man had a keener insight into character than he, or saw moral and mental distinctions more clearly; yet his judgments of particular persons were often rela

and gives to Des Cartes, what is not to be found in the latter and is to be found in the former. (See chapter v.) This he did in the face of Sir James Mackintosh, one of the most clear-headed and accurately learned men of the day, after inciting him to examine his own positions by contradiction; so incautious and dreamy was he. It seems as if he was ever dreaming of blows and caring for them no more than for the blows of a dream. How much strength of memory may co-exist with weakness, the intellect remaining quite sound in the main, may often be observed in old men. Just so many a nervous man can walk twenty miles when he cannot walk straight into a room, or lift a cup to his lips without shaking it.

It was from this same mixture of carelessness and confusedness that my Father neglected all his life long to make regular literary acknowledgments. He did it when he happened to think of it, sometimes disproportionately, at other times not, but without the slightest intention, and in some cases without the possibility of even temporary concealment. He published The Fall of Robespierre as An Historic Drama by S. T. Coleridge, without joining Mr. Southey's name with his in the title page, though my Uncle and all his many friends knew that he wrote the second and third act of it; and in a note to the Conciones he spoke of the first act only as his own. He did not call the Catullian Hendecasyllables a translation, though at any hour I might have seen the original in the copy of Matthisson's poems which he had given me, and in which he had written, after the presentation, "Die Kinderjahre, p. 15-29; der-Schmetterling, p. 50; and the Alpenreise, p. 75, will be especial favourites with you, I dare anticipate. 9th May, 1820, Highgate." His Hendecasyllables contain twelve syllables, and as metre are, to my ear, a great improvement, on Matthisson's eleven-syllable lines. He acted in the same way with regard to two epigrams of Lessing's, one in the Poetic Works, ii. p. 78, called Names, and another on Rufa and her Lapdog, which has been printed somewhere,-(Die Namen and An die Dorilis. Works of Lessing, vol. i. p. 19. and p. 46.) He had spoken of them as trans

Casimir, Cotton, Lessing and other Poets. xliii

tively wrong; not that he ascribed to them qualities which they did not possess, or denied them those which they had, but that his feelings and imagination height

lations to Mr. Cottle. Mr. Green tells me that in the Confessions are a few phrases borrowed from Lessing, which will be pointed out particularly hereafter. My Father once talked of translating all that author's works. An epigram printed in the Remains, Hoarse Mævius is also from the German; he seems to have spoken of it as such to Mr. Cottle. The fourth and sixth stanzas of Separation (P. W. i. p. 262.) are adopted from Cotton's Chlorinda. The late Mr. Sidney Walker thought that my Father was indebted to Casimir's xiiith Ode for the general conception of his Lines in answer to a melancholy Letter, one of the Juvenile Poems. The second stanza looks like an expansion of the commence

ment:

Non si sol semel occidit,

Non rubris iterum surget ab Indiis.

I see no likeness elsewhere, except of subject. Mr. S. W. also pointed out to me an image taken from the opening of Ossian's War of Inisthoma, in Lines on an Autumnal Evening, " As when the Savage," &c. (P. W. I. p. 39.) The Rose (Ib. p. 40.) is, I believe, from the French.

"And I the while, the sole unbusy thing

Nor honey make, nor build, nor pair, nor sing," (Ib. ii. p. 72.) would probably have been written, even if Herbert had not written, as Mr. Walker reminded me,

Neither bring honey with the bees,

Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry

To water these. (Employment, Poems, p. 53.)

I think it will hardly be supposed that Mr. Coleridge meant to cheat Casimir, Cotton, Lessing and Matthisson of the articles he borrowed from them. The two former he celebrated in his writings, when they were not much in the world's eye the two latter are popular and well known authors, whose works are in every hand in Germany, and here in the hands of many. Mr. Dequincey says he relied "too much upon the slight know

ened and magnified that side or aspect of a mind, which was most present to him at the time when his estimate was drawn; the good and the beautiful, which he beheld at the moment, appeared in his eyes the very type of goodness and beauty: the subjects of it were transfigured before him and shone with unearthly hues and lineaments. Of principles he had the clearest intuition, for that which is without degree is in no danger of being exaggerated; nor was he liable, from his peculiar temperament, to miss poetic truth; because nature, as she lends to imagination all her colours, can never be mis-represented by the fullest expenditure of her own gifts upon herself. And even in his view of the particular and individual,—though, as has been said of him in his literary character, "often like the sun, when looking at the planets, he only beheld his own image in the objects of his gaze, and often, when his eye darted on a cloud, would turn it into a rainbow," 23-yet possibly even here far more of truth re

ledge of German literature in this country; '-a blind remark ! Who relies for concealment on a screen which he is doing his best to throw down? Had my Father calculated at all he would have done it better; but to calculate was not in his nature. If he ever deceived others it was when he was himself deceived first. Hazlitt said he "always carried in his pocket a list of the Illustrious Obscure." I think he made some writers, who were obscure when he first noticed them, cease to be so; and it will be found, that he did not generally borrow from the little known without declaring his obligations; that most of his adoptions were from writers too illustrious to be wronged by plagiarism. It is true that Maasz, from whom he borrowed some things, never was famous but had he "relied" on the world's ignorance of him he would not have mentioned him as a writer on mental philosophy at all.

23 See Guesses at Truth, 2nd. edit. p. 241.

vealed itself to his earnest gaze than the world, which ever observes too carelessly and superficially, was aware of. Many of his poems, in which persons are described in ecstatic language were suggested by individuals, and doubtless did but pourtray them as they were constantly presented to him by his heart and imagination.

Such a temper is ever liable to be mistaken for one of fickleness, insincerity, and lightness of feeling; and even so has Coleridge at times been represented by persons, who judging partially and superficially, conceived him to be wanting in depth of heart and substantial kindness, whose depths they had never explored and with whose temperament and emotions there was no congeniality in their own. But it is not true, as others will eagerly testify, that the affections of Coleridge were slight and evanescent, his intellectual faculties alone vigorous and steadfast; though it is true that, in persons constituted like him, the former will be more dependent on the latter, more readily excited and determined through the powers of thought and imagination than in ordinary cases. His heart was as warm as his intellectual being was lifesome and active, nay it was from warmth of heart and keenness of feeling that his imagination derived its glow and vivacity, the condition of the latter, at least, was intimately connected with that of the former. He loved to share all he had with others; and it is the opinion of one who knew him well and early, that, had he possessed wealth in his earlier years, he would have given great part of it away. If there are any who conceive that his affections were apt to evaporate in words, I think it right to protest against such a notion of his character. Kind words are not to be contrasted with good deeds,

except where they are substituted for them, and those kindly feelings which, in the present instance, so often overflowed in words were just as ready to shape themselves into deeds, as far as the heart was concerned ;— how far the hand can answer to the heart depends on circumstances with which the last has no concern. Had there been this tenuity and shallowness in his spirit, he could never have made that sort of impression as an author, which many thoughtful persons have received from his works, much less as a man have inspired such deep love and esteem as still waits upon his memory from some who are themselves loved and honoured by all that know them well. That the objects of his affections oftener changed than consisted with, or could have arisen in, a happy even tenour of life, was, in his case, no symptom of that variableness which results from the union of a lively fancy with a shallow heart; if he soon formed attachments, this arose from the quickness of his sympathies, the ease with which he could enter into each man's individual being, loving and admiring whatever it contained of amiable or admirable; from a "constitutional communicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul," which, speedily attracting others to him, rendered them again on this account doubly interesting in his eyes; if he "stood aloof," during portions of his life, from any once dear to him, this was rather occasioned by a morbid intensity and tenacity of feeling than any opposite quality of mind,

24 Some persons appear to have confounded the general courtesy and bland overflowing of his manners with the state of his affections, and because the feelings which prompted the former fitted over the surface of his heart, to suppose that the latter were flitting and superficial too.