were at feed about us, and we had nothing to he exclaims. "I was in a continual low satisfy our cravings; the very beauty of the day fever. My whole being was, with eyes and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of closed to every object of present sense, liberty setting a keener edge upon them! How to crumple myself up in a sunny corner faint and languid, finally, we would return and read, read, read; fancy myself on toward nightfall to our desired morsel, half re- Robinson Crusoe's island finding a mounjoicing, half reluctant, that the hours of uneasy tain of plum-cake, and eating a room for liberty had expired! myself, and then eating it into the shapes

of tables and chairs

hunger, and fancy!"

"It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets objectless, shivering at cold windows of printshops, to extract a little At the same time he adds, "My talents amusement; or haply, as a last resort, in the and superiority made me for ever at the hope of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times-re- head in my routine of study, though utterpeated visit (where our individual faces would ly without the desire to be so- without a be as well known to the warden as those of his spark of ambition; and as to emulation, own charges) to the lions in the Tower, to whose it had no meaning for me; but the differlevée, by courtesy immemorial, we had a pre-ence between me and my form-fellows, in scriptive right of admission." our lessons and exercises, bore no proportion to the measureless difference between

--

This melancholy and harsh life was, me and them in the wide, wild wilderness however, ameliorated by some curious of useless unarranged book-knowledge and personal incidents. Once, for example, book-thoughts." A droll incident occurred the solitary boy, moving along the crowded about this period of his life, which shows streets, fancied, in the strange vividness how true was this absolute want of ambiof his waking dream, that he was Leander tion. The friendless boy had made swimming across the Hellespont. His acquaintance with a shoemaker and his hand "came in contact with a gentleman's wife, who had a shop near the school, and pocket" as he pursued this visionary who were kind to him; and thereupon he amusement, and for two or three minutes conceived the extraordinary idea of getColeridge was in danger of being taken ting himself apprenticed to his friend, into custody as a pickpocket. On finding whom he persuaded to go to the headout how matters really stood, however, master to make this wonderful proposal. this stranger genial, nameless soul-"Od's my life, man, what d'ye mean?" immediately gave to the strange boy the cried the master, with not unnatural indigadvantage of a subscription to a library nation mingling with his amazement; and close by, thus setting him up, as it were, notwithstanding Coleridge's support of in life. On another occasion, one of the the application, the shoemaker was turned higher boys, a deputy-Grecian," found out of the place, and the would-be apprenhim seated in a corner reading Virgil. tice chosen, " 'against my will," he says, "Are you studying your lesson?" he "as one of those destined for the univer asked. 66 No; I am reading for pleasure," sity." The same irascible yet excellent said the boy, who was not sufficiently ad- master flogged the boy severely on hear-. vanced to read Virgil in school. This in- ing that he boasted of being an infidel. troduced him to the favourable notice of It is odd and amusing, however, to realize the head-master Bowyer, and made of the what might have been Coleridge's fate had elder scholar, Middleton by name, a he been allowed his boyish will. We steady friend and counsellor for years. doubt much whether the conditions of his Yet at this time Coleridge was considered life would have been half so much changed by the lower-master, under whom he was, as would appear at the first glance had it "a dull and inept scholar, who could not been spent on the cobbler's bench. There, be made to repeat a single rule of syntax, as elsewhere, he would have been the although he would give a rule in his own oracle of a circle. He would have talked way." The life, however, of this great over his shoemaking as he talked all school, with all its injudicious liberties and through his literature, gathering around confinements, must have been anything him a little throng of worshippers, less but a healthy one. Starved and solitary, learned, no doubt, but not less enthusiascareless of play as play, and already full of that consuming spiritual curiosity which never left him, Coleridge's devotion to the indiscriminate stores of the circulating library gave the last aggravation to all the unwholesome particulars of his life. "Conceive what I must have been at fourteen,"

tic. Of all the men of genius we know, he is the one who would have suffered least from such a metamorphosis. Imagination indeed has little difficulty in picturing this wonderful phase of the might-have-been. How he would have talked in the queer little dingy shop; how his big forehead

He had

and dreamy eyes would have shone in deserve a more serious name. the obscurity; how quaintly his strange failed to win a university scholarship, his knowledge, his weird wisdom, the depth friend Middleton had left Cambridge, and and intensity of his vision, would have illuminated the place about him; and what a novel and wonderful effect would that illumination have had upon the intense reality of lowly life! Coleridge, as a cobbler, is one of the quaintest and most tempting suggestions which fancy ever had. It opens up to us an entire new world.

other causes combined to dishearten him. One authority informs us that he was tormented by his creditors, and another that he had been refused by a young lady to whom he had given his heart. Deeply cast down and despondent, he left Cambridge and went to London, where he strayed about the streets all night in the This, however, was not to be. His next first outburst of that strange dreamy selfstage in life was not a shoemaker's shop abandonment and rebellion against life's in Newgate Street, but Jesus College, Cam- ordinary laws which recurred so often in bridge, which he entered in 1791 at the his troubled existence. This was the age of nineteen the object of many high first; and there is in it something of the prophecies and hopes on the part of his boy's innocent and wayward but deep deschool and schoolfellows, who had unani- spair, which makes the reader smile even mously determined that he was to be great while he is most deeply touched by the and do them honour. The first thing he lad's solitary wandering and foolish misery. did, however, was, alas! too common an He gave away everything he had in his incident he got into debt, though not, it pocket to beggars whom he met with would appear, for an overwhelming sum, during this confused nocturnal ramble, and or in any discreditable way. So long as in the morning woke up from his dream at his friend of Christ's Hospital, Middleton, the sight of a bill on the wall which invited remained in Cambridge, Coleridge pursued "smart lads " to enlist in the 15th, Elliot's. his studies with a great deal of regularity Light Dragoons. He paused before this and in his first year won the prize for a with a reflection worthy of a half-crazed Greek ode. But after a while his industry | philosopher of twenty. "I have had all slackened, and a kind of dreamy idleness my life a violent antipathy to soldiers and implying no languor of the soul or com- horses," he said to himself; "the sooner I mon reluctance to mental work, but rather, can cure myself of these absurd prejudices it would seem, a disinclination to work in the better, and I will enlist in this regithe usual grooves, and do what was ex-ment!" And so he did accordingly, callpected of him -took possession of the ing himself, with a philosophical absurdity, young scholar. "He was very studious, in which there is a gleam of humour, Combut his reading was desultory and capri- berbach, as being likely to cumber the cious," writes a fellow-student. "He was back of any horse on which he was ready at any time to unshed his mind in placed. conversation, and for the sake of this his rooms were a constant rendezvous of conversation-loving friends. What evenings have I spent in these rooms! What little suppers, or sizings, as they were called, have I enjoyed; when Eschylus and Plato and Thucydides were pushed aside with a pile of lexicons and the like, to discuss the pamphlets of the day! Ever and anon a pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. There was no need of having the book before us; Coleridge had read it in the morning and in the evening he would repeat whole pages verbatim." It was while he was at the university that the French Revolution occurred; but, strangely enough, this great event made no such impression on the visionary as it did upon Wordsworth's steadier mind the reason of this however being, no doubt, that he was much less closely thrown in contact with it. His college life was interrupted by a curious and whimsical accident, for it does not seem to

--

In this curious situation he remained for six months, making himself, as his different biographers inform us, a very useful and entertaining member of the corps; not in any warlike way, it is true-his chief qualities in that respect being a tendency to fall from his horse, and absolute incapacity to learn his drill. But he nursed his sick comrades with kind and not unskilful hands; and he told them stories till the whole regiment was ready to serve him -cleaning his horse and accoutrements for him, and relieving him from the daily drudgery of the barracks. He was discovered, one account tells us, in consequence of having interposed to correct a Greek translation which one officer made to another in his hearing a very wonderful incident, surely, since we doubt whether young dragoon officers are much more in the way of quoting Euripides than young troopers are of setting them right. Another and more likely story is, that he was

met in the streets by a fellow-student, who | tions and miseries would, we cannot informed his friends of his whereabouts, doubt, be found his best plea for human and was thus the means of delivering him pardon. from the new coil of circumstances which doubtless by this time had lost their attraction of novelty. He went back, accordingly, to his college after this odd adventure, which does not seem to have made any particular impression on his mind, though it furnishes a quaint chapter to his life.

cism; and that if they were to offer to construe the will of a neighbour as they did that of their Maker, they would be scouted out of society. I said then, plainly and openly, that it was clear enough that John and Paul were not Unitarians. But at that time I had a strong sense of the repugnancy of the doctrine of vicarious atonement to the moral being, and I thought nothing could counterbalance that. 'What care I,' I said, 'for the Platonisms of John or the Rabbinisms of Paul? My conscience revolts!' That was the ground of my Unitarianism."

After this escapade of soldiering he returned to college, but only for a short time, his habits having been broken and his mind unsettled, no doubt, by so strange a break in his academic life. He had also by this time adopted, or supposed himself to have adopted, the doctrines of the Unitarians doctrines which he afterwards We are not informed who the "friends" condemned with all the eloquence and vewere who thus restored Coleridge to his hemence of which he was master. His natural sphere, and supported him at col- temporary adoption of them seems to have lege. Indeed it has never been our fate to meant little more than the general disencounter a life more lost in mystifications, order and unsettlement of a young man's or less easy to disentangle from the mists religious views. "I always told the Uniof statement and counter-statement which tarians," he said afterwards, "that their have grown about it. This is chiefly ow-interpretations of Scripture were intolering, no doubt, to the fact that there were able upon any principles of sound critimany things in it which the natural feeling of relations and descendants would fain have concealed. Concealment, however, in the case of such a man, is even more hopeless than it is in respect to ordinary persons; and it would have been much better not only for the world, in the contemplation of a most pathetic life, but to the family and good fame of Coleridge, had some one ventured to tell the sad story plainly and fully. As it is, we have to make our way as we can through Gilman's unfinished and flattering fragment of biography through the more satisfactory yet too reticent and also unfinished sketch At the end of his college course he made appended by his nephew to the "Bio- acquaintance with Southey - an acquaintgraphia Literaria," on one side; and ance which rapidly ripened into the warmthrough Cottle's maundering and self- est friendship, and which, in 1794, led him sufficient Recollections, and the elegant to Bristol- where he fell in love, and indiscretions of De Quincey, on the other. as was natural enough, fell also into one The attempt to smooth over on one hand, of those vaguely-splendid plans of Paragives the inclination to clear up on the dise revived, and a new Utopia, which other a spiteful and ill-tempered aspect; and are so delightful to the imagination of we find ourselves lost at last in a flood of youth. A great deal more than is at all mysterious gossip, no man venturing to necessary seems to have been made of speak plainly. We hope to be able, out this plan by the foolish loquacity of the of this muddle, to disentangle the sad check-bookseller Cottle, who suddenly found ered thread of the poet's life, so far as it concerns our present subject; but it is no easy task. His faults were great and grievous, no doubt; and they were thrown into fuller light by the success and the virtues of his two friends, Wordsworth and Southey, both of whom, with not much advantage over him in the outset of life, managed, nevertheless, to live and thrive without compromising their poetic character, and to secure comfort and good reputation as men, besides their fame. But it is often the fallen and failing to whom the heart turns most tenderly; and a true record of Coleridge's weaknesses, tempta

himself in the delightful position of patron and assisting providence to a cluster of young men of genius, and whose sense of practical superiority to all their ravings evidently intoxicated him. The plan itself, called Pantisocrasy, was one of the most charming and foolish ever invented by babe, lover, or poet. The chief originators of it - Coleridge, Southey, and Lovell-were respectively engaged to Sara, Mary, and Edith Fricker, young women who have left but few traces of their own individuality upon the world, yet whose fortune was remarkable enough. What more congenial to the three young pairs,

full of hope and enthusiasm, than the new as yet to compromise himself with the life, under new and strange conditions de- world, and he impressed upon every one lightfully unusual, novel, unlike anything who saw him a conviction of his exceedto be found elsewhere, which this dream ing genius. At the same time it must set before them? The bridegrooms were be fully understood that his actual poverty allied to each other by the half-adoring was rendered so much greater by the fact bond of poetic friendship and mutual ad- that he had not even, like so many pennimiration; the brides were sisters; an less genius, a manuscript in his pocket with ideal group, combining all that each want- which to conquer fate. He had neither ed-love, friendship, mutual aid, and a money nor money's worth. The liberal ready-made and perfectly sympathetic so- Cottle had offered him thirty guineas for ciety. In the present day the youthful a volume of poems not yet written, and brain, between the ages of twenty and had afterwards added to this by a promise twenty-five, has grown less susceptible; "to give him one guinea and a half for but a great many of us still can remember every hundred lines he might present to the time when such a vision would have me, whether rhyme or blank verse." On set our whole being aflame. The colony this substantial provision the young man was to be planted on the banks of the Sus- married! replying to some one who asked quehannah, chiefly because that river pos- what his means were with the lofty intisessed a soft and liquid name! and was to mation that "Mr. Cottle had made him support itself as Adam and Eve did by such an offer that he felt no solicitude on that delving and spinning which are the the subject." This, Heaven help him! primitive arts of mankind. No doubt was his way of "commencing man." He this plan afforded an infinite deal of talk was but twenty-three, still in all the chaos to the lovers, and to all their friends. It of youthful fancies, with an unsteady mind was discussed with all that mock serious- veering about like the wind, and that fatal ness and profound solemnity to which mixture of hope, self-confidence, and readiyouth is prone; and was intended to be ness to embrace every new plan suggested carried out no doubt, so long as the craze to him, which contains all the elements lasted, by help of that glorious hap- of ruin. No doubt it was his immense hazard which we all trust in more or less knowledge and wonderful versatility which in the beginning of life. There is no made him so open to every suggestion, trace, however, of any actual step being since of a hundred subjects one was as taken in the matter, though good Mr. easy and as natural to him as another. Cottle accepted everything au pied de la He had begun his life in Bristol (as did lettre, and makes the most of the divine also Southey) by delivering lectures, which folly without any consciousness of the ne- apparently paid sufficiently well to keep cessity of effervescence which existed in him afloat for the time. But now more sethese young brains. By the beginning of rious and steady work for a livelihood was 1795, Coleridge had shaken himself free necessary. It is a curious indication of the of the university without even taking his intellectual excitement of the age, that not degree. He would seem at the same time, Coleridge only, but Cottle and other pracso far as any further indication is given tical men seem to have felt it quite possius, to have shaken himself free of his fam- ble for the young poet to earn his bread ily, whom he had no doubt disappointed by the new tide of verse which made his and exasperated, and to have thrown him- honeymoon musical. He himself, for the self upon the world in which he was hence- moment at least, was nothing loath. He forward to fight, a painful battle for him- took his bride to a cottage at Clevedon, self, without either aid from or reference on the shores of the Bristol Channel; and to his kith and kin. He returned with here for a short but beautiful moment Southey to Bristol," says his nephew, "and made visible his imprudent happiness. commenced man." The solitary had become two- there was no time as yet for the entrance of heavy disquietude. His Sara had still all the complacency of a bride, all the admiration for his powers of a young woman in love; and he could admire and adore and sing litanies to the woman he loved, without being compelled to ask himself whether she understood or cared for them. Here are the first breathings of the poet's content:

Up to this moment, so far as we can make out, he had published nothing, and had not written much. His friends had probably destined him for the Church, which of course had become impossible from his Unitarian principles; but it is evident that no kind of professional training had ever been his. He was penniless; but his mind was full and overflowing with a thousand schemes: he had done nothing

(Viewless, or haply for a moment seen
Gleaming on sunny wings), in whispered

tones

I've said to my beloved, 'Such, sweet girl!
The inobtrusive song of happiness,

Unearthly minstrelsy! then only heard

"If thou wert here these tears were tears of
light;

But from as sweet a vision did I start
As ever made those eyes grow idly bright.

And though I weep, yet still around my
heart

A sweet and playful tenderness did linger,
Touching my heart as with an infant's finger.

Across my breast there lay a weight so warm
As if some bird had taken shelter there,
And lo! I seemed to see a woman's form,
Thine, Sara, thine! Oh joy, if thine it

were.

I gazed with stifled breath and feared to stir it,

No sweeter trance e'er wrapt a yearning spirit.

When the soul seeks to hear; when all is And now when I seemed sure thy face to see,

hushed,

And the soul listens!""

And again—

"My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined
Thus on my arm, most soothing sweet it is
To sit beside our cot, our cot o'ergrown
With white-flowered jasmine, and the broad-
leaved myrtle,

(Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!)
And watch the clouds, that late were rich with
light,

Slow saddening round, and mark the star of

eve

Serenely brilliant (such should wisdom be)
Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents
Snatched from yon bean-field! and the world so
hushed!"

Thy own dear self in our own quiet home, There came an elfish laugh and wakened me; 'Twas Frederic who behind my chair had clomb,

And with his bright eyes at my face was peep

ing;

I blessed him, tried to laugh, and fell a-weeping."

When this first note of joy begins to die on the ear, the children come in, or at least the eldest child, the babe who is cradled at the young father's feet, when he sits up at his work after all else are at rest in his cottage. Nothing can be more warm, more tender, than those outpourings of his love and happiness. There is no mistaking the reality and fervour, the truth and purity of the sweet domestic idyll-so long as it lasts.

For a few years this Arcadian strain is heard at intervals, indicating the pleasant changes of the gentle domestic story. At But unfortunately this was not long. one time the poet thanks God who has There are circumstances in which poverty given him "Peace and this cot, and thee, is gentle and almost pleasant — at least to heart-honoured maid" at another, he the spectator when she can be at least answers the question how he felt when his supposed to be the handmaid of goodness, first child, born in his absence, was pre-restraining self-indulgence, and making sented to him. At first "my slow heart was only sad," he says:

--

"But when I saw it on its mother's arm,

And hanging at her bosom (she the while Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile) Then I was thrilled and melted, and most

warm

Impressed a father's kiss: and all beguiled

many temptations impossible; and there are circumstances in which she is noble, enduring the evils she cannot mitigate. But for once that poverty can exhibit these attractive features, there are a hundred in which she can be nothing but hideous when her physical sufferings are as nothing to the little meannesses, the greedy aspect, the ravenous demand she makes, whether with her will or not. Of all terrible things in the world, this hunwas gering penury is the most terrible. It compels a man to a hundred humiliations, it forces him to shifts and importunities he loathes, it makes him despicable to him"self and others, and finally it ruins his character, and converts him in reality into the sorry, shifty, greedy, shameless wretch

Of dark remembrance and presageful fear,
I seemed to see an angel-form appear
'Twas even thine, beloved woman mild!
So for the mother's sake the child

dear,

And dearer was the mother for the child." When he is absent, there is still the same refrain of love. In the "Day-Dream he gives us a little picture of his still loverlike sentiments: