fresh period of unthinking infancy. For every- cation between good and evil, and make a debatething is beautiful in his time, and childhood cannot able ground of palliations, affinities, excuses, and be protracted into youth, (except in the innocence detractions, obscuring the path which seemed at a which characterizes it ;) its purposeless, wander- distance so clear; as natural philosophers lose their ing, merely impulsive being cannot be retained disgust for what is revolting to the uneducated beyond the natural term, without implying some senses, in their skill in resolving every hateful weakness, either in the will or the constitution of sight of decomposition, each evil odor, to_the the mind. What Hartley's singular powers of chemical elements of which it is composed. It is mind were at this time, we learn from an extract well that we should learn to love what is cleanly, from Mr. Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary. and hate what is foul and impure, before we attain knowledge, good and true in itself, but neither good nor true to us, if it interferes with our dis tinct appreciation of cleanliness and impurity, or abates one tittle of our love and abhorrence for The habit, as an these antagonistic qualities. exercise of the understanding, did not grow upon him; his childhood and boyhood were rather distinguished by fancy and invention; such invention, that is, as a child is capable of, which is more a rapid adaptation of all newly-acquired knowledge to his purpose than anything really original; a talent only remarkable in the degree in which he possessed it, in the hold it had over him, to the literal confusion to his own mind between fact and fiction, and, above all, in the power he possessed of conveying his dreams to others in clear, animated language. We will not suspect our readers of forgetting their own childhood so far, or suppose it to have been so dull and uninspired, as to apologize for introducing them to the fairy land of this young genius, as recorded by his brother, and thus giving each one an opportunity of comparing it with his own. Afterwards stepped to Charles Lamb's. Coleridge there. A short but interesting conversation on German metaphysics. C. related some curious anecdotes of his son Hartley, whom he represented to be a most remarkable child, a deep thinker in his infancy. He tormented himself in his attempts to solve the problems that would equally torment the full-grown man, if the world and its cares and pleasures did not distract his attention. Hartley, when about five years old, was asked a question about himself being called Hartley. "Which Hartley?" asked the boy. Why is there more than one Hartley?" Yes," he replied, "there's a deal of Hartleys." "How 80?" "There's Picture-Hartley," (Haslett had painted a portrait of him,) "and Shadow-Hartley, and there's Echo-Hartley, and there's Catch-me-fast-Hartley at the same time seizing his own arm with the other hand very eagerly, an action which shows that his mind must have been drawn to reflect on what Kant calls the great and inexplicable mystery, viz., that a man should be both his own subject and object, and that these two should be one. 66 At a At the same early age, continued Coleridge, Hartley used to be in agony of thought, puzzling himself about the reality of existence. As when some one said to him "It is not now; but it is to be." "But," said The autumn of the year, (1807, when Hartley was he, "if it is to be, it is." Perhaps this confusion of ten or eleven years old,) he spent at Bristol with his thought lay not merely in the imperfection of language. maternal grandmother, where he joined his mother, Hartley, when a child, had no pleasure in things; his little sister, and myself. It is now that my own they made no impression on him till they had under-recollections of my brother begin to be distinct and gone a process in his mind, and were become thoughts continuous. From this time for the next eight years or feelings.-Memoir, p. xxvii. -how large a portion of those first twenty years, which have been truly said to constitute a full half As Mr. Coleridge says, the tendency to meta- of the longest life!-I was his constant companion at physical inquiry is common in children. Most of home and at school, at work and at play, if he could us probably can remember when the mysteries of ever have been said to have played; by day and by our being before we had, as it were, got used to night we read together, talked together, slept together. existence, and new things were continually pre- Thus I became the depositary of all his thoughts and senting themselves to our mind-perplexed us feelings, and in particular of that strange dream of much more than they do now, when we take life, which, as above mentioned, he led in the cloud wonderful things as a matter of course; but also land of his fancy. It will not be thought strange if I this child was placed very much in circumstances linger over this period, the most remarkable, and, as to encourage this habit of thought. What are it proved, by far the happiest of his mortal existence; called hereditary tendencies are as often derived nor, considering the object of this narrative, do I think after our birth, through the simple agency of the an apology necessary for the following details. senses, as by the more subtle influence which is very early period of his childhood, of which he had himself a distinct though visionary remembrance, he generally understood by the expression; and seeds imagined himself to foresee a time when, in a field of certain trains of thought may be, and probably that lay close to the house in which he lived, a small often are, laid at an age too early for those that cataract would burst forth, to which he gave the name plant them to have any idea of what they are doing. of Jug-force. The banks of the stream thus created The conversation that would greet Hartley's infant soon became populous—a region—a realm; and, as ears would be of a metaphysical character, and he the vision spread in ever-widening circles, it soon might catch the knack of it long before he could overflowed as it were the narrow spot in which it was follow in any direct sense the meaning of the words originally generated, and Jugforcia, disguised under spoken. Possibly it may not be well for children the less familiar appellation of Ejuxria, became an to hear much deep talk, if, that is, they have any island continent, with its own attendant isles-a new turn for understanding it, for in most instances Australia, or newest Sea-land-if it were not rather there is a native healthful power of resistance and a reflection of old Europe projected from the clouds on some wide ocean somewhere. * * Taken as a rejection of what is hard and crabbed, which pro- whole, the Ejuxrian world presented a complete analtects from this danger. It needs a mature mind, ogon to the world of fact, so far as it was known to and a will and principles confirmed and strength- Hartley, complete in all its parts: furnishing a the ened by direct precept and simple uninquiring faith, atre and scene of action, with dramatis persone and to stand the shock of metaphysics, that analyzing suitable machinery, in which day after day for the of facts and principles and motives, which seems space of long years he went on evolving the compliso often to remove the hard, strong lines of demarcated drama of existence. There were many nations, continental and insular, each with its separate history, civil, ecclesiastical, and literary; its forms of religion and government, and specific national character. * * When at length a sense of unreality was forced upon him, and he felt himself obliged to account for his knowledge of and connection with this distant land, he had a story (borrowed from the "Arabian Nights") of a great bird, by which he was transported to and fro. But he recurred to these explanations with reluctance, and got out of them as quickly as possible. Once I asked him how it came that his absence on these occasions was not observed, but he was angry and mortified, and I never repeated the experiment. Memoir, p. XXXV. trophe, applied to his father, who excited his indignation by treating the matter too lightly, when he said "he should inform the public that the only bad lines in the tragedy were written by Mr. Coleridge senior!" He called this nation the "Ejuxrii;" and one day, when walking very pensively, I asked him what ailed him, he said, "My people are too fond of war, and I have just made an eloquent speech to the senate, which has not made any impression on them, and to war they will go."-Memoir, p. 33. His seriousness, amusing as it must have been at the time, and contrasting him favorably, to ordinary observers, from the common run of children, had no doubt to do with the unreal, unpractical Looking back upon the strength of the illusion which seemed to possess him, and his unwilling part of his character; he seemed not to be able to ness to believe it a dream, we may feel that in distinguish between reality and pretence. As we these lay whatever danger there might be in yield-tread on; fancy should be fancy, play should be have said, children should know the ground they ing to such fancies. Most children, as we have said, have a region of their own to expatiate in; but the healthy, vigorous mind, knows when it is indulging in illusions, and likes them because they are illusions over which it has unlimited power and mastery, which it can take up and lay down at will. It is best too, we believe, for this region of fancy to be a secret possession-a treasure held within the inmost mind, which bashfulness, and, indeed, the absence of all temptation to seek a confidant, must keep forever closed from the outer world, with something of the same sense of snug ness and exclusiveness which made the garden of the poet seem so charming : And what alone did all the rest surpass, Of pleasures to the excluded world unknown. play with them as with their elders. In the common sense of the word, his brother says he never should be said emphatically of the man who in after played. At first sight, it is remarkable that this life never worked, i. e., never steadily pursued or carried through any undertaking. But any one who watches children at play will understand how in it. Every thought is there acted upon and the practical element of the character is developed and theory. Mimic business in fact-the fun lying It is the very reverse of mere talk in its not being real business-is the subject-matter of play, and, much more than book-learning—we do not speak of application-trains and qualifies the mind to take its place in life, and do the external work set before it. But why dwell on these thoughts, when there is so little practical to be done? It is hard to make a serious child a merry worked out. Not, of course, but that such things must be accord-one, or to persuade a boy into being fond of play ing to the natural temperament, and no checking or suppression of fancies from without could avail for the want of that native reserve we are advocating. But to return to this terra incognita : who does not by nature like it; he will creep back to his dreams and his books in spite of our wellmeant endeavors; and much more would it be vain and worse than useless to establish in our own In truth, I was willingly beguiled. His usual mind any rigid standard, the departure from which mode of introducing the subject was, "Derwent," call- shall cast shadows and forebodings over any harming me by my name, (for these disclosures in latter less peculiarity of mind, which it is impossible to years were made to me alone,) " I have had letters and change or reduce to our ideal; but the lesson which papers from Ejuxria;" then came his budget of news, we believe may be learnt from the instance before with appropriate reflections, his words flowing on in us is, to desire for our children a full measure of an exhaustless stream, and his countenance bearing ordinary gifts, rather than more brilliant extraorwitness to the inspiration-shall I call it?-by which dinary ones-to cultivate in them the qualities he was agitated. Nothing could exceed the serious-natural to their age, more than others which seem ness of his manner, and doubtless of his feeling. He to go beyond them-and to be fully satisfied when was, I am persuaded, utterly unconscious of invention; and if the early age in which this power was exercised be remarkable, the late period to which it was continued was not less so. I have reason to believe that he continued the habit mentally from time to time after he left school, and of course had no longer a confidant-in this, as in many other ways, continuing a child.-Memoir, p. 39. Another witness to this habit of mind is found in the recollections of a still earlier age; recorded by Mrs. Basil Montagu, who says in a letter of recent date: we see them children in the simplest sense of the word, without longing for premature evidence of intellect. For even taking the lowest groundwhich to a Christian worldly ambition ought to appear-ordinary gifts are more important to the formation of a great character than extraordinary; a man to be great must possess all the qualities in full development of our common nature-there must be this foundation of brotherhood and sympathy with universal man, on which superadd as many peculiar powers as you please. But universal qualities are the wood and stone of the huHe was a most extraordinary child, exhibiting at man temple; they must be reared symmetrically, six years old the most surprising talent for invention. before the painting and sculpture, the gold and At eight years of age he had found a spot upon the globe which he peopled with an imaginary nation, these fitly joined together we can make no harmogems, can be seen as they ought to be, and without gave them a name, a language, laws, and a senate, nious display of our fine things; while the solid where he framed long speeches, which he translated, he said, for my benefit, and for the benefit of my structure of ordinary humanity we have pictured is neighbors, who climbed the garden wall to listen to comparatively independent of its costly decorations, this surprising child, whom they supposed to be recit- and may form a very fine building without them. ing pieces from memory. About this time he wrote a All are ready to grant this when men have reached tragedy, and, being at a loss in winding up the catas-maturity; but children are estimated, and perhaps of his school-fellows he never played. He was, indeed, incapable of the adroitness and presence of mind required in the most ordinary sports. His uncle Hence, he was much alone, passing his time in read(Southey) used to tell him that he had two left hands. ing, walking, dreaming to himself, or talking his dreams to others. One friend he had, a resident in the town, not a school-fellow, Robert Jameson, to whom he afterwards addressed a series of beautiful sonnets, but, with this exception, he had, strictly speaking, no mates, and formed no friendships. He stood apart, admired and beloved by all, but without intimacy. He could do nothing with or for his school-fellows, except to construe their lessons and to tell them tales. In the latter capacity, he stood, I believe, quite Other boys may have displayed more inven unavoidably so, by what they can do what their | No harm came of it either to body or mind, but, as I capabilities are; and thus arises the constant dis- believe, much good to both. My brother, however, appointment in clever children-a disappointment employed his liberty in a very different way from any unjust to them, for they really fulfil their promise. But men will not learn by experience, they will suppose that a child's cleverness promises too much. We look for the crowning power of manliness to come as it were of course, and are surprised to find the clever boy grow up only clever, in no sense our ideal of a man, and passed in the race by his less brilliant and forward companion, whose youth had attracted no attention because he was only a boy, of whom nothing could be said but that he had the qualities characteristic of a boy, i. e., which a boy ought to have; which, however, grow into the qualities that a man ought not to be without. In this view, a boy's companions, in their estimate of him, often prove much truer prophets than his teachers, unless their acquaintance with him is intimate, and their observation extended beyond the school-room. But to return. 66 alone. tion, and perhaps greater originality, though none such have come under my own observation; but what he did, his achievement, if I may so express myself, It is remarkable that invention, for which his of tales, but by one continuous tale, regularly evolved, as a story-teller was unique. It was not by a series childhood seemed most distinguished, ceased to be and possessing a real unity, that he enchained the athis characteristic as life advanced. His original tention of his auditors, night after night, as we lay in turn of thought and expression found utterance in bed, (for time and place, as well as the manner in treating of the actual, not in framing a world of which he carried out his witchery, might have been their own. When it was forced upon him that his adopted from Scherezade,) for a space of years, and Ejuxria" was not real, he cared no longer for not unfrequently for hours together. This enormous such regions. The one tale of fancy which his romance, far exceeding in length, I should suppose, poems contains is not to our minds happily con- the compositions of Calprenede, Scudery or Richardceived, "Leonard and Susan," belonging neither son, though delivered without premeditation, had a to nature nor the imagination, and the incidents progressive story, with many turns and complications, being at once hackneyed and improbable. Nor did with salient points returning at intervals, with a sus his premature devotion to politics in his ideal world pended interest varying in intensity, and occasionally have more permanent influence over his tastes. catastrophe and conclusion. Whether, in the sense wrought up to a very high pitch, and at length a final The mind that in infancy was full of senates and of Aristotle, it could be said to have a beginning, a armies, and dreamed of ruling nations, found its middle, and an end; whether there was perfect conmost fitting and congenial exercise in after life in sistency and subordination of parts, I will not trust purely speculative subjects, and matters of taste; my recollection to decide. There was certainly a great or in dwelling with fond remorseful love on the yet variety of persons sharply characterized, who appeared unstained innocence of childhood; the charms of on the stage in combination, and not merely in suc domestic life, from which he felt himself excluded, cession. In the conception of these, my impression is the influence of nature and friendship, which that very considerable power was evinced. He spoke through all his deviations held their sway over without hesitation in language as vivid as it was him; and in religious musings and self-question-flowing. This power of improvisation he lost, or conings; unreal, perhaps, so far as they ended in them-ceived himself to lose, when he began the practice of selves, but genuine and expressive, and containing many a useful lesson, as well as pathetic plea for our own interest and sympathy. When the age for school came, the two brothers were placed as day-scholars under the tuition of the Rev. John Dawes, of Ambleside, of whom Mr. Coleridge gives a warm eulogy. They were lodged at a hamlet, a mile from the town, for the sake of being near their father's friend, Charles Lloyd, whose sons were their school-fellows. Domestic supervision, or at least control, we had none; we lived with an elderly woman, the daughter of a Westmoreland statesman, and her son, a man of some education, originally intended" for the Church,' but now a malster, who, in a rough, simple way, took good care of us, and to whom we became much attached. But our freedom out of school hours was unlimited; our play-place was the hill-side, the river bank, or the broad bosom of the lake, and our bounds the furthest point to which our inclinations led, or our strength would carry us. Some time afterwards, we were joined by two companions, sons of a Liverpool merchant, who had built a house in Grasmere; and certain it is that the license we enjoyed, however perilous it might have been under other circumstances, was never abused during the whole time it lasted, some eight or nine years, by any one of the party. neither very original nor particularly edifying, was written composition. The moral of the tale, though characteristic both of himself and of the time. It turned upon the injustice of society, and the insufficiency of conventional morals to determine the right or wrong of particular actions.-Memoir, p. 1. This remarkable power did not set him much above his school-fellows in acquiring the art of written composition, which he had to learn, as others must," his peculiar powers seeming to have been suspended during the operation;" but what cost him pains he retained, and his style, the result of labor and study, was very felicitous, which perhaps modes of writing acquired readily, seldom are. The singular advantage of this period, indeed of the whole period of his youth, has yet to be dwelt upon, if seeming advantages can be numbered as such in his case. It was among the advantages never to be forgotten of our school days, that we had the opportunity of constant intercourse with Mr. Wordsworth and his family. It was in the library at Allan Bank, in the vale of Grasmere, where the great bard at that time resided, that Hartley carried on his English studies, and acquired, in a desultory manner, a taste for literary acquirements, and no inconsiderable amount of knowledge. This privilege was continued after Mr. Words worth had removed his residence to Rydal. It was at | could hardly be called-during which he bit his arm this early period that he became acquainted with the or finger violently. He yielded, as it were, unconpoet, now Professor Wilson, then residing at his beau-sciously to slight temptations, slight in themselves, tiful seat, Elleray, on the banks of Windermere, who and slight to him, as if swayed by a mechanical im became from that time, and continued to the last, one pulse apart from his own volition. It looked like an of his kindest friends. In his later years my brother organic defect-a congenital imperfection. I do not looked back upon the hours he spent at Elleray as offer this as an explanation. There are mysteries in among the happiest of his life. He has himself re- our moral nature upon which we can only pause and corded the pleasure and profit which he derived from doubt.-Memoir, p. lix. his visits at New Brathay, the seat of John Harding, Esq., a gentleman of varied accomplishments, and most engaging manners. with Lloyd was neither less delightful nor less instructive. It was so, rather than by a regular course of study, that he was educated ;-by desultory reading, by the living voice of Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth, Lloyd, Wilson and De Quincy-and again, by homely familiarity with town's folk and country folk, of every degree; lastly, by daily recurring hours of solitude;-by lonely wanderings with the murmurs of the Brathay in his ear.-Me-powers into which the improvisations of his boymoirs, p. lv. hood issued. In a letter from the Rev. Alexander * * His intercourse "It will surely be asked," continues his biographer, "what came of this?" in entering, as he now must, on the painful part of his history, "not without great searchings of heart." From 1814, when Hartley left school, the brothers were separated, and only met for short periods, and at long intervals for the rest of their lives. Mr. Coleridge ceases therefore to speak from his own memory, and is dependent for the rest of his account on his brother's private memoranda, and the information of others. The following remarks in closing his own personal recollections imply, we think, more than he himself seems to infer, that Hartley's character permanently suffered for want of early discipline. The liberty of their early school days, though it resulted in no errors or excesses which needed correction, no doubt fostered that impatience of constraint which he describes, and those other morbid indications of want of self-control. The intercourse with gifted men which distinguished his boyhood, while it developed certain faculties, perhaps prematurely, in no way acted instead of authority. There seems to have been wanting the salutary check to his own excitable nature of a will more powerful than his own, which, without the direct sense of constraint, would force him, by the bonds of habit and affection, to follow its dictates, and not leave him at that critical period to follow unconstrained the impulse of each moment. Yet it is true, as his brother says, that subsequent events alone suggest such reflections. The history of his boyhood, as it stands alone, is certainly an attractive one, and he must have been bent on evil prophecies who could have foretold so sad a conclusion to it. forward through Mr. Southey's intervention, HartBy the help of friends and relations, who came ley, a year after leaving school, went to Oxford as scholar or post-master of Merton, his father being at this time in no condition to afford his son any pecuniary assistance. There remains little record of his early college life, but mention is made of college friendships of that period which did honor to his choice, and from one of these friends we have the first mention of those rare conversational Dyce, dated 1849, we read : If I had known Hartley later in his career, perhaps something painful might have mingled with my recollections of him; but I remember him only as s young man who possessed an intellect of the highest order, with great simplicity of character, and considerable oddity of manner. His extraordinary powers as rather a declaimer) procured for him numerous ina converser (or vitations to what are called at Oxford "wine parties." He knew that he was expected to talk, and talking was his delight. Leaning his head on one shoulder, turning up his dark bright eyes, and swinging backwards and forwards in his chair, he would hold forth by the hour, (for no one wished to interrupt him,) on whatever subject might have been started-either of literature, politics, or religion-with an originality of thought, a force of illustration, and a facility and beauty of expression, which I question if any man then living, except his father, could have surpassed. I have reason to believe that this display of eloquence did him some harm eventually at the university: Reports were rife that he was fond of inveighing fence than his having been seen in his cap and gown against all establishments, (a more unpardonable of buying a pennyworth of apples from an old woman in Oriol lane,) and very probably he had given cause for such reports being spread abroad by matter-of-fact persons, who could not distinguish between what he said when truth was his sole object, and what he uttered when he declaimed merely to show his ingenuity in argument. I have little doubt he was no more serious in those supposed attacks on "Church and State," than he was when he maintained (as I have heard him do) that ages of darkness would again prevail in Europe, to the destruction of literature and the arts, (a catastrophe which the discovery of printing has rendered impossible ;) or when he gravely asserted that, for all we know, dogs may have a language of smell, and that what is to our organs a very disagreeable odor, may be to canine organs a most beautiful poem.-Memoir, p. lxiv. A word before I proceed, of one serious import. My brother's life at school was so blameless, he seemed, and was, not merely so simple, tender-hearted and affectionate, but so truthful, dutiful and thoughtful-so religious, if not devout, that, if his after years had run in a The poet calls beauty "dono infelice," the unhappier course, the faults of his boyhood might well happy gift; but its temptations, as far as experihave been overlooked, and nothing seen but that which promised good. An eye sharpened for closer attend the gift of the tongue-a ready flow of ence shows us, are small compared to those which observation may in the retrospect descry the shadow of the coming cloud. A certain infirmity of will, eloquent expression. It is hard to say anything the specific evil of his life, had already shown itself. against fine talking-the most enchanting of all His sensibility was intense, and he had not where- accomplishments-the most invigorating of all rewithal to control it. He could not open a letter with-freshments and relaxations to the listener, and a out trembling; he shrank from mental pain; he was beyond measure impatient of constraint. He was liable to paroxysms of rage, often the disguise of pity, self-accusation, or other painful emotion-anger it perfectly lawful exercise of the understanding, if kept within due bounds, to the imparter of this high pleasure. Yet we would ask our readers, each in his own sphere, if he has ever known man or woman celebrated as a talker without being mani- | sex." If it was carried to the point of weakness festly the worse for it, and failing conspicuously, it was at best an amiable and attractive one, and is and evidently from this cause, in one or more of the evidenced by so much simple and pure unselfish most important duties of his or her station. There feeling, as constitutes one of the great charms of is something in the power of enchaining the atten- his poetry, and of such indications of his domestic tion of others, of carrying them along, of moving, life as are given to us. The singularity of persuading, convincing at will, by the immediate his person, and his subsequent irregularities, contact of oral intercourse, which, as man is con- precluded the hope to his sensitive mind of any stituted, proves to be one of the most dangerous of return of this sentiment. Once or twice, "in all gifts one which has the most direct tendency brief periods of dear delusion," this feeling_cento separate words from deeds, thought from action tred in a particular object, but never found ex-to reduce all those faculties which were designed pression to the object of his particular regard. to enlighten the path of duty to mere engines of The habit of his mind was rather to be in love barren display. Many reasons may be found for with the fair and good qualities of the gentler sex this, the fact being, however unwillingly, granted; wherever he saw them; and in return the ladies but this is not the place for a lengthened treatise on seem to have felt for him that sympathizing comthe abuse of the tongue-not that tediously profuse passion and regard which, as far as human influence exercise of it which brought down Bishop Butler's could have power, had most sway over him. He reprehension in one of the wittiest pieces of gravity, valued this general kindness for what it was worth, or gravest specimens of wit, which perhaps our but it could not satisfy such yearnings as are language affords; but on the more brilliant abuse conveyed constantly in his writings for a particular of this member-the indifference it engenders to exclusive regard, and are feelingly expressed in perfect truth, in the aim to produce present effect, the following lines:or in mere wanton exercise of sway over the mind of the listener, showing how easily right and wrong may be made to change places by those who have the skill to do it-and in the consequent vanity which makes the man of many words in his turn swayed by the applause and sympathy of others, instead of by the dictates of conscience, and the approbation of his own heart. In the particular instance before us, however, his brother exonerates Poems, p. 43. him from the charge of want of purpose, if we may Connected with this sentiment was a certain so consider it, in his friend's account of his under-morbid vanity alternately taking the aspect of love graduate disquisitions; his invectives against establishments were no mere oratorical displays, but the abiding thoughts of his heart. Though far from a destructive in politics, he was always keenly alive to what he supposed to be the evils and abuses of the existing state of things both in Church and State; while he remained constant in his allegiance to what he believed to be the essentials of both. He was neither a high churchman nor a high tory; but views similar to his, in many particulars, have since been adopted by a class of ardent and generous reformers who claim both names. On these points his creed was early formed, and never changed. İt differed in some important points from mine, which I mention, once for all, to prevent misapprehension. On all subjects he spoke his mind, often through whim or impatience, more than his mind freely, without regard to consequences. This, at the time of which we are speaking, helped to bring him into trouble. Soon afterwards he bought the privilege of impunity at a very dear rate.-Memoirs, p. lxvi. Few of our readers, probably, are ignorant to what this allusion refers, for poor Hartley Coleridge's errors and their consequences were distinguished by an unusual publicity. But we have not yet arrived at this painful conclusion of his Oxford career. In his examination for his degree he passed with credit, being placed in the second class as a sort of compromise amongst the examiners, some of whom would have given him a first, in consideration of his evident talent and varied knowledge, while others saw such deficiencies in his scholarship as only merited a fourth. The distinctions that examiners can bestow were, however, dear to him only so far as they could win him the approbation and notice of a very different tribunal. It was one of the young poet's peculiarities or must we call it weaknesses?-to desire ardently to "stand well in the opinion of the other The earliest wish I ever knew Was woman's kind regard to win ; of display and craving for sympathy, which his brother attributes to the singularities of his mind and constitution throwing him back upon himself in undue self-contemplation. Of this he has shown an amusing consciousness in the following confession, written in after years, but which we place here in connection with his Oxford career. I very much doubt the expediency of English verse prizes at the universities. That the poems produced on these occasions are not always of first-rate excellence is no great objection; but the train of feeling they induce is alien from the course of academical study, and the public recitation before the assembled beauties of commencements and commemorations, is too intoxicating for any but mathematical heads to bear. I verily believe that I should have gone crazy, silly-mad with vanity, had I obtained the prize for my "Horses of Lysippus." It was almost the only occasion in my life wherein I was keenly disappointed, for it was the only one upon which I felt any confident hope. I had made myself very sure of it, and the inman, absolutely stupefied me. telligence that not I, but Macdonald, was the lucky Yet I contrived for a time to lose all sense of my own misfortunes, in exultation for Burton's success. Poor, dear Burton! how calmly he took it, rejoicing chiefly in the pleasure his honors would afford to his mother and sister; though perhaps another, whom he mentioned not, was not less in his heart. The truth is, I was fea. I sung, I danced, I whistled, I leapt, I ran from room to room, announcing the great tidings, and tried to persuade even myself that I cared nothing at all for my own case. But it would not do. It was bare sands with me next day. It was not the mere loss of the prize, was as one who discovers that his familiar, to whom but the feeling or phantasy of an adverse destiny. I he has sold himself, is a deceiver. I foresaw that all my aims and hopes would prove frustrate and abortive; and from that time I date my downward declension, my impotence of will, and melancholy recklessness. It was the first time I sought relief from wine, |