prompter and abettor: I can't help accusing you-I must do it; so that's settled." Hartley was acquainted with the character of the man so well that he despaired of moving him; and he knew Pike would not lift his little finger to save the life of a fellow-being, if nothing personally was to be got by the action. He felt in his heart the truth of the other's reasoning, and believed, under any circumstances, that Pike would be transported for life; consequently, the promise of making over to him property on his presumed return, would, however urged, possess no weight in influencing his conduct. In a word, Hartley was now assured that Pike would betray their connexion, and bring him to shame. An idea crossed his mind: might it not be possible to remove the evidence, and silence the man's tongue for ever, for he had that concealed about him which would enable him to effect the deed? What then?should he improve his position? no; for an ignominious death on the gallows would be the inevitable consequence. On all sides he saw himself hemmed in: here, certain accusation; there, if he sought to prevent that accusation, a doom of shame; while the gratification he had received from carrying out his revengeful projects was at an end, and the triumphant countenance of his enemy rose like a mocking vision upon his waking dreams. Half his life had been wasted in the morbid indulgence of one dark and demoniacal passionthe offspring of an unhappy, disappointed love. He had fed, as it were, on the poison of revenge: the pains, trials, and sorrows of his enemy had formed the only source of happiness he had known, and, with fostering care, he had spread his persecutions over a wide space of years. His heart was now not the seat of remorse, but of cankering wretchedness of gloom deeper than that of a Cain-of a weariness, a loathing of mankind and the world, which words may not describe. Anger or excitement was no longer betrayed by Hartley: his manner settled into a deep, imperturbable calm; and he now addressed the man who had been his tool and accomplice. You "Hear me ; you will be banished to a distant land; you will be made to work in chains; every farthing of your property is lost for ever. will be a wretched being-a blot on the earth-a loathed thing of shame for men to wag their heads at. Will you escape all this?—I know a way." Mr. Pike sprang up breathlessly, hope and joy beaming in his counte nance. "A way ? Then tell me, dear Mr. Hartley; show me this way, and I will not accuse you-I will bless you!" "There is a passage in one of the Greek writers which teaches-when the ills of life counterbalance the good, when misery is stronger than happiness, then it is the part of wisdom-to die!"" "To die?" repeated Pike, staring on Hartley-"to die? I don't understand That's not the way you mean, is it ?" you. "Yes; are you reluctant to leave a world which has no more good to offer ?" 66 Rather," said Pike, turning pale; "I think I would rather not leave it at least not just yet." "Do you fear to sleep in the earth instead of in your bed ?" "Don't talk so, dear Mr. Hartley-I don't like to hear you talk like this. I tell you, I would rather not die—a great deal rather not. Sleep in the earth?'tis horrible to think of." "This is the only method, then, I can recommend, if you wish to escape the evils which surround you." "Thank you; I would rather be excused following your advice," answered Mr. Pike. "Under any circumstances, I am resolved to live." "Poor coward!" said Hartley, musingly; "governed by the instinct that governs the unreasoning brute-clinging to life for life's sake. Pitiable man, live and be wretched! I envy thee not. Betray me-say what thou wilt-it will be the same to me now." Hartley turned away, and searched for something beneath his vest. He again approached Pike, and the latter perceived that he held in his hand a small pistol. The attorney, who only thought of himself, started back in terror. "What! you don't mean to murder me, Mr. Hartley? In pity, forbear! Think of the consequences to yourself. I don't wish to die, I say -I will live-I must live !" "Fear not, timorous idiot! live, for I can wish thee no deeper curse than the life thou dost cling to. Here," he said, looking at the pistol, and speaking to himself rather than his companion, "this little thing will give me all I now covet-oblivion and peace. It will solve the grand secret. It will send me, perhaps, to join company with Cato, Brutus, and all who, to escape defeat and the ills of life, dared to cut the thread of their own destiny, rather than to wait patiently for the dividing shears of the dark Sisters. Welcome-welcome the future, whatever it be!" Mr. Pike, paralysed by terror, remained in the corner of the cell. He could not call the gaoler-he could not utter a word; his limbs shook, his teeth chattered, and his eyes were rivetted on Hartley. But he who meditated suicide appeared suddenly to alter his determination, and returned the pistol to his pocket, muttering to himself, "Not here-not here; I would not be carried forth from a prison." One silent, contemptuous look he cast at the unhappy attorney, and moved to the door of the cell; he passed out, and Pike, much to his relief and satisfaction, found himself alone. That evening, when all was calm and quiet in the Temple, and the lawyers had closed their offices-when the dews were lightly falling on the shrubs and flowers in the Temple Gardens, and the first stars were shedding down their silver threads of light on the old hall, the playing fountain, and the church where the dust of centuries is laid-the report of a pistol was heard. It proceeded from chambers in the King's Bench-walk, and a porter, hastening up the stairs, found Hartley on the floor. The ball had entered a vital part, but as the porter raised the bleeding man, he still breathed. "Tell people I committed this act-pshaw! you need not fetch a surgeon, it is of no use. Somerset- he gasped, endeavouring to raise his hand, "my enemy-it is your turn to triumph now; so moves round the wheel of inevitable fate!" He sank back; his fierce and malignant eye grew dim; and the unhappy Hartley-the man whose nature disappointed love had changed almost into a demon's-the brooding recluse the incarnation of a revengeful spirit-had ceased to breathe. HARTLEY COLERIDGE'S" NORTHERN WORTHIES."* POOR Hartley should have lived to see this fair edition of his worksnow comprising seven delightful post-octavos. "I own," he once said or sung I own I like to see my works in print; The page looks knowing, though there's nothing in't. To have read his own poems, essays, marginalia, and "Biographia Borealis" (that "gentle book with a blustering title," as Southey called it), in so compact and tasteful a series-thanks to Mr. Moxon's tact in publishing "form and pressure"--would have cheered that child-like, gracious heart of his, and made him go on his lonely way rejoicing. Living, he was comparatively unrecognised; deceased, he is honoured with many honours-as a light of the age, though not, perhaps, a burning and shining one-as a power of the age, though the potency was cribbed and confined by sorrowful conditions. His brother's manly and affectionate memoir, at once so discreet and candid in its "deliverances," has awakened in every feeling heart a true sympathy with Professor Wilson's exclamation: "Dear Hartley! Yes, ever dear to me!" And his own writings are so fully stored with attractive personal traits, and testify to so kindly and genial a nature, that we incline to appropriate Landor's benison on the departed Elia, that "cordial old man, and say, in spite of hyper-orthodoxy: What wisdom in thy levity, what truth I'd spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven. Is it objected that this is being to Hartley's faults more than a little blind, and to his virtues very, very kind? So be it. A "gentle" reader will not press the objection; and others, ungentle ones, we are not careful to answer in this matter. Enough to quote to them the canon-possibly to their thinking a vulgar error-de mortuis nil nisi bonum: and as Hartley Coleridge is not the man to be dismissed with a nil, let them not grudge the bonum we bestow, nor cavil at our interpretation of the rule nisi. In the year 1832, Hartley entered into an engagement, his brother tells us, with a printer and publisher at Leeds, to furnish matter for a provincial biography, to be entitled "The Worthies of Yorkshire and Lancashire," which, however, only proceeded as far as the third number. But as each life was complete in itself, and had an interest independent of mere local associations, the portion which had appeared was reprinted under the title of "Biographia Borealis." After a lapse of twenty years the same work re-appears, enriched with annotations by the author's father and brother. Hartley's intellect was, like his father's, prone to fragmentary, excursive, discursive moods; and there are those, we doubt not, who are disturbed by the influence of this peripatetic philosophy in a biogra * Lives of Northern Worthies. By Hartley Coleridge. Edited by his Brother. A New Edition, with the Corrections of the Author, and the Marginal Observations of S. T. Coleridge. 3 vols. Moxon, 1852. 66 pher. Whether narrative in general does not suffer from such vagrancy whether the stream loses depth, force, and clearness, by such perpetual meanderings, we shall not stay to inquire. We can only record our aspiration, uttered fresh from the perusal of the lives before us, O si sic omnes! It is easy to forgive a writer his serpentine intricacies, when every involution and convolution is so full of suggestiveness, and when to deny him the right he assumes, would be to denude the maypole of its wreathing garlands, or to convert Hogarth's line of beauty into a mathematical right line. Mr. Derwent Coleridge properly characterises these biographies" as biographical essays-vehicles of remark and discussion, everywhere distinguished by keen observation, genial humour, and right feeling; often lawlessly digressive, yet never felt as an interruption, nor pursued to weariness; serious wisdom and varied knowledge, conveyed in the most delightful form. Not expecting much documentary research or critical examination, our part is to welcome the appearance of the author, behind the occasionally withdrawn veil of conventional reserve, like old Fuller or Montaigne, speaking in his own person-sometimes in a sportive, often in a familiar vein-with a freedom unmarked by affectation or mannerism, the spontaneous issue of the biographer's mind, varied by the varying mood. For "the style of the work passes through every variety of tone; but the transition is always easy, because it is always natural. Sometimes it is grave and solemn; shortly after, playful and careless; then dogmatic and sententious. It is sometimes highly poetical, or rather poetry itself, pede soluto; but it is never forced." Such, in fact, as Hartley is in those right pleasant essays of his, which we used to admire in Blackwood, long, long ago, without knowing who owned them--and Hartley had a finger in the "Noctes" themselves— such he is in the "Lives of Northern Worthies." A little more attention to method is about the only differential. His own estimate of this, his "largest, if not his highest literary achievement," appears to have been extremely moderate. He considered it overpraised. Remembering the difficulties which attended its publication, and comparing it with his own ideal standard of excellence, such a judgment was natural. 66 How," he asks, in a letter to a friend, " in the haste with which the work is to be got out, is it possible to hunt out for original facts, or to collect original documents, even if they were always accessible, which is far from being the case ?" In another place he states, that he had to write eight, nine, and ten hours a day, to keep up with the press. Of course, from the necessity of the case, some portions of the work are mere compilation. Not the least notable feature of this work is its large-hearted toleration-the liberality and catholicity with which it appraises the widely differing subjects of which it treats. The biographer's duty is, as Hartley observes in the introductory essay, to endeavour to place himself at the exact point, in relation to general objects, in which his subject was placed, and to see things as he saw them-not, indeed, neglecting to avail himself of the vantage-ground which time or circumstances may have given him to correct what was delusive in the partial aspect, but never forgetting, while he exposes the error, to explain its cause. presenting the several "Worthies" to whom these volumes are devoted In characters in every profession, of all parties, and many religious denominations the author states his rule to have been, to make each speak for himself in his own words, or by his own actions, as to political or religious matters of opinion; taking care, as far as possible, to represent the opinions that men or sects have actually held, in the light in which they have been held by their professors-not in the distorted perspective of their adversaries. Not that he engages to withhold his own sentiments; but he declines to judge, much less condemn, the sentiments of others. And to this wise rule, on the whole, he wisely and consistently adheres. For that Romanist must be hyper-papistically disposed who cannot relish the memoir of Bishop Fisher, herein honoured as a martyr, if not to the truth that is recorded in the authentic "Book of Heaven," yet to that copy of it which he thought authentic, which was written on his heart in the antique characters of authoritative age. And that Manchester schoolman must have suffered a desperate warp in the woof of his mind, who cannot enjoy the history of Richard Arkwright, the penny barber, who came to be a knight-bachelor, and died worth double the revenue of a German principality-a man prominent among those who have, in Wordsworth's language, An intellectual mastery exercised O'er the blind elements; a purpose given, And that littérateur must have narrowed sympathies, who cannot extract profit and pleasure from the life of William Roscoe-celebrated as biographer and historian, but yet more estimable as "a grey-headed friend of freedom”—and one who, after the disappointment of a hundred hopes, after a hundred vicissitudes of good and ill, never despaired of human nature; or that of Congreve, or Mason, or Bentley, especially the last. And that patriot must come of a windy, empty sort, who cannot exult in the portraiture of Andrew Marvell, "a patriot of the old Roman build, and a poet of no vulgar strain," whose mind, like the street and the wall of Jerusalem, was built in troublous times, yet pronounced by Burnet the "liveliest droll of the age," and whose writings made the Merry Monarch forgive the Patriot for the sake of the Humorist. And that Quaker must be straitened in his own bowels, who can read without edification and creature-comfort the sketch of Dr. John Fothergill. Of the Society of Friends, indeed, Hartley Coleridge writes with an interest and tenderness akin to that of Elia himself, who loved to sit among the Silent Ones in deepest peace, which some outwelling tears would rather confirm than disturb. We do not propose to give extracts from a work which has been before the public so many years past, and which long since secured the firstfruits of a sure though slow renown, and of which Wordsworth thought so highly, that he recommended Mr. Moxon to omit no opportunity of obtaining an interest in the copyright, saying, "it was full of matter," and that he "doubted not it would live." But there is one feature in the present edition to which we must call attention-the marginal notes, namely, by the venerable "Head of the Family." These are comparatively few and far between, but they are highly characteristic, and some |