The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats

“ Idolized by many, and used without scruple visited Mr. Coleridge have left him with a feeling by more, the poet of Christabel and the “An. akin to the judgment indicated in the above re. cient Mariner' is but little truly known in that mark. They admire the man more than his common literary world, which, without the pre. works, or they forget the works in the absorbing rogative of conferring fame hereafter, can most impression made by the living author. And no surely give or prevent popularity for the present. wonder. Those who remember him in his more In that circle he commonly passes for a man of vigorous days can bear witness to the peculiarity genius who has written some very beautiful and transcendent power of his conversational eloverses, but whose original powers, whatever they quence. It was unlike any thing that could be were, have been long since lost or confounded in heard elsewhere; the kind was different, the de the pursuit of metaphysic dreams. We ourselves gree was different; the manner was different. venture to think very differently of Mr. Coleridge, The boundless range of scientific knowledge, the both as a poet and a philosopher, although we are brilliancy and exquisite nicety of illustration, the well enough aware that nothing which we can deep and ready reasoning, the strangeness and say will, as matters now stand, much advance his immensity of bookish lore, were not all; the dra. chance of becoming a fashionable author. In. matic story, the joke, the pun, the festivity, must deed, as we rather believe, we should earn small be added ; and with these the clerical-looking thanks from him for our happiest exertions in dress, the thick waving silver hair, the youthful. such a cause ; for certainly, of all the men of let colored cheek, the indefinable mouth and lips, the ters whom it has been our fortune to know, we quick yet steady and penetrating greenish-grey never met any one who was so utterly regardless eye, the slow and continuous enunciation, and the of the reputation of the mere author as Mr. Cole- everlasting music of his tones,—all went to make ridge-one so lavish and indiscriminate in the up the image and to constitute the living presence exhibition of his own intellectual wealth before of the man." any and every person, no matter whomone so In a note at the conclusion of the number of reckless who might reap where he had most pro “ The Quarterly Review" from which the predigally sown and watered. "God knows,'

-as we ceding passage has been taken, Mr. Coleridge's once heard him exclaim upon the subject of his decease is thus mentioned : unpublished system of philosophy,—God knows, “ It is with deep regret that we announce the I have no author's vanity about it. I should be death of Mr. Coleridge. When the foregoing ar. absolutely glad if I could hear that the thing had ticle on his poetry was printed, he was weak in been done before me.' It is somewhere told of body, but exhibited no obvious symptoms of so Virgil, that he took more pleasure in the good near a dissolution. The fatal change was sudden verses of Varius and Horace than in his own. and decisive; and six days before his death he We would not answer for that; but the story has knew, assuredly, that his hour was come. His always occurred to us, when we have seen Mr. few worldly affairs had been long settled ; and, Coleridge criticising and amending the work of a after many tedious adieus, he expressed a wish contemporary author with much more zeal and that he might be as little interrupted as possible. hilarity than we ever perceived him to display His sufferings were severe and constant till within about any thing of his own. Perhaps our readers thirty-six hours of his end; but they had no may have heard repeated a saying of Mr. Words- power to affect the deep tranquillity of his mind, worth, that many men of this age had done won. or the wonted sweetness of his address. His derful things, as Davy, Scott, Cuvier, &c.; but prayer from the beginning was, that God would that Coleridge was the only wonderful man he not withdraw his Spirit; and that by the way in ever knew. Something, of course, must be al. which he would bear the last struggle, he might lowed in this as in all other such cases of anti- be able to evince the sincerity of his faith in thesis ; but we believe the fact really to be, that Christ. If ever man did so, Coleridge did." the greater part of those who have occasionally