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MR. COLERIDGE.

THE present is an age of talkers, and not of doers; and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and doat on past achievements. The accumulation of knowledge has been so great, that we are lost in wonder at the height it has reached, instead of attempting to climb or add to it; while the variety of objects distracts and dazzles the looker-on. What niche remains unoccupied? What path untried? What is the use of doing anything, unless we could do better than all those who have gone before us? What hope is there of this? We are like those who have been to see some noble monument of art, who are content to admire without thinking of rivalling it; or like guests after a feast, who praise the hospitality of the donor "and thank the bounteous Pan"-perhaps carrying away some trifling fragments; or like the spectators of a mighty battle, who still hear its sound afar off, and the clashing of armour and the neighing of the war-horse and the shout of victory is in their ears, like the rushing of innumerable waters!

Mr. Coleridge has "a mind reflecting ages past:" his voice is like the echo of the congregated roar of the "dark rearward and abyss" of thought. He who has seen a mouldering tower by the side of a crystal lake, hid by the mist, but glittering in the wave below, may conceive the dim, gleaming, uncertain intelligence of his eye he who has marked the evening clouds uprolled (a world of vapours,) has seen the picture of his mind, unearthly, unsubstantial, with gorgeous tints and ever-varying forms

"That which was now a horse, even with a thought

The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct

As water is in water."

Our author's mind is (as he himself might express it) tanr There is no subject on which he has not touched, none an he has rested. With an understanding fertile, subtle, expanse "quick, forgetive, apprehensive," beyond all living precedent, w traces of it will perhaps remain. He lends himself to al: sions alike; he gives up his mind and liberty of thought to He is a general lover of art and science, and wedded to no on particular. He pursues knowledge as a mistress, with outstre hands and winged speed; but as he is about to embrace be Daphne turns-alas! not to a laurel! Hardly a speculat, a tas been left on record from the earliest time, but it is loosely f up in Mr. Coleridge's memory, like a rich, but somewhat tat piece of tapestry: we might add (with more seeming the extravagance,) that scarce a thought can pass through the of man, but its sound has at some time or other passed over h.s with rustling pinions. On whatever question or author y - 92% „k, he is prepared to take up the theme with advantage—tr.m Abelard down to Thomas Moore, from the subtlest meta; to the politics of the Courier. There is no man of gen 2 whose praise he descants, but the critic seems to stand above author, and "what in him is weak, to strengthen, what is i raise and support:" nor is there any work of genius that desir come out of his hands like an illuminated Missal, spark! ng es in its defects. If Mr. Coleridge had not been the most „m, rees, ve talker of his age, he would probably have been the finest but he lays down his pen to make sure of an auditor, and gages the admiration of posterity for the stare of an aller If he had not been a poet, he would have been a powerful logician of he had not dipped his wing in the Unitarian controversy, be a chi have soared to the very summit of fancy. But in writing he is trying to subject the Muse to transcendental theories in ka abstract reasoning, he misses his way by strewing it with wer All that he has done of moment, he had done twenty years ag since then, he may be said to have lived on the sound of La own voice. Mr. Coleridge is too rich in intellectual wealth, to need

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task himself to any drudgery: he has only to draw the sliders of his imagination, and a thousand subjects expand before him, startling him with their brilliancy, or losing themselves in endless obscurity

"And by the force of blear illusion,

They draw him on to his confusion."

What is the little he could add to the stock, compared with the countless stores that lie about him, that he should stoop to pick up a name, or to polish an idle fancy? He walks abroad in the ma jesty of an universal understanding, eyeing the "rich strond," or golden sky above him, and "goes sounding on his way," in eloquent accents, uncompelled and free!

Persons of the greatest capacity are often those, who for this reason do the least; for surveying themselves from the highest point of view, amidst the infinite variety of the universe, their own share in it seems trifling, and scarce worth a thought, and they prefer the contemplation of all that is, or has been, or can be, to the making a coil about doing what, when done, is no better than vanity. It is hard to concentrate all our attention and efforts on one pursuit, except from ignorance of others; and without this concentration of our faculties, no great progress can be made in any one thing. It is not merely that the mind is not capable of the effort; it does not think the effort worth making. Action is one; but thought is manifold. He whose restless eye glances through the wide compass of nature and art, will not consent to have "his own nothings monstered:" but he must do this, before he can give his whole soul to them. The mind, after "letting contemplation have its fill," or

"Sailing with supreme dominion

Through the azure deep of air,”

sinks down on the ground, breathless, exhausted, powerless, inactive; or if it must have some vent to its feelings, seeks the most easy and obvious; is soothed by friendly flattery, lulled by the murmur of immediate applause, thinks as it were aloud, and babbles in its dreams! A scholar (so to speak) is a more disinterested and abstracted character than a mere author. The first looks

at the numberless volumes of a litr ry, and saya, A. mine." the cther points to a single volume perlaps z immortal one) ani says, "My name is written on the This is a puny and grovelling ambition, beneath the h tude of Mr. Coleridge's mind. No, he revolves in his wa soul, or utters to the passing wind, or discourses to his cas things mightier and more various!-Let us draw the curtam ami unlock the shrine.

Learning rocked him in his cradle, and while yet a h

"He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.”

At sixteen he wrote his Ode on Chatterton, and he still revera that period with delight, not so much as it relates to himsel that string of his own early promise of fame rather jars than wh wise) but as exemplifying the youth of a poet Mr Cer talks of himself, without being an egotist, for in him the naval a is always merged in the abstract and general He distingated himself at school and at the University by his knowledge is na classics, and gained several prizes for Greek epigrams H.wma ny men are there (great scholars, celebrated names in I- ratare) who having done the same thing in their youth, have no other all the rest of their lives but of this achievement, of a f. 27 and dinner, and who, installed in academic honours, would ask down on our author as a mere strolling bard! At Chrara Hi pital, where he was brought up, he was the idol of those his schoolfellows, who mingled with their bookish stalas music of thought and of humanity; and he was ususiy at:- need round the cloisters by a group of these (inspiring and d) whose hearts, even then, burnt within them as he tand, and where the sounds yet linger to mock ELIA on his way, Ka, tur pensive to the past! One of the finest and rarest parts of Mr Coleridge's conversation, is when he expatiates on the Greek te gedians (not that he is not well acquainted, when he pleases, wa the epic poets, or the philosophers, or orators, or historians of aud quity) on the subtle reasonings and melting pathos of Eur on the harmonious gracefulness of Sophocles, tuning ha a re laboured song, like sweetest warblings from a sacred gr.se, the high-wrought trumpet-tongued eloquence of Eschy, us, w

Prometheus, above all, is like an Ode to Fate, and a pleading with Providence, his thoughts being let loose as his body is chained on his solitary rock, and his afflicted will (the emblem of mortality)

"Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."

As the impassioned critic speaks and rises in his theme, you would think you heard the voice of the Man hated by the Gods, contending with the wild winds as they roar, and his eye glitters with the spirit of antiquity!

Next, he was engaged with Hartley's tribes of mind, "etherial braid, thought-woven," and he busied himself for a year or two with vibrations and vibratiuncles and the great law of association that binds all things in its mystic chain, and the doctrine of Necessity (the mild teacher of Charity) and the Millennium, anticipative of a life to come-and he plunged deep into the controversy on Matter and Spirit, and, as an escape from Dr. Priestley's Materialism, where he felt himself imprisoned by the logi cian's spell, like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree, he became suddenly enamoured of Bishop Berkeley's fairy-world, and used in all companies to build the universe, like a brave poetical fiction, of fine words and he was deep-read in Malebranche, and in Cudworth's Intellectual System (a huge pile of learning, unwieldy, enormous) and in Lord Brook's hieroglyphic theories, and in Bishop Butler's Sermons, and in the Duchess of Newcastle's fantastic folios, and in Clarke and South and Tillotson, and all the fine thinkers and masculine reasoners of that age-and Leibnitz's Pre-established Harmony reared its arch above his head, like the rainbow in the cloud, covenanting with the hopes of man-and then he fell plump, ten thousand fathoms down (but his wings saved him harmless) into the hortus siccus of Dissent, where he

* Mr. Coleridge named his eldest son (the writer of some beautiful Sonnets) after Hartly, and the second after Berkeley. The third was called Derwent, after the river of that name. Nothing can be more characteristic of his mind than this circumstance. All his ideas indeed are like a river, flowing on for ever, and still murmuring as it flows, discharging its waters and still replenished

"And so by many winding nooks it strays,
With willing sport to the wild ocean!”

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