narrative, and there the style should be simpler. But the great thing in poetry is, quocunque modo, to effect a unity of impression upon the whole; and a too great fulness and profusion of point in the parts will prevent this. Who can read with pleasure more than a hundred lines or so of Hudibras at one time? Each couplet or quatrain is so whole in itself, that you can't connect them. There is no fusion, —just as it is in Seneca. Imitation is the mesothesis of Likeness and Difference. The difference is as essential to it as the likeness; for without the difference, it would be Copy or Fac-simile. But, to borrow a term from astronomy, it is a librating mesothesis for it may verge more to likeness as in Painting, or more to difference, as in Sculpture. DR. JOHNSON'S fame now rests principally upon Boswell. It is impossible not to be amused with such a book. But his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced; -for no one, I suppose, will set Johnson before Burke, and Burke was a great and universal talker ; - yet now we hear nothing of this except by some chance remarks in Boswell. The fact is, Burke, like all men of genius who love to talk at all, was very discursive and continuous; hence he is not reported; he seldom said the sharp short things that Johnson almost always did, which produce a more decided effect at the moment, and which are so much more easy to carry off. Besides, as * Burke, I am persuaded, was not so continuous a talker as Coleridge. Madame de Staël told a nephew to Burke's testimony to Johnson's powers, you must remember that Burke was a great courtier; and after all, Burke said and wrote of the latter, at Coppet, that Mr. C. was a master of monologue, mais qu'il ne savait pas le dialogue. There was a spice of vindictiveness in this, the exact history of which is not worth explaining. And if dialogue must be cut down in its meaning to small talk, I, for one, will admit that Coleridge, amongst his numberless qualifications, possessed it not. But I am sure that he could, when it suited him, converse as well as any one else, and with women he frequently did converse in a very winning and popular style, confining them, however, as well as he could, to the detail of facts or of their spontaneous emotions. In general, it was certainly otherwise. "You must not be surprised," he said to me, at my talking so long to you- I pass so much of my time in pain and solitude, yet everlastingly thinking, that, when you or any other persons call on me, I can hardly help easing my mind by pouring forth some of the accumulated mass of reflection and feeling, upon an apparently interested recipient." But the principal reason, no doubt, was the habit of his intellect, which was under a law of discoursing upon all subjects with reference to ideas or ultimate ends. You might interrupt him when you pleased, and he was patient of every sort of conversation except mere personality, which he absolutely hated. Ed. more than once that he thought Johnson greater in talking than in writing, and greater in Boswell than in real life.* Newton was a great man, but you must excuse me if I think that it would take many Newtons to make one Milton. July 6. 1833. PAINTING. - MUSIC. POETRY. It is a poor compliment to pay to a painter to tell him that his figure stands out of the canvass, or that you start at the likeness of the portrait. Take almost any daub, cut it out of the canvass, and place the figure looking into or out of a window, and any one may take it for life. Or take one of Mrs. Salmon's wax queens or generals, and you will very sensibly feel the difference between a copy, * This was said, I believe, to the late Sir James Mackintosh. ED. - as they are, and an imitation, of the human form, as a good portrait ought to be. Look at that flower vase of Van Huysum, and at these wax or stone peaches and apricots! The last are likest to their original, but what pleasure do they give? None, except to children. * * This passage, and those following, will evidence, what the readers even of this little work must have seen, that Mr. Coleridge had an eye, almost exclusively, for the ideal or universal in painting and music. He knew nothing of the details of handling in the one, or of rules of composition in the other. Yet he was, to the best of my knowledge, an unerring judge of the merits of any serious effort in the fine arts, and detected the leading thought or feeling of the artist, with a decision which used sometimes to astonish me. Every picture which I have looked at in company with him, seems now, to my mind, translated into English. He would sometimes say, after looking for a minute at a picture, generally a modern one, "There's no use in stopping at this; for I see the painter had no idea. It is mere mechanical drawing. Come on; here the artist meant something for the mind." It was just the same with his knowledge of music. His appetite for what he thought good was literally inexhaustible. He told me he could listen to fine music for twelve hours together, and go away refreshed. But he required in music either thought or |