Coleridge and Wordsworth by the Edinburgh Review, under the so-called "lake poets." The epithet, although at first sight appropriate, the trio residing in the lake district and associating with one another intimately for years, is substantially incorrect and unfortunate. It would be impossible to find in English history any other three contemporaries that have so few features in common and who have borrowed so little inspiration one from the other.

"An English worthy, doing his duty for fifty noble years of labor, day by day stor ing up learning, day by day working for scant wages, most charitable out of his small means, bravely faithful to the calling which he had chosen, refusing to turn from his path for popular praise or prince's power; - I mean Robert Southey. We have left his old political landmarks miles and miles behind; we protest against his dogmatism; nay, we begin to forget it and his politics; but I hope his life will not be forgotten, for it is sublime in its simplicity, its energy, its honor, its affection! In the combat between Time and Thalaba, I suspect the former destroyer has conquered; Kehama`s curse frightens very few readers now; but Southey's private letters are worth piles of epics, and are sure to last among us as long as kind hearts like to sympathize with goodness and purity and love and upright life." —Thackeray.

MRS. CAROLINE ANNE SOUTHEY, 1787-1854, better known as Caroline Bowles, is favorably known as a writer both of prose and verse.

Mrs. Southey was the daughter of Captain Charles Bowles. She was married to Robert Southey in 1839. She cultivated authorship both before and after marriage, contributing chiefly to Blackwood's Magazine. The best known of her prose writings are four tales, - The Young Grey-Head, The Murder Glen, Walter and William, and The Evening Walk. Her poems also are very popular, such as Autumn Flowers, Solitary Hours, etc.

"If Mrs. Norton is the Byron, Mrs. Southey (Caroline Bowles) is the Cowper of our modern poetesses. She has much of that great writer's humor, fondness for rural life, melancholy pathos, and moral satire. She has also Cowper's pre-eminently English manner in diction and thought." — Hartley Coleridge.

Coleridge.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, was, of all the contemporary writers, the man most endowed by nature with genius. But the fitful and irregular character of his mental action prevented his accomplishing any great and completed work commensurate with his acknowledged genius. His poetic fame rests on two poems, both of singular, almost supernatural power; yet one, Christabel, is only a fragment, the other, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, more nearly complete in itself, is only a part of an incompleted whole. The like is true of his prose writings, they are, at the best, only splendid fragments.

Career. Coleridge was at first a pupil of Christ Hospital, where he gained distinction for scholarship, as he did afterwards when a student at Cambridge. But being disappointed in a love-affair while at the University, he left the place without graduation, and enlisted by stealth in the army, under an assumed name. A scrap of Latin which he scribbled on the stable-wall of the barracks betrayed his disguise, and led to his being released from his false position and restored to his friends.

Soon after, in 1794, he became intimate with Southey. Both of them at that time were ardent republicans, and admirers of the French Revolution. Both also were Unitarians in religion. Needy, restless, and full of the spirit of adventure, the young poets devised a scheme of emigrating with some friends to America, and there founding on the bank of the Susquehanna a utopian republic, or Pantisocracy, the distinguishing feature of which should be a community of goods. Having no money to carry out the romantic project, Coleridge began writing for the Morning Post; he published also a volume of poems, and gave lectures at Bristol, on moral and political subjects. He and Southey also married sisters, the Misses Fricker of Bristol. Coleridge at this time preached occasionally for the Unitarians at Bristol.

Through the liberality of Josiah and Thomas Wedgewood, the wellknown potters, Coleridge was enabled in 1798 to go to Germany, where he studied with great diligence in the University of Göttingen. On returning to England, he settled at Keswick, in the Lake District of Westmoreland, where also Southey and Wordsworth resided. Hence these three friends have been called the Lake Poets.

A few years later, Coleridge renounced Unitarianism, and adopted the creed of the Anglican Church; he made a like change in his political opinions, having become disgusted with the excesses of the French Republicans.

In 1808 Coleridge lectured on Shakespeare and the Fine Arts, in the Royal Institution, London. He began soon after a periodical, The Friend. His habits of living being irregular, and his health failing, he fell into the way of taking opium, which added greatly to his other infirmities, and made him for years a most pitiable spectacle. He was rescued from this condition, however, and spent his declining years in the hospitable refuge of a generous physician, Dr. Gilman, of London.

Estimate of Him. - The universal testimony of competent judges is that Coleridge's natural endowments were of the very highest order. Method and industry, such method and industry as mark the career of Tennyson, of Milton, and of Shakespeare, would have made him the equal, possibly the superior, of any of these great men. Even from the desultory and fitful efforts of his genius which remain, he must

be regarded as one of the great men of all time. His powers as a conversationist, or rather as a talker, for he did not converse, have probably never been equalled; and had there been a Boswell to gather up all these brilliant sayings which fell from his lips, the record would have been of inestimable value. Much of his conversation has been preserved in the Table-Talk, published after his decease. But we have no such minute report as that which Boswell gave of Dr. Johnson.

Works. Coleridge's works are chiefly the following: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Christabel; Genevieve; Remorse, a Tragedy; Aids to Reflection; Lectures on Shakespeare; Constitution of Church and State; The Statesman's Manual; Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit; Theory of Life; Essays on his Own Times; The Friend, several volumes; Lay Sermons; Table-Talk; Biographia Literaria; Literary Remains. "This illustrious man, the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and most comprehensive, in my judgment, that has yet existed among men."-De Quincey, "His mind coutains an astonishing map of all sorts of knowledge, while, in his power and manner of putting it to use, he displays more of what we mean by the term genius than any mortal I ever saw, or ever expect to see.” —John Foster.

"I shall never forget the effect his first conversation made upon me. It struck me as something not only out of the ordinary course of things, but as an intellectual exhibition altogether matchless. The party was unusually large, but the presence of Coleridge concentrated all attention towards himself. The viands were unusually costly, and the banquet was at once rich and varied; but there seemed to be no dish like Coleridge's conversation to feed upon-and no information so varied as his own. The orator rolled himself up, as it were, in his chair, and gave the most unrestrained indulgence to his speech,—and how fraught with acuteness and originality was that speech, and in what copious periods did it flow! The auditors seemed to be rapt in wonder and delight, as one observation more profound, or clothed in more forcible language than another, fell from his tongue. For nearly two hours he spoke with unhesitating and uninterrupted fluency. . . . I regretted that I could not exercise the powers of a second Boswell, to record the wisdom and the eloquence which had that evening flowed from the orator's lips. It haunted me as I retired to rest. It drove away slumber." -Dibdin.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE, 1796-1849, eldest son of the poet S. T. Coleridge, was himself also a poet of high excellence.

He lived in seclusion at Grasmere, occupying himself with literary pursuits. He was a precocious child, giving utterance in early youth to thoughts and expressions entirely beyond his years. He was physically deformed, and in his mental organization there was something irregular; in disposition also he was wayward. He achieved distinction at Oxford, and was elected to a Fellowship, but forfeited it by habits of intemperance. His conversational powers are said to have been great, and the effect was heightened by the grotesqueness of his personal appearance and the dreamy oddity of his manners. "It is impossible to give you any adequate idea of his oddity; for he is the oddest of all God's creations, and he grows quainter every day."-Southey.

Works. He wrote a good deal for Blackwood. His separate publications are: Poems; Biographia Borealis, or Lives of Distinguished Northmen; Worthies of Yorkshire and Lancashire; Life of Andrew Marvell; Essays and Marginalia (edited by Derwent C).

"Though we do not rank Hartley Coleridge with the greatest poets, the most profound thinkers, or the most brilliant essayists, yet we know of no single man who has

left, as his legacy to the world, at once poems so graceful, thoughts so just, and essays so delectable."-Fraser's Magazine.

REV. DERWENT COLERIDGE, 1800 —, another son of the poet Samuel Taylor C., was a clergyman of the English Church, and Principal of St. Mark's College, Chelsea. Works: The Scriptural Character of the English Church; Notes on English Divines; Lay Sermons. He edited also S. T. Coleridge's Poems and Dramatic Works.

WILLIAM HART COLERIDGE, 1790-1850, supposed to be a cousin of the poet S. T. Coleridge, was educated at Oxford, and became Bishop of Barbadoes in 1841. He published Address to Candidates for Holy Orders; Charges delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of the Barbadoes; Sermons, etc.

HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, 1800-1843, nephew, and literary executor, of the poet S. T. C., was a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and a lawyer by profession. He accompanied his uncle, William H. C., Bishop of Barbadoes, on his voyage to the W. Indies. He wrote: Six Months in the West Indies; and An Introduction to the Study of the Great Classic Poets. He also contributed to the London Quarterly Review. But his chief literary labor consisted in collecting and editing the various literary remains of his uncle, the great poet. These were: Literary Remains, 4 vols.; Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit; The Friend, 3 vols.; Constitution of Church and State; Biographia Literaria. The editing of the work last named was begun by him and finished by his widow, Sarah, who was his cousin, and a daughter of the poet.

SARAH HENRY COLERIDGE, 1803-1852, daughter of the poet S. T. Coleridge, and wife of his nephew, H. N. Coleridge, wrote Pretty Lessons for Good Children; Phantasmion, a tale; and a translation from the Latin of The Albipones of Paraguay. Her chief merit, however, was in the aid she gave in editing the literary remains of her illustrious father.

SIR JOHN TAYLor Coleridge, 1790, also a nephew of the poet S. T. Coleridge, and a man of great distinction in the legal profession, became a Judge of the Court of the Queen's Bench in 1835, and a Member of the Privy Council in 1858. He published an edition of Blackstone, with notes.

Joanna Baillie.

Joanna Baillie, 1764-1851, was a dramatist of great celebrity, contemporary with Sir Walter Scott, Sir James Mackintosh, Jeffrey, Southey, Byron, and Coleridge, and was eminent even among those great names.

She was born near Glasgow, Scotland, but spent most of her life and achieved her principal literary successes in the neighborhood of London.

Her dramas were published under the title of Plays on the Passions, her plan being to make each passion the subject of two plays, a tragedy and a comedy. Besides these she published a volume of Miscellaneous Dramas; The Family Legend, a Tragedy; Poetic Miscellanies; Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters; and A View of the General Tenor of the New Testament regarding the Nature and Dignity of Jesus Christ.

"A noble monu

Her chief works were those first named, Plays on the Passions. ment of the powerful mind and the pure and elevated imagination of its author.”— Edinburgh Review.

The Family Legend was acted both in Edinburgh and London with great success. On the occasion of its performance in Edinburgh, Scott wrote: "We wept till our hearts were sore, and applauded till our hands were blistered." Her dramas, however, are rather intended for reading than for representation. She herself did not frequent the theatre, and was not familiar with its arrangements. As reading plays, they are accepted by the highest critical authorities as among the grandest works of the poetical art.

Mrs. Hemans.

Mrs. Felicia Dorothea Hemans, 1794-1835, was, during her life, a leading favorite, her poems being read, admired, and quoted by almost everybody, and on almost all occasions.

Career.

Mrs. Hemans was a native of Liverpool, daughter of a Mr. Browne, a merchant of that city. She began writing at a very early age, and a volume of her poems, Early Blossoms, was published before she had reached fifteen. She was at that time singularly beautiful in appearance and attractive in manners.

She was married at eighteen to Captain Hemans, of the British army. The union was not a happy one, and, after living together for six years, they separated. Captain Hemans went to Italy to take care of himself, and remained there; Mrs. Hemans remained at home to rear and educate the five sons who were the fruits of their ill-assorted marriage. It redounds to her honor certainly that these domestic infelicities found no voice in her song. She bore her griefs in dignified silence, and did not, like Byron, coin her heart-pangs into marketable verse.

Mrs. Hemans resided for some years with her sister and mother, and, after the death of the latter, spent the close of life at Dublin, where her brother, Major Browne, resided. She visited at different times Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and other literary celebrities, and was a general favorite with them all.

Works.- Mrs. Hemans wrote no long poems, but a large number of occasional pieces, and at the time of her death was an almost universal favorite, both in England and America. Even Sir Archibald Alison speaks of her as a rival to Coleridge! But her reputation has been steadily on the wane for the last thirty or forty years. The truth is, she wrote pleasing things with infinite prettiness, but she had no true creative genius.

"It may not be the best imaginable poetry, and may not indicate the very highest or most commanding genius; but it embraces a great deal of that which gives the very best poetry its chief power of pleasing; and would strike us, perhaps, as more impassioned and exalted, if it were not regulated and harmonized by the most beautiful taste. It is infinitely sweet, elegant, and tender,-touching, perhaps, and contemplative, rather than vehement and overpowering; and not only finished through