encumbered by the stately magnificence of his drapery; in many, or most of his lyrical productions, we acknowledge with delight their great and various excellence. The Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Geneveive, are the productions of a truly poetical mind, combining original genius, with a knowledge of the Muse's art, and with a command over the collected treasures of the realms of Parnassus. The thoughts which are conceived are expressed in the truest and most appropriate language, while the imagery that surrounds them is never wanting in harmony, and in fulness of effect. These Poems, however, are well known to the general reader, and safely inshrined in the hearts and heads of all the lovers of song. We will give therefore a fragment of one previously unknown to us, which seems to possess many of Mr. Coleridge's peculiar excellencies elegant in its design, and chaste in its execution. THE BALLAD OF THE DARK LADIE. A Fragment. Beneath yon birch with silver bark, And drops and swells again. Up the castled mountain's breast, Oh! wherefore can he stay? She springs, she clasps him round the She sobs a thousand hopes and fears; Her kisses glowing on his cheeks, She quenches with her tears. * "My friends, with rude ungentle words, The Knight made answer to the Maid, my love's, The fairest castle of the nine! The fairest shall be thine. "Wait only till the hand of Eve, Hath wholly closed yon western bars, And through the dark we two will steal Beneath the twinkling stars." "The dark? the dark? No! not the The twinkling stars! How, Henry, how? He pledged his sacred vow. Shall lead me from my mother's door, Sweet boys and girls all clothed in white Strewing flowers before. "But first the nodding Minstrels go ; With music meet for lordly bowers; "And then my love and I shall pace- The leading quality of Mr. Coleridge's poetry is not to be sought in the moral sublimity, the deep emotion of his great contemporary, the poet of Rydal Mount; nor is it in the pensive tenderness, the thoughtful affection of the Laureate's song; but it consists in a high imaginative power,-in a fancy throwing its brilliant and grotesque lights even over the shaded abodes of sorrow--in a feeling of the picturesque, the romantic, the supernatural-in a playful seriousness, dallying with its griefs; sometimes delighting to dwell among the fables of enchantment-amid the pageants of chivalry, in masque and tournament-sometimes in the wild and savage solitudes of natureanon in gilded palaces, among the breathing forms of art-then is it to be seen fetching from the colder and far off dwellings of philosophy, subtle speculations, and fine analogies; and then again all these are intermingled and fused by the Genius of Poetry, and one of our bard's beautiful and singular creations starts up before us. We have only room for one more specimen, which we shall make, of a little poem that has we think a very pretty and pensive kind of beauty of its own, encased in a tuneful and elegant versification. YOUTH AND AGE. Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying When I was young! "When I was young?"-ah! woeful "when!" Ah! for the change twixt now and then! Flowers are lovely-love is flower-like, Ere I was old! "Ere I was old?"-ah! woeful "ere" Which tells me youth's no longer here! Oh, subtle youth for years so many and 'Tis that thou and I are one. When we are old. That only serves to make us grieve DIARY OF A LOVER OF LITERATURE. 1806. Nov. 30. Read circumstantial details of Mr. Fox's illness, containing many interesting anecdotes of that illustrious statesman, whose reputation after all transcends-I blush to disclose it-any proofs I have ever been able to discover of his ability. Burke he appears to have estimated more highly than I expected. What he says of "his eloquence casting a shadow over the wisdom it enshrines," Mackintosh repeated to me as his own idea. Fox was evidently a Deist; but he believed in the immortality of the soul, and appears to have derived much succour from this persuasion in his latter moments. Dec. 2. Read Franklin's works-by some very judicious remarks it appears that Franklin saw clearly enough that population will mount up to the means of subsistence, and must be increased by increasing those powers; but to Malthus still remains the origiuality of distinctly consider ing its nisus to mount higher, and the physical and moral checks by which this effort is repressed. Dec. 13. Went to the Opera. Semiramide-Catalani's first appearance -of highest excellence-asserted her pre-eminence at the first outset. Her voice of prodigious compass, sweet, clear, brilliant, and powerful through its whole extent; running the most rapid, intricate, and extensive divisions with the utmost precision and veracity, ascending and descending for two octaves through every chromatic interval articulately, with the speed of lightning, equally great in the delicate, the graceful, and the sobbing, as in the impassioned and bravura style; combining in an exalted degree the voice of Mara, the execution of Billington, and the pathos of Banti, but infinitely superior to all. I have no conception of higher excellence in the art-the house overflowing and transported with delight Dec. 14. Spent the day with Ellis in pleasant chat. "It runs merrily," said Fox, "when the water gushed out at the first tapping." Said to Lord R. Spencer in an early stage of the negociation, "Buonaparte's views on the Continent are, I fear, not yet completed, and therefore I am afraid peace is at present hopeless." A friend of his related from a conversation which passed between Parr and Fox, that the latter was a Christian: of this, however, I much doubt, though certainly it was most abhorrent to Fox's nature to dissemble. * Jan. 10, 1807. Read the last volume of Sir Charles Grandison, for the most part a heavy appendage. Richardson, though destitute of higher invention, is very happy in minute details, where he does not indulge too much in the natural effeminacy of his mind. One would think he had been bred up among women. After all, I am afraid that the tendency of such works is less to amend the heart and conduct, than to disgust one with real life; and this not so much from the characters described, as from the issues ascribed to these actions. A Sir Charles Grandison might surely be found, if such consequences would flow from such principles, feelings, and deportment; but, oh! how such a man in real life would be chafed and tormented. Yet the solace to the mind from these fictions for the time is sweet, and I part with regret from the dramatis personæ as from an old and valued acquaintance. Feb. 1. Looked over the Prolegomena to Hughes' edition of Spenser's Fairy Queen. He has a very neat image in his Essay on Allegorical Poetry. The art of framing allegories, like that of painting upon glass, he observes, is now little practised, and in a great measure lost. Our colours want richness and transparency, and are either so ill-prepared, or so unskilfully laid on, that they more often sully the light which is to pass through them, than agreeably tincture and beautify it." Feb. 22. Looked over Beloe's Anecdotes of Scarce Books; giving me a perfect surfeit of these literary rarities; the collectors of which rank, in my estimation, not a degree higher than butterfly-hunters. March 19. Began Loudon on Country Residences. His theory of taste with which he sets out, is too contemptible for criticism. How far will fancy go, when he gravely asserts, that a well-proportioned female figure placed erect, assumes nearly the form of two cones united at their bases, and that the breasts are also each a cone! March 24. Began an Abridgment of Abraham Tucker's "Light of Nature * From Richardson's Correspondence, published subsequently to the time when this observation was made, Mr. Green's remark proves true. pursued," which Sir James Mackintosh strongly recommended to my notice. I like the spirit of the editor, which he has probably caught from his author, though I do not think he has got quite the right scent of true philosophy; but his modes of thinking seem original and masterly. March 29. There is a small blemish in the 25th stanza of the 2d canto of Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel--more disgraceful perhaps to discover than to incur; when describing a sweet morning breeze, And peeped forth the violet pale, And spread her breast the mountain rose. yet Poets ought to be very guarded against this species of anachronism. April 23. Finished Hume's Essays in Ritchie's Appendix to his Life, his character of Sir Robert Walpole, and his critique on Wilkie's Epigonead. The essays aim rather at elegant instruction, than profound research, and novel moral discoveries. On the seventh, however, on the middle station of life, he remarks that it is evident more genius is requisite to make a good lawyer, or physician, than a great monarch, since out of twentyeight of our sovereigns, eight have been regarded as of great capacity. Of philosophers, he esteems Galileo and Newton so far above the rest, that he can admit no other into the same class with them-not Bacon? His character of Sir R. Walpole appears a very just one, wonderfully so for the time when it was written. His review of the Epigoniad evinces, as might be expected, more acuteness of observation than of sensibility of taste. Of an epic poem he remarks, that the story is the least essential part; force of versification, vivacity of images, justness of description, and the natural play of the passions, are the chief circumstances which distinguish the Poet from the Novelist. May 8. Finished four volumes of Washington's Life. Marshall observes of him, that prosperity never relaxed his exertions, nor could the most disastrous state of things drive him to despair. His compositions are solid, able, and masterly productions, well reasoned, and heightened by touches of true unaffected eloquence, flowing from the heart. It appears from Marshall's account, that America was nearly exhausted, when we abandoned the struggle. Read Lord Grenville's Letter to the Secretary of the Society for Christian Information-a most able, powerful, masterly, and conclusive composition. June 29. Called at Christ Church in the morning. Talking of the superstition of dreams, Mrs. Mitchell stated what she had seen in her father's hand-writing. He dreamed that his lady, who was then with child, would be brought to bed of a son on a particular day, and that on that day month the child should die. There was an addition to his dream, he said, which he wished to keep solely to himself. On the day foretold his lady was brought to bed of a son, and he appointed that day month for the christening. The christening passed off quite well, the child was in perfect health, and about eleven in the evening they were remarking how little faith was to be given to dreams though partially fulfilled, when the nurse came down and said 'the child was taken with convulsions;' before twelve he was dead. After this, said Mrs. Mitchell, my mother used to say my father never held his head up; but, being appointed King's Chaplain went to Oxford to take his degree, when he sickened, and soon after died. My mother said she always thought that the other event which he dreamed, but concealed, was his own death. July 3. Dined at the White Horse. Mr. related a most extraordinary adventure, which came, he said, from two friends of undoubted veracity, and happened within half a century. They were proceeding from Berwick to Edinburgh, when a stormy evening compelled them to take shelter, and put up at a solitary inn on the road, some miles short of the town they intended to have reached. The looks of the people of the house were dark and ferocious, their manners suspicious and uncouth, and they were unaccountably impressed, from its strange aspect and peculiar taste, that the meat pie, which was the only thing they could procure for supper, was composed of human flesh. As the evening, however, continued tempestuous, and they had ordered beds, they were apprehensive of precipitating their danger by an immediate departure, and retired to their chamber. Several circumstances on their passage thither heightened their suspicions, and the hideous sight through the crevice of their apartment of a woman servant sharpening a large case knife in an adjoining room, completed their alarm. They contrived to make their escape, leaving their horses and baggage behind them; and quitting the high road, endeavoured to make their way across the country to the next town. They had not advanced far before they found they were pursued and scented by a blood hound; by fording a river, however, they evaded the pursuit, and at length reached their destination. The story which they related increased the suspicions of the people of the town-many travellers, they said, had strangely disappeared upon that road, and no tidings afterwards were heard of them. A search warrant was granted-the people of the house were secured the house itself was examined, and on different parts of the premises, the plunder of many passengers were found, and the bodies of several discovered. Can this be true? It transports me to Calabria. June 23. Read Drummond's "Academical Questions." He plunges at once into the midst of his subject in a very perplexing manner, and entangles himself and his readers with abstractions and the ideal system, in favour of which I do not perceive that he advances any new arguments, or concentrates the spirit of the old ones. He denies the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, contending that they both exist only in the mind; yet in showing this of the latter from the various modes in which different minds are affected, he contrasts those with the uniform assurance respecting geometrical truths, though according to him, figure exists as much in the mind as tastes, or smells. His assertion of the importance of physical inquiry over the claims of pedantry, p. 50 and 61, is masterly and just. His modern metaphysics seem vitiated by his attention to ancient ;-whose notions are so remote and restrictive, that they glance off from my mind: from his pursuing no order nor system in his disquisitions, he appears to me wonderfully obscure. I hardly know whether to rank him as a Materialist or Idealist: he seems to incline to Atheism. He is professedly a Necessitarian: he denies the existence, at least the perception, of power; we are merely perceptive of change; and what we regard as different powers and faculties of the mind, he thinks are reducible to perception merely; and belief he defines as nothing but a clear perception or distinct sensation. Reason, he thinks, produces belief, only causing indistinct notions to be more accurately perceived, Of the truth of this story no doubt can be reasonably entertained. The editor's friend, the amiable and accomplished Bernard Barton, has sent him the names of the parties. A similar story is told in many books of Italian travels, of the proprietors of a small solitary inn on the mountains between Florence and Bologna.-EDIT. GENT. MAG. VOL. II. D |