intellect alike surpassing by the facility with which it generalized the most multifarious political details into principles, and by the vivacity, variety, and power of its pictorial delineations. And pursuing the topic into which the Edinburgh Review provoked us, in our twentieth Number, it would be easy to shew that the most acute and vigorous mind of the present age-that mind which has perhaps never been rivalled in any age for its powers of logical deduction and comprehensive analysis; we speak of Mr. Bentham-is far more free from failure, when directed to the purpose of conveying the truth he would teach by means of material illustration, than the most fanciful of the carping critics, who look up alike despondingly and enviously to his intellectual elevation." A philosopher must always have something of poetry in him, and a poet of philosophy, for in the nature of things, which is the source of both, they are inextricably intertwined; there is no dissociating the true and the beautiful; and however exclusively the mind may be devoted to the pursuit of the one, its perceptions must be quickened to the apprehension of the other, by finding it in constant contact therewith. Thus Mr. Coleridge is a Benthamite in his poetry; a Utilitarian; a "greatest happiness" man; for, as a poet, he writes under the controlling and dictating power of truth and nature, under the inspiration of his own profound convictions and emotions. It is different, indeed, in his prose. There he is not his own man. There he has something else in view besides telling out what he thinks and feels in the melodious words which it spontaneously assumes. But with that, thank heaven, we have not now to do. Our present business is solely with his poetical character, which is brought under our notice by this edition of his works, in which he may be considered as packing up his pretensions to the laurel for posterity. There is little doubt that the consignment will reach its destination, and the award be decidedly favourable. And the anticipation is grounded not only on the appreciation of the truth, reason, sound philosophy, which are to be found enshrined in his verses, but also in the application of those tests with which we are furnished by the very principle whose adoption is often stupidly represented as inconsistent with even the capacity for perceiving poetry and feeling its influences. So far from its being proscribed by Utilitarian notions, they demand its existence, as amongst the most effective agencies of human enjoyment; they suggest the laws to which, for that end, it must be subjected, and by which, therefore, criticism must make trial of its worth; and as they inspire a high idea of the art itself, so have they also impelled VIII. ON FINANCIAL REFORM. By Sir Henry Parnell, Bart. M.P. 394 IX. LAWRIE TODD, OR THE SETTLERS IN THE WOODS. By John XI. JUSTICE AND CODIFICATION PETITIONS: being forms pro- posed for signature by all persons whose desire it is to see Justice no longer Sold, Delayed, or Denied; and to obtain a possibility of that Knowledge of the Law, in proportion XII. A GENERAL, MEDICAL, AND STATISTICAL HISTORY OF THE PRESENT CONDITION OF PUBLIC CHARITY IN FRANCE; comprising a detailed Account of all Establishments des- tined for the Sick, the Aged, the Infirm, for Children, and for Lunatics; with a View of the Extent of Pauperism and Mendicity, and the means now adopted for their Relief and XIII. MEMOIRS OF REAR ADMIRAL PAUL JONES, Chevalier of the Military Order of Merit, and of the Russian Order of St. Anne; now first compiled from his Original Journals and 2. An Essay on the Character and Writings of Fenelon. By 3. Remarks on the disposition which now prevails to form Associations, and to accomplish all objects by Or- ganized Masses. By W. E. Channing, D. D. XV. CLOUDESLEY. A Tale. By the Author of "Caleb Williams" 491 1. A Treatise on Fever. By Southwood Smith, M. D. THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW. JANUARY, 1830. ART. 1.-The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 3 vols. 8vo. 1829. THERE is a set of dunces in the world who having, as they think, compassed the comprehension of one idea, cannot by any means expand their minds to its combination with a second idea, and who therefore sturdily deny that any body else can. These are the people who, having had woeful experience that Utilitarians are somewhat logical, hold as downright heresy, or flat blasphemy, the notion that possibly the gods have made them poetical also. And truly their own poetry is as destitute of logic, as their logic is of poetry. But that is no rule for the world; nature having made many minds by a much ampler measure. Nay, so far from there being any natural incongruity between the reasoning and imaginative faculties, as dunces have always been delighted to believe, it may rather be affirmed that they have a mutual affinity, and rarely attain their full development but when they exist in union.-Produce who can the name of any first-rate poet who was not a sound reasoner. Not Milton; for his defence of the people of England, the worthy oration of a nation's advocate pleading for his country at the world's bar, and for the verdict of posterity, his 'Areopagitica,' and his Treatises on Divorce,' would have made his name great, though he had never dreamed that delicious dream of Paradise, nor set off its placid loveliness by the double contrast of Celestial splendors and Tartarean horrors. Not Shakespeare; for he would, in half an hour, have created half a dozen senators, lawyers, or cardinals, and given them life and logic enough of themselves to silence all the oracles of all the schools that then were flourishing in their Aristotelian pride. VOL. XII.-Westminster Review. B Not Jeremy Taylor; for he was a poet too,-no mean one either; a poet whose name indeed may be transplanted among the logicians, and it will take root and flourish there, like one of his own metaphors so rich and redolent of beauty, and twining gracefully about the intellect which could cut so finely in casuistry as to be a qualified Ductor Dubitantium, and lay down principles se broad as those which yet sustain unshaken the liberty of prophesying. Not Wordsworth; for he makes syllogisms of odes and odes of syllogisms, and his "song is but the eloquence of truth"-the truth of our inmost souls-the truth of humanity's essence, brought up from those abysses which exist in every bosom, and just moulded into metre without being concealed or disfigured by the workmanship. No, it is not among great poets that we are to look for men who cannot handle the foils of logical fence, well enough to disarm in a trice the dullest dog that ever tumbled over the dry bones of Aristotle. They are all of them at home in the business. They have keen swords beneath their myrtle garlands. They can despatch an opponent and then chant his dirge. They can win a fight and then sing the song of victory. Pity that they are not always on the right side. But that misfortune befalls the philosophers as well as the poets. And that reminds us, that we have to summon from among them, too, witnesses to the position, that the higher degrees of the ratiocinative and imaginative powers are usually found together. And here it is fit to begin with the first and highest name upon the roll, even with the founder of the reformed philosophy, Lord Bacou. Let any man read his Essays, and say if they be not abundant in the materials of the richest and purest poetry. How beautifully he often bodies forth a principle in an image; and what an eye he had for nature's paintings,-what an ear for nature's melodies. There is nothing in Thomson's Seasons half so good as Bacon's Essay of Gardens. How true his perception that "the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air than in the hand," because there "it comes and goes like the warbling of music ;" and what a "royal ordering" does he make of "gardens for all the months of the year," "that you may have ver perpetuum, as the place affords." Hobbes's great work, tough as it is, is but the amplification of a poetical conception. The Leviathan is only a personification filling a folio. He could versify too; and that seldom without vigour-sometimes with a good deal of beauty. The eloquence both of South and Barrow often rises into poetry. The one strikes off a beautiful thought at a heat; the other elaborates it into perfection, by the faithful and complete accumulation of particulars. It is enough to name Burke, the most splendid example of an intellect alike surpassing by the facility with which it generalized the most multifarious political details into principles, and by the vivacity, variety, and power of its pictorial delineations. And pursuing the topic into which the Edinburgh Review provoked us, in our twentieth Number, it would be easy to shew that the most acute and vigorous mind of the present age-that mind which has perhaps never been rivalled in any age for its powers of logical deduction and comprehensive analysis; we speak of Mr. Bentham-is far more free from failure, when directed to the purpose of conveying the truth he would teach by means of material illustration, than the most fanciful of the carping critics, who look up alike despondingly and enviously to his intellectual elevation. A philosopher must always have something of poetry in him, and a poet of philosophy, for in the nature of things, which is the source of both, they are inextricably intertwined; there is no dissociating the true and the beautiful; and however exclusively the mind may be devoted to the pursuit of the one, its perceptions must be quickened to the apprehension of the other, by finding it in constant contact therewith. man. Thus Mr. Coleridge is a Benthamite in his poetry; a Utilitarian; a "greatest happiness" man; for, as a poet, he writes under the controlling and dictating power of truth and nature, under the inspiration of his own profound convictions and emotions. It is different, indeed, in his prose. There he is not his own There he has something else in view besides telling out what he thinks and feels in the melodious words which it spontaneously assumes. But with that, thank heaven, we have not now to do. Our present business is solely with his poetical character, which is brought under our notice by this edition of his works, in which he may be considered as packing up his pretensions to the laurel for posterity. There is little doubt that the consignment will reach its destination, and the award be decidedly favourable. And the anticipation is grounded not only on the appreciation of the truth, reason, sound philosophy, which are to be found enshrined in his verses, but also in the application of those tests with which we are furnished by the very principle whose adoption is often stupidly represented as inconsistent with even the capacity for perceiving poetry and feeling its influences. So far from its being proscribed by Utilitarian notions, they demand its existence, as amongst the most effective agencies of human enjoyment; they suggest the laws to which, for that end, it must be subjected, and by which, therefore, criticism must make trial of its worth; and as they inspire a high idea of the art itself, so have they also impelled |