his voice seemed to mount, and melt into air, as the images grew more visionary, and the suggestions more remote.

COLERIDGE AND BYRON.

The following passages are selected and abridged from Lord Byron's poems:

"Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here,
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?

Though themes of innocence amuse him best,
Yet still obscurity's a welcome guest;
If Inspiration should her aid refuse
To him who takes a pixy for a muse,
Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass
The bard who soars to elegise an ass,
So well the subject suits his noble mind,
He brays, the laureate of the long-ear'd kind.”
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

"All are not moralists, like Southey, when
He prated to the world of ‘Pantisocracy;'
Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then
Season'd his pedlar-poems with democracy;
Or Coleridge, long before his mighty pen

Lent to the Morning Post its aristocracy ;
When he and Southey, following the same path,
Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath).

"Bob Southey! you're a poet-Poet Laureate---
And representative of all the race;

Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at
Last,-yours has lately been a common case;
And now, my epic renegade, what are ye at?
With all the lacqueys, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye,
Like 'four-and-twenty blackbirds in a pie ;'

"Which pie being open'd, they began to sing,'
(This old song and new simile holds good),
'A dainty dish to set before the king,'

Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;
And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But, like a hawk encumber'd with his hood,
Explaining metaphysics to the nation-
I wish he would explain his explanation."

Don Juan, cantos I. and II.

66 He, Juan (and not Wordsworth) so pursued
His self-communion with his own high soul,
Until his mighty heart, in its great mood,

Had mitigated part, though not the whole
Of its disease, so he did the best he could
With things not very subject to control,
And turn'd, without perceiving his condition,
Like Coleridge, into a metaphysician."

Don Juan, canto I. xcl.

If ever I should condescend to prose,

I'll write poetical commandments, which
Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those

That went before, in these I shall enrich
My text with many things that no one knows,
And carry precept to the highest pitch;
I'll call the work 'Longinus o'er a Bottle,'
Or, 'Every Poet his own Aristotle.'

“Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;

Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey; Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,

The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy:

With Crabbe it may be difficult to cope,

And Campbell's Hippocrene is somewhat drouthy:
Thou shalt not steal from Samuel Rogers, nor
Commit flirtation with the Muse of Moore."

Don Juan, canto I. cciv. ccv.

The two volumes of Coleridge's Table Talk which have been published give no adequate notion of his eloquence. His conversation was not in fragments, but was wont to continue without aid from others, and in the way either of suggestion, or of contradiction, for hours at a time. All things, human and divine, joined with one another by subtlest links, entered into his discourse, which, though employed upon the most abstruse subjects, was a spell whose fascination even the most dull or ignorant could not resist.

"It is characteristic of the Roman dignity and sobriety," says Coleridge, "that in the Latin, to favour with the tongue (favere lingua) means to be silent. We say, Hold your tongue! as if it were an injunction that could not be carried into effect but by manual force, or the pincers of the forefinger and thumb! And verily I blush to say—it is not women and Frenchmen only that would rather have their tongues bitten than bitted, and feel their souls in a strait-waistcoat when they are obliged to remain silent."

Good music never tired Coleridge, nor sent him to sleep. He used to say: "I feel physically refreshed and strengthened by it, as Milton says he did."

COLERIDGE AND MADAME DE STEÄL.

Leslie tells us that Coleridge and Madame de Staël met, both furious talkers. The next day she was asked how she liked Coleridge. "For a monologue," said she, "excellent, but as to a dialogue-good heavens !" "She would have

been better pleased," said Haydon, "if Coleridge could have said this of her. For that evening never were two people so likely to hate each other."

THE COLERIDGE MEMORIAL.

One of the prizes awarded on "Speech Day," at old Christ's Hospital, for the first time, in 1873, was the "Coleridge Memorial," raised by a subscription among "Old Blues," the Masters, and other friends of the school, including the Attorney-General, Sir John D. Coleridge; and it is, we understand, to be held as a sort of "challenge prize" by that "ward" in the school which has most highly distinguished itself in the work of the previous year. This memorial has taken the form of a group of three boys, modelled in silver, and intended to represent an incident in the school-life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was at Christ's Hospital with Charles Lamb and Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta. It appears that the last named, when a "Grecian," found little Coleridge sitting by himself and reading Virgil, not as a lesson, but for pleasure. He reported the fact to Dr. Bowyer, the Head-Master, who, pleased with this promise of future distinction, took the boy out of the lower school, where he "passed for a dull scholar who could not learn his syntax," and kept him under his own eye-with what success in afterlife we all are aware. Charles Lamb, too, was a small boy in the school at the same time, and he forms the third figure in the group; but he is represented as "intent on hockey rather than on hexameters," and running up "to see what fun was going on."

J. P. CURRAN.

JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN was born July 24, 1750, at Newmarket, in the county of Cork, Ireland. His parents were respectable, but not wealthy; his father had been an officer to a manorial court, and possessed the advantages of a classical education. His mother, evincing early indications of talent, was in hopes. of his becoming a clergyman. Being Protestants he was first instructed from the Rev. Nathaniel Boyse, the resident clergyman, with whom he maintained a long friendship. He was next sent to the Free Grammar School, at Middleton, and afterwards entered as a sizar in Trinity College, Dublin. After acquiring considerable proficiency in classical learning at that University, he abandoned his first intention of entering the Church, and determined to adopt the profession of the law. Accordingly, having passed through the University with great credit, he went to London, and entered himself at Middle Temple in 1773. Here his straitened means occasioned him some inconvenience; but he studied law with considerable assiduity, and practised oratory at some debating societies, where he evinced his talent for energetic and sarcastic speaking. In one of the vacations, between the terms, he returned to Ireland and married a daughter of Dr. Creagh, in 1774. With her he received a small portion, which somewhat smoothed the remainder of his term of probation, and in 1775 he was called to the Irish bar.

Mr. Curran's success was almost immediate. His style was precisely suited to the Irish courts; humorous, discursive, often flowery and poetical, vehemently appealing to the feelings, never wearying by dry legal arguments, but when urging them enlivening their dryness by occasional witty or satirical illustrations, and he soon obtained a legal business. His social habits also operated in his favour, and although he had already adopted a political belief in opposition to the reigning government, he was a general favourite even with his political

opponents, while his independent bearing to the judges won him the favour of the public. The fearlessness of his addresses, however, sometimes brought its inconveniences. As counsel in an action for assault by the Marquis of Doneraile on a poor old Roman Catholic clergyman, he had styled Mr. St. Leger, one of the witnesses for the defence, a renegade soldier, a drummed-out dragoon ;" a duel followed, when he declined returning Mr. St. Leger's fire, and the affair ended.

66

He had been always a warm politician, and in 1782 he was returned to parliament as member for Belbeggan in the interest of a Mr. Longfield. As a specimen of the state of the Irish parliament, we may mention that soon after entering the House of Commons he found himself differing in political opinions with his patron, and as he had no way of vacating his seat he coolly offered to buy another seat, to be filled by any one Mr. Longfield might choose to appoint. That gentleman declined the offer, but in the succeeding parliament Mr. Curran bought a seat for himself.

In the House of Commons he soon took a leading part, generally acting with Mr. Grattan, and the few Liberal members who then had seats. His speeches were of a very similar character to those he made at the bar, and he was often appointed to make the reply from his readiness and happy facility in retorting charges of damaging the position of his opponents.

He supported the formation of the Irish volunteers in 1788, and the unconditional appointment of the Prince of Wales to the regency on the occasion of the King's illness in 1789; and his attacks on the government led to a duel, first with Mr. Fitzgibbon, afterwards Earl of Clare, and then with Major Hobart, in which Mr. Curran was the challenger, in both of which neither party was injured.

It was in 1794, and the few subsequent years, that Mr. Curran's reputation obtained its climax. In the House of Commons Mr. Curran, Mr. Grattan, and others had been continually pointing out to the government that their measures were driving the people towards rebellion. The warnings were unheeded, and in 1794 Mr. Hamilton Rowan was indicted for a seditious libel issued in the form of an address to the volunteers of Ireland from the society of United Irishmen (not the same as the rebellious societies which afterwards took this name), of which he was secretary. Mr. Curran was his