plexity arose. I removed the harness without difficulty; but after many strenuous attempts I could not remove the collar. In despair, I called for assistance, when Mr. Wordsworth brought his ingenuity into exercise; but after several unsuccessful efforts, he relinquished the achievement as a thing altogether impracticable. Mr. Coleridge now tried his hand, but showed no more skill than his predecessors; for, after twisting the poor horse's neck almost to strangulation and the great danger of his eyes, he gave up the useless task, pronouncing that the horse's head must have grown since the collar was put on; for he said, 'it was a downright impossibility for such a huge os frontis to pass through so narrow an aperture.' Just at this instant, a servant-girl came near, and understanding the cause of our consternation, 'Ha! master,' said she, 'you don't go about the work in the right way. You should do like this,' when, turning the collar upside down, she slipped it off in a moment, to our great humiliation and wonderment, each satisfied afresh that there were heights of knowledge in the world which we had not yet attained."

A SCENE NEAR NETHER STOWEY, SOMERSET.
A green and silent spot amid the hills!
A small and silent dell !-O'er stiller place
No singing skylark ever poised himself!
The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope
Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on,
All golden with the never bloomless furze,
Which now blooms most profusely; but the dell,
Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate
As vernal corn-field, or the unripe flax,
When through its half-transparent stalks, at eve,
The level sunshine glimmers with green light.
Oh, 'tis a quiet spirit-healing nook,

Which all, methinks, would love; but chiefly he,
The humble man, who in his youthful years
Knew just so much of folly as had made
His early manhood more securely wise :
Here he might lie on fern or wither'd heath,
While from the singing lark (that sings unseen
The minstrelsy which solitude loves best)
And from the sun, and from the breezy air,
Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame;
And he with many feelings, many thoughts,
Made up a meditative joy, and found
Religious meanings in the forms of nature.

And so, his senses gradually wrapp'd

In a half-sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark!
That singest like an angel in the clouds.

SONNET

ON A RUINED HOUSE IN A ROMANTIC COUNTRY.

And this reft house is that, the which he built,
Lamented Jack! and here his malt he piled,
Cautious in vain! Those rats that squeak so wild,
Squeak, not unconscious of their father's guilt.
Did ye not see her gleaming through the glade!
Belike, 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn,
What though she milk no cow with crumpled horn,
Yet aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd:
And aye beside her stalks her amorous knight !
Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,
And through those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn,
His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white,
As when through broken clouds, at night's high noon,
Peeps in fair fragments forth the full-orbed harvest moon!

BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA.

One of the most enthusiastic admirers of Wordsworth was Coleridge, so long his friend and associate, and who looked up to him with a sort of filial veneration and respect. He has drawn his poetical character at length in the Biographia Literaria, and if we consider it as applying to the higher characteristics of Wordsworth, without reference to the absurdity or puerility of some of his early fables, incidents, and language, it will be found equally just and felicitous. First, An austere purity of language, both grammatically and logically; in short, a perfect appropriateness of the words to the meaning. Secondly, A correspondent weight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments won, not from books, but from the poet's own meditations. They are fresh, and have the dew upon them. Even throughout his smaller poems, there is not one which is not rendered valuable by some just and original reflection. Thirdly, The sinewy

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strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs; the frequent curiosa felicitas of his diction. Fourthly, The perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions, as taken immediately from nature."

CHARACTERISTICS OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS.

Coleridge considers the plays of Shakspeare to be distinguished from those of all other dramatic poets by the following characteristics:

"1. Expectation in preference to surprise. It is like the true reading of the passage, 'God said, Let there be light,' not, there was light. As the feeling with which we startle at a shooting star, compared with that of watching the sun rise at the pre-established moment; such, and so low is surprise compared with expectation.

"2. Signal adherence to the great law of nature, that all opposites tend to attract and temper each other.

"3. Keeping at all times in the high road of life. Shakspeare has no innocent adulteries, no interesting incests, no virtuous vice; he never renders that amiable which religion and reason alike teach us to detest, or clothes iniquity in the garb of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher, the Kotzebues of the day. Shakspeare's fathers are roused by ingratitude, his husbands stung by unfaithfulness: in him, in short, the affections are wounded in those points in which all may, nay, must feel. Let the morality of Shakspeare be contrasted with that of the writers of his own, or the succeeding age, or those of the present day, who boast their superiority in this respect. No one can dispute that the result of such a comparison is altogether in favour of Shakspeare. Even the letters of women of high rank, in his age, were often coarser than his writings. If he occasionally disgusts a keen sense of delicacy, he never injures the mind; he neither excites passions, in order to degrade the subject of it; he does not use the faulty thing for a faulty purpose, nor carries on warfare against virtue by causing wickedness to appear as no wickedness, through the medium of a morbid sympathy with the unfortunate. In Shakspeare, vice never walks as in twilight; nothing is purposely out of its place; he inverts not the order of nature and propriety,-does not make every magistrate a drunkard or a glutton, nor every poor man meek, humane, and temperate; he has no benevolent butchers, nor any sentimental rat-catchers.

"4. Independence of the interest of the story as the groundwork of the plot. Hence, Shakspeare never took the trouble of inventing stories. It was enough for him to select from those that had been already invented or recorded, such as had, one or other, or both, of two recommendations, namely, suit

ableness to his particular purpose, and there being parts of popular tradition,-names of which we have often heard, and of their fortunes, and as to which all we wanted was to see the man himself. So it is just the man—the man himself— the Lear, the Shylock, the Richard, that Shakspeare makes us for the first time acquainted with. Omit the first scene in Lear, and yet everything will remain; so the first and second scenes in the Merchant of Venice. Indeed, it is universally

true.

"5. Interfusion of the lyrical-that which in its very essence is poetical-not only with the dramatic, as in the plays of Metastasio, where at the end of the scene comes the aria, as the exit speech of the characters, but also in and through the dramatic.

"6. The characters of the dramatis persona, like those in real life, are to be inferred by the reader; they are not told to him. And it is well worth remarking that Shakspeare's characters, like those in real life, are very commonly misunderstood, and almost always understood by different persons in different ways. The causes are the same in either case. If you take only what the friends of the characters say, you may be deceived, and still more so, if that which his enemies say; nay, even the character himself through the medium of his character, and not exactly as he is. Take all together, not omitting a shrewd hint from the clown, the fool, and perhaps your impression will be right; and you may know whether, in fact, you have discovered the poet's own idea by all the speeches receiving light from it, and attesting its reality by reflecting it.

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Lastly, in Shakspeare, the heterogeneous is united, as it is in nature. You must not suppose a pressure, or passion, always acting on or in the character; passion, in Shakspeare, is that by which the individual is distinguished from others, not that which makes a different kind of him. Shakspeare followed the main march of the human affections. He entered into no analysis of the passions or faiths of men, but assured himself that such and such passions and faiths were grounded in our common nature, and not in the mere accident or disease. This is an important consideration, and constitutes our Shakspeare a morning star, a guided pioneer of true philosophy."

COLERIDGE'S TALK IN INNER TEMPLE LANE.

His

The years which Lamb passed in his chambers here were perhaps the happiest of his life. Here the glory of his Wednesday nights shone forth in its greatest lustre. There Coleridge sometimes, though rarely, took his seat; and then the genial hubbub of voices was still; critics, philosophers, and poets were contented to listen; and toil-worn lawyers, clerks from the India House, and members of the Stock Exchange, grew romantic while he spoke. Lamb used to say that he was inferior then to what he was in his youth; but Lamb could scarcely be believed; at least there was nothing in his early writing which gave Lamb any idea of the richness of his mind so lavishly poured out at this time in his happiest moods. Although he looked much older than he was-his hair being silvered all over, and his person tending to corpu lency--there was about him no trace of bodily sickness or mental decay, but rather an air of voluptuous repose. benignity of manner placed his auditors entirely at their ease, and inclined them to listen delighted to the sweet, slow tone in which he began to discourse on some high theme. Whether he had won for his greedy listener only some raw lad, or charmed a circle of beauty, rank, and wit, who hung breathless on his words, he talked with equal eloquence; for his subjects, not his audience, inspired him. At first his tones were conversational; he seemed to dally with the shallows of the subject, and from fantastic images that bordered it; but gradually the thought grew deeper, and the voice deepened with the thought; the stream, gathering strength, seemed to bear along with it all things which opposed its progress, and blended them with its current; and stretching away, among regions tinted with ethereal colours, was lost at airy distance in the horizon of fancy.

Coleridge was sometimes induced to recite portions of Christabel, then enshrined in manuscript from eyes profane, and gave a bewitching effect to its wizard lines. But more peculiar in its beauty than this, was his recitation of Kubla Kahn. As he recited the passage

"A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw :

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mont Abora !"