horns of the second beast in the Revelations, that spoke like a dragon. A person, to whom one of my letters of recommendation had been addressed was my introducer. It was a new event in my life, my first stroke in the new business I had undertaken of an author, yea, and of an author trading on his own account. My companion, after some imperfect sentences, and a multitude of hums and haas, abandoned the cause to his client; and I commenced an harangue of half an hour to Phileleutheros, the tallow-chandler, varying my notes through the whole gamut eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and in the latter from the pathetic to the indignant I argued, I described, I promised, I prophesied; and beginning with the captivity of nation, I ended with the near approach of the millenium, finishing the whole with some of my own verses describing that glorious state out of the Religious Musings: -Such delights, As float to earth, permitted visitants! When in some hour of solemn jubilee' The massive gates of Paradise are thrown Wide open and forth come in fragments wild Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies, And odours snatch'd from beds of Amaranth, And they that from the chrystal river of life Spring up on freshen'd wings, ambrosial gales! Religious Musings, 1. 356. "My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praise-worthy patience, though (as I was afterwards told on complaining of certain gales that were not altogether ambrosial) it was a melting day with him. And what, Sir! (he said after a short pause) might the cost be? Only FOUR-PENCE, (O! how I felt the anti-climax, the abysmal bathos of that four-pence!) only four-pence, Sir, each number, to be published on every eighth day. That comes to a deal of money at the end of a year. And how much did you say there was to be for the money? Thirty-two pages, Sir! large octavo, closely printed, Thirty and two pages? Bless me, why except what I does in a family way on a sabbath, that's more than I ever reads, Sir! all the year round. I am as great a one as any man in Brummagem, Sir! for liberty and truth, and all them sort of things, but as to this (no offence, I hope, Sir!) I must beg to be excused. "So ended my first canvass; from causes that I shall presently mention, I made but one other application in person. This took place at Manchester, to a stately and opulent wholesale dealer in cottons. He took my letter of introduction, and having perused it, measured me from head to foot, and again from foot to head, and then asked if I had any bill or invoice of the thing; I presented my prospectus to him; he rapidly skimmed and hummed over the first side, and still more rapidly the second and concluding page; crushed it within his fingers and the palm of his hand; then most deliberately and significantly rubbed and smoothed one part against the other; and, lastly, putting it into his pocket, turned his back on me with an "over run with these articles!" and so, without another syllable, retired to his counting-house; and, I can truly say to my unspeakable amusement." Our author here abandoned the attempt to procure subscriptions by personal application. His friends however took up the business, and prosecuted it, as we learn from him, with more success. "From this rememberable tour I returned with nearly a thousand names on the subscription list of the Watchman; yet more than half convinced, that prudence dietated the abandonment of the scheme. But for this very reason I persevered in it; for I was at that period of my life so completely hag-ridden by the fear of being influenced by selfish motives, that to know a mode of conduct to be the dictate of prudence, was a sort of presumptive proof to my feelings, that the contrary was the dictate of duty. Accordingly, I commenced the work, which was announced in London by long bills, in letters larger than had ever been seen before, and which (I have been informed, for I did not see them myself) eclipsed the glories even of the lottery puffs. But, alas! the publication of the very first number was delayed beyond the day announced for its appearance. In the second number an essay against fast days, with a most censurable application of a text from Isaiah for its motto, lost me near five hundred of my subscribers at one blow. In the two following numbers I made enemies of all my Jacobin and Democratic patrons: for disgusted by their infidelity, and their adoption of French morals with French philosophy ; and perhaps thinking, that charity ought to begin nearest home: instead of abuseing the government and the Aristocrats chiefly or entirely, as had been expected of me, I levelled my attacks at "modern patriotism,” and even ventured to declare my belief, that whatever the motives of ministers might have been for the sedition (or as it was then the fashion to call them, the gagging) bills, yet the bills themselves would produce an effect to be desired by all the true friends of free dom, as far as they should contribute to deter men from openly declaiming on subjects, the principles of which they had never bottomed, and from "pleading to the poor and ignorant, instead of pleading for them." At the same time I avowed my conviction, that national education, and a concurring spread of the gospel, were the indispensable condition of any true political amelioration. Thus, by the time the seventh number was published, I had the mortification (but why should I say this, when, in truth, I cared too little for any thing that concerned my worldly interests to be at all mortified about it?) of seeing the preceding numbers exposed in their dry old iron shops for a penny a piece. At the ninth number I dropt the work. But from the London publisher I could not obtain a shilling; he was a and set me at defiance. From other places I procured but little, and after such delays as rendered that little worth nothing: and I should have been inevitably thrown into jail by my Bristol printer, who refused to wait even for a month for a sum between eighty and ninety pounds, if the money had not been paid for me by a man by no means affluent, a dear friend who attach ed himself to me from my first arrival at Bristol, who has continued my friend with a fidelity unconquered by time or even by my own apparent neglect; a friend from whom I never received an advice that was not wise, or a remonstrance that was not gentle and affectionate." Mr. Coleridge tells us that he now sought a refuge, from trouble and the world, with love-in a cottage. He took up his residence at Stowey, and provided for his "scanty maintenance by writing verses for a London Morning Paper." But even here he could not escape from humiliating evidences "of the unsaleable nature of his writings." "For," says he, "happening to rise at an earlier hour than usual, I observed her putting an extravagant quantity of paper into the grate in order to light the fire, and mildly checked her for her wastefulness; la, Sir! (replied poor Nanny) why, it is only "WATCHDIAN."" Had Mr. Coleridge shown the same talent in his paper, which he has exhibited in relating the tale of his knight errantry, we cannot think he would have had reason to complain of the indisposition of the public to patronise him. There are, it is true, in every country where property constitutes the chief claim to consideration, and where the constant fluctuation of property throws it frequently into the hands of the ignorant and the sordid, men of some consequence, who cannot read any thing but a newspaper, and cannot understand the half of that, from whom it is vain to expect any patronage for literature; but there is in England, and there is in America, a sufficient number of enlightened and liberal persons, willing and able to support works of value. The value of a work, however, results not merely from the quantity of genius and learning it evinces, but from their application. A man may write a very wise book which nobody will buy, if he shall select a subject which interests nobody. We do not say that a wise man might write such a book, for this would be a solecism, and the other may appear paradoxical. In computing the worth of a publication the purchaser computes the advantage he can derive from it, which may consist in either entertainment or instruction, or in both. Subscribers to periodical works expect a variety not only of articles, but of topics and of manner, whilst they hope to receive from all either information or amusement. But to what other uses Mr. Coleridge's chimerical essays could have been applied, than those to which they were converted, we cannot well conceive. We have not room to trace all Mr. Coleridge's religious and political meandrings from jacobinism to ministerialism, and from psilanthropism to trinitarianism. He informs us that from the commencement of the Addington administration to the present day, he has been a constant writer in the Morning Post and the Courier. Of the former paper he was for many years the principal editor. He has not however always accorded with the policy of the government. He was opposed to the unhappy war with this country, and expresses his satisfaction in seeing not only "the sentiments but the language" of some of the articles which he had written, "adopted in several of the Massachusetts State-papers." As to the coincidence of the sentiment of any paragraph of Mr. Coleridge's with any sentiment expressed in any of the Massachusetts State-papers, we have no means of determining, but that any sentiment was adopted from Mr. Coleridge we are slow to believe, and that an enlightened legislature should borrow his language is truly incredible. In the chapter entitled, "An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel themselves disposed to become au thors," Mr. Coleridge emphatically inculcates it upon his young readers, NEVER TO PURSUE LITERATURE AS A TRADE; which advice he supports by some judicious arguments. But we must pass over this, and we must pass over his critical examination of Mr. Wordsworth's poetical principles, and of the character of his poetical writings, which he has extended through a very considerable part of the second volume. We may hereafter find an appropriate occasion to enter into the consideration of Mr. Wordsworth's style; we must content ourselves, at present, with expressing a general coincidence with Mr. Coleridge's estimate of this eccentric writer. We cannot but remark again how forcibly we are struck with the correctness of Mr. Coleridge's judgment, which seems to be entirely at variance with his muse. duplicity. Indeed in his case there seems to have been double-dealing in brother authors as well as in reviewers. Mr. C. tell the story with a good grace—but we shall only extract a single paragraph. He contrasts the premature praises bestowed on the Christabel, with its ultimate reception. "In the Edinburgh Review it was assailed with a malignity and a spirit of personal hatred that ought to have injured only the work in which such a tirade was suffered to appear; and this review was generally attributed (whether rightly or no I know not) to a man who, both in my presence and in my absence, has repeatedly pronounced it the finest poem of its kind in the language. This may serve as a warning to authors, that in their calculations on the probable reception of a poem, they must subtract to a large amount from the panegyric; which may have encouraged them to publish it, however unsuspicious and however various the sources of this panegyric may have been." But if we may believe Mr. Coleridge, not only do modern reviewers belie their private professions, in their denunciations ex cathedra, but they are base enough to abuse the rites of hospitality, and to repay benefits by insults and inju ries. The following anecdote related by Mr. C. requires no comment. Mr. Coleridge thinks that, in the manner in which they are conducted, the British Reviews, are not likely to assist in forming the public taste, nor to encourage general benevolence. They not only feed malignity, but they stimulate it. To give pungency to a paragraph the reviewers, he asserts, are willing to sacrifice not only truth and their own convictions, but the peace and even the livelihood of the objects of their satire. In their judicial capacity they promulge opinions directly contrary to those which they profess in private circles, provided an oppor- "Some years ago a gentleman, the chief tunity for persiflage presents itself--though writer and conductor of a celebrated reout of their profession, they are "all ho- view, distinguished by its hostility to Mr. nourable men." We must make some Southey, spent a day or two at Keswick. deduction for the exasperation of an au- That he was, without diminution on this thor smarting under a recent infliction of account, treated with every hospitable atthe critical rod; but Mr. Coleridge does tention by Mr. Southey and myself, I not deal in vague assertion. He cites in- trust I need not say. But one thing I stances within his own knowledge in may venture to notice, that at no period proof of his charges. Speaking of the of my life do I remember to have receivireful mood of the Edinburgh Reviewers ed so many, and such high coloured against Mr. Wordsworth, and the resent- compliments in so short a space of time. ment which this gentleman betrayed, he He was likewise circumstantially informsays, "let not Mr. Wordsworth be charged by what series of accidents it had haped with having expressed himslf too indignantly, till the wantonness and the systematic and malignant perseverance of the aggressions have been taken into fair consideration. I myself heard the commander in chief of this unmanly warfare make a boast of his private admiration of Wordsworth's genius. I have heard him declare, that whoever came into his room would probably find the Lyrical Ballads lying open on his table, and that (speaking exclusively of those written by Mr. Wordsworth himself,) he could nearly repeat the whole of them by heart." But Mr. Coleridge has suffered in his own person from a similar instance of pened, that Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Southey, and I, had become neighbours; and how utterly unfounded was the supposition, that we considered ourselves, as belonging to any common school, but that of good sense, confirmed by the long established models of the best times of Greece, Rome, Italy, and England, and still more groundless the notion, that Mr. Southey, (for, as to myself, I have published so little, and that little of so little importance, as to make it almost ludicrous to mention my name at all,) could have been concerned in the formation of a poetic sect with Mr. Wordsworth, when so many of his works had been published, one. not only previously to any acquaintance between them, but before Mr. Wordsworth himself had written any thing but in a diction ornate, and uniformly sustained; when, too, the slightest examination will make it evident, that between those and the after writings of Mr. Southey, there exists no other difference than that of a progressive degree of excellence from progressive development of power, and progressive facility from habit and increase of experience. Yet among the first articles which this man wrote after his return from Keswick, we were characterized as "the School of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes." In reply to a letter from the same gentleman, in which he had asked me, whether I was in earnest in preferring the style of Hooker to that of Dr. Johnson, and Jeremy Taylor to Burke, I stated, somewhat at large, the comparative excellences and defects which characterized our best prose writers from the reformation to the first half of Charles II.; and that of those who had flourished during the present reign, and the preceding About twelve months afterwards a review appeared on the same subject, in the concluding paragraph of which the reviewer asserts, that his chief motive for entering into the discussion was to separate a national and qualified admiration of our elder writers, from the indiscriminate enthusiasm of a recent school, who praised what they did not understand, and caricatured what they were unable to imitate. And, that no doubt might be left concerning the persons alluded to, the writer annexes the names of Miss BAILIE, W. SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, and COLERIDGE. For that which follows, I have only hear-say evidence, but yet such as demands my belief; viz. that on being questioned concerning this apparently wanton attack, more especially with reference to Miss Bailie, the writer had stated as his motives, that this lady, when at Edinburgh, had declined a proposal of introducing him to her; that Mr. Southey had written against him; and Mr. Wordsworth had talked contemptuously of him; but that as to Coleridge, he had noticed him merely because the names of Southey and Wordsworth and Coleridge al ways went together." Mr. Coleridge's frank admission of the insignificance of his singularly beautiful' poem, must disarm honest criticism of all its severity. We confess that we did ridicule the Christabel, and do still hold it most ridiculous, but we are now more inclined to sympathize with Mr. VOL. 11.-No. 11. Coleridge than to make him the but of jests, which, after the palinode on his part, would be both unfeeling and unmanly. In this farrago, which he calls biographical sketches, Mr. Coleridge has introduced, in a review of the tragedy of Bertram, some very just remarks on the modern drama. From this specimen of his critical acumen we are led to hope that he will one day give to the world his lectures upon Shakspeare, which he has been reading for many years in London. We believe him much better qualified to comment on our great dramatic bard, than to establish a new theory of psychology, or to form a standard of the English tongue. Indeed Mr. Coleridge's project of writing a complete dictionary and logical grammar of our language, is as absurd as his utter ignorance of the value, and of the sensible construction of words, is astonishing. We shall not advert to the multitude of his new-coined and newly compounded terms, but will point out a few of the violations of the common rules of syntax, of which wo took notice, in a single reading of the book in hand. In page 8 we have this sen tence. "I learnt from him that poetry, even that of the loftiest, and seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes." Here Mr. Coleridge either uses more in one case as an adjective, after having used it three times immediately before as an adverb, as which he employs it again directly afterwards, or he means it as an adverb throughout, and then we are to understand 'more and more fugitive causes,' as a comparison of the successive states of these causes in re⚫lation to themselves, which, besides being nonsense, is equally objectionable in the connexion. A similar abuse of more will be seen in a sentence which we have already singled out as pregnant with faults. Page 16, we have, "neither bookish nor vulgar, neither redolent of the lamp or of the kennel." This form of expres sion, neither followed by or as its correla tive, occurs more than fifty times in this book, whilst the first member of the quo tation is the only instance in which the proper correspondence has been observed; and we are strongly inclined to suspect that this single exception is owing to an oversight of the printer's. In page 65 we meet with the following sen 15 tence. "Whenever, therefore, any one of the movements which constitute a complex impression, are renewed through the senses, the others succeed mechanically." Page 37, Vol. 2, we find, "neither one or the other differ half as much," &c. and again, 66 or even, perhaps, as the exciseman, publican, or barber happen to be or not to be," &c. In page 99, Vol. 2, we have the following errors, "from which one or other of two evils result." "The fourth class of defects is closely connected with the former; but yet are such," &c. Page 102, Vol. 2, we read-"There are many of us that still possess some remembrances more or less distinct, respecting themselves," &c. By the way, Mr. Coleridge has undertaken to account for the Irishman's bull, 'I was a fine child but they changed me!' Mr. Coleridge talks of an hundred, an harshness, an history, an heretic, &c. &c. We shall not pretend to take any note of the defective, redundant, insensible, or unintelligible sentences which abound in this work. We have shown sufficient evidence of our author's incompetency to the office of a lexicographer, and must now take our leave of him; though had we more time and room we might still glean much entertainment from this miscellaneous effusion. As this biography is professed to be designed as an introduction to Mr. Coleridge's "Sybilline Leaves," we were at the pains to procure a copy of that work, but after a slight experiment gave up the E. idea of reading it. ART. 4. Sketches of Lower Canada, Historical and Descriptive; with the Author's Recollections of the Soil and Aspect; the Morals, Habits, and Religious Institutions of that Isolated Country; during a Tour to Quebec in the month of July, 1817. By Joseph Sansom, Esq. Member of the American Philosophical Society, Author of Letters from Europe, &c." New-York. Kirk & Mercein. 12mo. pp. 316. THE HE time, we trust, has now arrived, when foreigners shall cease to degrade the literary pretensions of the United States. After having perused this work, they will consider the literary character of this nation as fixed on a basis moveless as Atlas, lofty as the Andes, and permanent as Pindus, Pelion, or Parnassus. In early life the mighty mind of Milton was pregnant with something great, and in due time appeared Paradise Lost: of which an accident in Italy gave the first hint. The mind of Mr. Sansom appears to have been at least ten months gone with similar greatness. What accident induced him to be delivered in the shape unfolded by the title of his work, we are not informed. It is, however, of little importance; though the causes might tend much to gratify the curiosity of future ages. The author informs us that his work 66 Was put to press after having been hastily written from penciled memorandums, during a fortnight's stay at Balls town and Saratoga.' The future biographers of Mr. Sansom are here saved we know not how much laborious research in ascertaining the time occupied in writing this immortal work, and the places in which it was written. Johnson's Prince of Abyssinia was written in seven evenings: the "Sketches" of the American Philosopher, were the labour f but a fortnight. The title was at first modestly, printed "A Trip to Canada." "Under his forming hand a creature grew, and a more appropriate title was deemed necessary. We will give the words of the author: "But the composition insensibly assuming a more historical and scientific form, in going through the press, amidst the Libraries of New-York, it was decided, in a literary circle, at Dr. Hosack's, that the scope of the Work demanded a more elaborate designation: and the title has been accordingly varied to that of "Sketches of Lower Canada, historical and descriptive;" the discrepancy of which, with the style and matter of a Book of Travels, may possibly be excused by the learned; in favour of the obvious occasion for more general views of society on the American Continent, than have hitherto obtained, either at home or abroad." 66 Going through the press, amidst the libraries of New-York, it was decided at Dr. Hosack's, &c." We entirely agree with the learned author that the "historical and scientific form" of his work, demanded a title more sonorous, and descriptive of the historical talents and knowledge, and the scientific erudition of the author, than the humble one of "A Trip to Canada." Almost any man could have written a Trip: a member of the American Philosophical Society must, ex-officio, stand on higher ground. We admire the condescension of Mr. Sansom in giving the world the informa |
