about fifty years of age, of unusually short, even diminutive, stature; his hair beginning to be grey, his brow broad and intellectual. His gestures and movements were peculiar; he had a habit, even in company, of rising from his seat, and laying his hand upon his head, with open fingers, as if measuring its shape and size;. and, when he thought that no one observed him, as he walked among the quiet roads, or on the hills, he would wave his arms as if reciting poetry or conversing with the mountains, his companions. His eyes, if memory serves right, were dark grey, and the expression of his face thoughtful and benevolent, with a touch of sadness. He was a frequent attendant at the church on Sundays; but even there his poetic fancies often seemed to follow him, and it was difficult not to watch his features with wonder and amusement, while he stood up in his pew and looked round on the kneeling congregation, a strange but kindly smile playing on his face, as of one looking down with benevolent interest on children engaged in their devotions. Not that he himself was wanting in decorous attention to the service, for his mind was in its very structure devotional, as his writings testify; and his conversation, though tinged occasionally with satirical or humorous allusions to religious parties, never breathed irreverence or doubt with regard to Christian truth. Of the impression produced by his conversation it is difficult to give an adequate conception. Young men, it is true, are more susceptible of pleasure from intercourse with a really original thinker than those whose admiration is held in check by larger experience, and perhaps distrust. And it may be partly due to this intense appreciation of what is far-reaching and beautiful in thought and imagery, which is the gift of youth, that the conversation of Hartley Coleridge seems in retrospect so marvellous. For the minds of the young in the four or five years preceding and following manhood are receptive of ideas to a degree that is never the case in after majority of cases, sets a bar to the imagination, and limits intellectual interests. Even where the latter are still retained, the vivid delight in new thoughts and ideas gives place to a critical habit; we no longer climb the mountains merely for the sake of the unknown views beyond, but choose safe paths that will bring us with the least trouble to our journey's end. The abandon with which we threw ourselves upon the untried regions of thought is gone, never to return. Nor can the mind, that retains to the end most of its first freshness recover the keen delight and the eager admiration with which, in the opening of its powers, it welcomed the utterances of gifted men, and drank in their teaching. Even older men, however, have borne testimony to the remarkable brilliance of Hartley Coleridge's conversation. It was not that it was sprightly, clever, and witty; such conversation is sometimes most fatiguing. It was not, as his father's is described, an eloquent, rapt monologue: there was nothing in it obscure and misty, no oracular pretension, no dark profundities. Yet few ever exemplified more strongly the inborn difference between genius and talent. Beautiful ideas seemed to be breathed into his mind perpetually, as if they came to him from the mountain breezes, or welled up in his heart and mind from an inexhaustible reservoir within. There was nothing like effort, nothing like that straining after brilliance which wearies while it amuses: all was simple, unaffected, spontaneous. Perhaps the fact that his companions were younger than himself, and glad to listen to the poet's words, encouraged the unrestrained flow of his thought. Among equals there is apt to be rivalry, or at least reserve; appreciation and sympathy from younger men often unlock stores of thought, and draw out its treasures. And in Hartley Coleridge these were vast and varied-to his younger hearers apparently inexhaustible. A wide and diversified range of reading, especially in poetry, philosophy, abundant material, which his original and ever-active mind was continually shaping. Nor, although evidently pleased to pour out his reflections, did he monopolize the conversation, as some great talkers are wont to do. A question or remark from any of his younger hearers would engage him in a new train of thought, and he would listen to their arguments with perfect courtesy and patience, and without any of that selfconscious superiority which sometimes makes the conversation of clever men so oppressive. It must not be supposed that the only topics that interested him were poetry and literature. His remarks on politics, and Church questions, or other subjects of the day, were keen and original, often humorous or satirical. There lay in his mind, as in that of men of imaginative genius there always is, a fund of humour, breaking out now in sparks of wit, now in somewhat broad and boyish jests. "What is the charge for asses?" he would suddenly say to the astonished turnpike-keeper on the Thirlmere road, putting his hand in his pocket, and turning to count his companions as they passed the toll-bar. Occasionally, but not frequently, a tinge of bitterness would dash the current of his talk; more often, in a few words of powerful irony he would denounce some popular untruth, and expose its fallacy. Such passages are to be found here and there in his writings, although their prevailing tone is grace and tenderness. His mind, indeed, had a strong element of stern and masculine feeling, which did not often rise to the surface, but which, if he had given it scope, would have made him eloquent and powerful as a moral teacher or a satirist. And yet, notwithstanding the varied play of his intellect, and a certain childlike enjoyment of his gifts, the whole impression left on the mind by intercourse with him was one of sadness and pity, mingled with admiration. There was cause enough for this, unhappily, in his life, in facts which this is not the place to dwell on which, indeed, it is no concern of ours to dwell on at all. Inheriting in a high degree his father's genius, he inherited something of his defect of will. One unhappy weakness marred, without staining, a character which was in its substance singularly innocent, benevolent, pure, and childlike. Few men could have done less harm; few men of such diversified genius have written so much of unmixed good. But the consciousness of great power combined with any degree of moral weakness, of lofty and immortal gifts, lifting their possessor above common men, while in strength of will and self-control he feels himself unequal to them, must create a sadness, deep and bitter, in proportion to the intrinsic worth and purity of the heart. This sadness was a prevailing feature in Hartley Coleridge's mind; it was expressed in his features, it underlay his conversation, it is the key-note to much of his poetry. That it never issued in defiance, or in unjust anger, or irreverence; that it never tempted him, as it has tempted so many others, to call good evil, and evil good; that it is always humble, self-accusing; still more, that in its deepest and most regretful moments it is always hopeful: this marks his character, in our judgment, as one worthy of all sympathy and love. Few poets have left a more distinct impress of their mind and heart upon their works than Hartley Coleridge. Much of them belongs to that kind of poetry which is wrung by sorrow from the soul of genius. Nothing can exceed the melancholy of some of his sonnets; as of that deeply touching one "Once I was young, and fancy was my all, My love, my joy, my grief, my hope, my fear, And ever ready as an infant's tear, Whate'er in Fancy's kingdom might befall; But is itself its own sure destiny." Or the following: 66 'Youth, thou art fled,-but where are all the charms Which, though with thee they came, and pass'd with thee, Should leave a perfume and sweet memory Of what they have been?-All thy boons and harms Have perished quite. Thy oft renewed alarms Forsake the flutt'ring echo.-Smiles and tears Die on my cheek, or, petrified with years, Show the dull woe which no compassion warms, The mirth none shares. Yet could a wish, a thought, Unravel all the complex web of ageCould all the characters that Time hath wrought Be clean effaced from my memorial page In mere music and rhythm, his sonnets often come nearer to Shakspeare's than those of any modern poet, not excepting Wordsworth. The English language contains few more exquisite ones than that on the lack of great poets in this age: In the void air; even at this breathing hour That sweetly nestle in the foxglove bells, Then might our pretty modern Philomels Sustain our spirits with their roundelays." That again to Homer is scarcely inferior, especially in the concluding lines, describing the varied music of the old poet's verse : "How strong, How fortified with all the num'rous train Of human truths, great poet of thy kind, Wert thou, whose verse, capacious as the sea, And various as the voices of the wind, Swell'd with the gladness of the battle's glee, And yet could glorify infirmity When Priam wept, or shamestruck Helen The peculiarity of the sonnet, its ending as it were without an end, was adapted perhaps to a certain incompleteness, not of thought, nor of expression, which are often highly finished, but (if the expression may be used) of character, in the poet's mind. The sonnet finishes, yet does not finish, the subject; it contains a complete thought, but suggests that there is more behind. In the use of the double syllable at the end of the line "Could any sin survive and be forgiven, One sinful wish would make a hell of heaven," giving a quiet ring to the verse, and varying its monotony, as well as in the happy introduction of the tribrach, or the anapast "To greet the pressure of immaculate feet," Hartley Coleridge is a artist. But the characteristic of his poetry, throughout, is its unaffectedness. There is no straining after effect, no staring, startling epithets, no elaborate and artificial simplicity. All is graceful, tender, beautiful-the growth of a mind in which grace and beauty were native elements. Whether his genius was capable of a sustained flight it is hard to say. The longest poem in his first volume (that published in his lifetime) is not the most striking; but that called the "Prometheus" (in the posthumous volume) though a fragment, is in itself a gem of exquisite beauty. It is an adaptation of some of the many mysterious ideas which cluster round the story of the benevolent, suffering, unbending Titan. In no modern poet can we point to a more beautiful passage than that in which the sylphs describe the infancy of Jupiter, at whose enforced desertion his mother Rhæa "would have given her godhead for a heart That might have broken;" then his growing boyhood, while his future greatness dawned upon him gra Perhaps the writings of Hartley Coleridge are hardly known as much as they deserve to be. The blaze of glory around Tennyson dims for the present the lustre of contemporary poets. But as long as grace, pathos, and tenderness have charms when clothed in an expression of simple but finished beauty; as long as there is interest in the sorrows, and struggles, and hopes of a highly-gifted and good, though imperfect man; as long as there is sympathy for purity and tenderness of feeling, and delight in the melody of exquisite verse so long will his works deserve a place among the genuine productions of high poetic genius. WINE AND SLEEP. AMID Cithaeron's solitudes, what time He leaned against a plane-tree richly wed "Apollo, Hermes, Hera, Cybele, And very majesty of Zeus, look down, Are void of them who worshipped erst, but now, Grape-maddened, roam Cithaeron's wilds with me, The youngest and the mightiest of the gods." Thus vaunting he strode forth, and with proud glance Contentment fled him, and he flushed with wrath, They lay on bunches of crushed grapes, on coils Blent with the thyrsus, the empurpled bowl, The deadly beauty of the leopardess Lay slumbering there,-blunt head and dainty paw And fresh unsealed. Swimming, his eyeball thrice Then sank, and his drowsed hand dismissed the cup. R. GARNETT. CRADOCK NOWELL: A TALE OF THE NEW FOREST. BY RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE. CHAPTER XXIX. It was a Tuesday evening when Cradock Nowell and Amy Rosedew signed and sealed, with the moon's approval, their bond to one another. On the following day, Dr. Hutton and wife were to dine at Kettledrum Hall; and the distance being considerable, and the roads so shockingly bad,-" even dangerous, I am told, to gentlemen who have dined with me, sir," said Kettledrum, in his proudest manner,-they had accepted his offer, and that of Mrs. Kettledrum, which she herself came over to make, that they should not think of returning until after breakfast on Of band's hints, Rosa felt the keenest interest in "that Mrs. Kettledrum. Leave her to me, dear Rufus. You need not be afraid, indeed. Trust me to get to the bottom of it." And so she exerted her probing skill upon her to the uttermost, more even than ladies usually do, when they first meet one another. course, there was no appearance of it, nothing so ill-bred as that; it was all the sweetest refinement, and the kindest neighbourly interest. They even became affectionate in the course of half-anhour, and mutual confidence proved how strangely their tastes were in unison. Nevertheless, each said good-bye with a firm conviction that she had outwitted |