"He heard I was here. I dassay he would, and all that--but I don't

intend to wait for him here. I'll beat up his quarters at the hall--I

will--and all that."

Miss Arabel had a profound contempt for old people and little people;

and the person who at present addressed her was both little and old.

He wore a short flaxen wig, and a spenser over a long-tailed blue

coat; grey nether habiliments, with four or five inches of a white

worsted stocking visible between his knee and his gaiter. It was a

very well-shaped leg, and the owner thereof seemed to know it.

"You will not find papa at home," said Miss Arabel. "He has gone out

to a magistrate's meeting."

"I didn't say I was going there to-day, did I?--and he don't go

justicing every day in the week, I hope. I'll see him soon, depend

on't, and make acquaintance with his young 'uns, and all that. How

many is there of you?"

"My sister and myself--if you enquire as to the number of Mr

Gillingham Howard's family," replied Miss Arabel.

"What! ha'n't ye picked up ne'er a man yet? ne'er a one on you? Is

your sister any thing like yourself?"

Miss Arabel cast a look of haughty indignation on her questioner; but

disdained a reply.

"Pr'aps you're looking out for a juke or a bernet, or some regular

nobleman, and all that--for I hear you carries all your heads uncommon

high--whereby it wouldn't be unagreeable to pull 'em down a bit, and

all that. Come, come, don't pout nor be sulky. Be friendly, young

'oman, now that we're going to be neighbours, and all that."

"Friendly, indeed!" said Miss Arabel, with a toss of her head that

would have snapped a martingale in fifty pieces. "Pray walk on, sir. I

am a lady, and papa would be very indignant at your impertinence."

"I dassay he would; but not a bit more than I have been at his'n this

many a long day. Why, I've dandled him on my knee a hundred times."

"Have you? Perhaps you were his nurse's husband, or the butler. If you

come to the servants' hall"----

"Indeed! What to do? To see fine ladies' maids give themselves airs,

and disgust people with their insolence and affectation. Much obliged

to you all the same; but when I wants to see sights like that, I'll

come into the drawing-room."

"I don't know what you mean, and beg you'll retire. Papa put an Irish

beggar into prison for three weeks for insulting my aunt."

"What! old Susie--old Two-to-the-Pound, and all that. He must have

been very much of an Irishman to insult the old Roman."

"What do you mean, sir? Do you know my aunt Susannah?"

"Ay, to be sure. Ain't I one of her elders? Lord love ye, I've known

old Susie since she was just up to my knee--and a reg'lar speciment

she was. We always called her Two-to-the-Pound. Many's the laugh her

father and I has had about her dumpiness, and all that."

"Papa's grandfather? Did you know him, sir?" enquired Miss Arabel,

examining her companion at the same time to see if he was not the

Wandering-Jew or St Leon; for she considered her papa's grandfather as

the principal personage of a very remote historical era; and would

have been little more surprised to hear that the old gentleman before

her had smoked cigars with Sir Walter Raleigh. "Did you know my

great-grandfather, sir?"

"Didn't I? There wasn't a bigger snob, though I says it, in all

England; and just about two-and-forty years ago, him and me was as

thick as two thieves, though only one of us was a thief. He was a old

man then, and I was a young 'un, and all that. Your father was summut

about eight years old, and my daughter was born the very month afore

he bought this here estate. So you see it ain't no great time to talk

about, seeing my daughter aint a old 'oman yet, though she has a girl

twenty year old."

"I don't understand what you say," repeated Miss Arabel.

"Old Susie will understand me better, and so will little Gus."

"Who is Gus?"

"Gus is your father--Augustus he was christened; but we always called

him Gus. Well, it's quite pleasant, I declare, to be among old

friends; and I'm glad I've took a willa so close."

The sound of the word "willa," even with the initial "w," attracted

Miss Arabel's attention. Could it be possible that this was the old

gentleman with whom the handsome stranger was on a visit?

"If you live so near, you can, of course, have an opportunity of

seeing papa."

"Seeing him? yes, and telling him a bit of my mind. I'll see every

thing in the house--from old Susie Two-to-the-Pound, down to the last

born kitten. You keeps cats of course, and all that? Susie must be

pleased to see me. Sich laughs, to be sure, we had about her and a

young man of the Excise. He was about seven feet high, and she wa'n't

above four and a half, so we always called him her young man of the

extra size. Wasn't it funny? But he died of a decline; and I hear

she's a broad as she's long. Well, we must all die!"

"I must wish you good-day, sir. I'm going home," said Miss Arabel,

rising to go away, and assuming as much dignity as she could.

"Well, good-day, and good-luck to you," said the old man. "Why, how

tall you are! and the wick not half covered. You wouldn't do credit to

old Bill Wilkins's manufacture, though I says it as shouldn't. You

ain't much better than one of the single dips. I'll call on your

father one of these fine days; for now that I've come to the

neighbourhood, I've little better to do than pay off old scores--and

interest's been running on for two-and-forty years. Tell him he had

better set a price on Surbridge, and prepare to move, for I want to

buy the estate for a friend of mine."

"I beg, sir--I insist--I don't know you, sir," said the agitated and

angry Arabel.

"He does though. He knows me precious well; and, what's more, you may

tell him my name if you like."

"I will tell him, sir, that he may send you to prison for your

impertinence. He's a magistrate."

"I know all about him. He's a boastful blockhead. Tell him I told you

so. My name is Mr Thomas Roe, 20, Riches Court."

CHAPTER III.

The account given by Miss Arabel of her interview with the hateful

purchaser of the coveted meadows, was so confused, that to persons

less interested in the matter than Mr Gillingham Howard and Miss

Susannah Wilkins, (or Gillingham by brevet,) it would have been

altogether unintelligible. But before these two terror-struck

individuals rose a vision of their detected boasts and overthrown

pretensions, that filled them with dismay. What! Mr Gillingham Howard

exposed in all quarters as the descendant of a tallow-chandler, and

the censorious Miss Susan as having been known from her childhood by

the name of Two-to-the-Pound? Could they silence the accuser by

making him their friend?--or could they repel his revelations by dint

of unhesitating, unqualified lying?--or finally, would it be necessary

to quit the neighbourhood? Mr Gillingham Howard was a tall portly man,

with his hair slightly grizzled, and an air of quiet assurance

reposing on his somewhat coarse features, which his partial aunt

considered the solemn dignity of virtue and high birth. To a less

blinded observed his narrow brow and heavy chin showed strong

indications of the animal preponderating over the intellectual in his

organization, and his slow, solemn talk--always about himself--showed

the importance he attached to the slightest incident that had occurred

to so distinguished an individual. Not that Mr Gillingham Howard, as

we remarked before, limited his narratives merely to what had actually

occurred--they diffused themselves over every circumstance that had

happened to any one else, and might by any possibility have happened

to him. By this means he had an extraordinary fund of conversational

anecdote; for whatever story he heard, or adventure he read, he

immediately appropriated to himself; and thought nothing of killing

his eight hundred ducks at one shot with Munchausen, or finding out

false concords in a Greek play with the Bishop of London. His aunt was

so used to hear his marvellous tales, that we must in charity suppose

she believed some of them to be true; and in that persuasion she was

called upon on all occasions to bear witness to the facts. She

testified accordingly, with the most perfect readiness, to all his

achievements in the rows at Oxford; his suggestions to the other

magistrates, that were always approved; his courage in every danger;

his mastery in every game, and his skill in every science. She was a

little, vulgar-looking woman, with small cunning eyes, and a very

round face, glistening and shining with its absurd obesity; and in

shape and complexion bearing a close resemblance to a sun-flower stuck

into a Dutch cheese. The awe with which she regarded her nephew arose

partly from his size, but principally from the aristocratic loftiness

of his birth--being the third in descent from the original founder of

the family, while nothing stood between her and the tallow vat except

the six years during which her father had enacted the country squire.

What could be more appalling to these unhappy beings than the

threatened visit, and long-delayed vengeance of the implacable Thomas

Roe? In the mean time, Miss Arabel had only a confused notion of the

meaning of all the threats and messages, the mere report of which

wrought such anguish in the paternal breast. Her thoughts dwelt more

constantly on the interview she had had with the mysterious stranger;

and the speech he had made about the treasure he had heard of in

Surbridge Hall, came every moment to her mind. It was so pretty a

speech; and he looked so full of admiration when he said it! Was there

no way of getting him introduced to papa? Not a word of the meeting

could she mention to her sister; for Miss Arabel was one of those

amiable beings not uncommon in ball-rooms, who will not risk the peace

of mind of a friend by making her acquainted with a rich or

fascinating partner on any account. And if this holds good with a

friend, much more in the case of Miss Arabel did it hold good with a

sister. So she sat in her own room and devised fifty expedients for

legitimating her acquaintance with the interesting unknown.

But while Surbridge Hall is frightened from its propriety, let us pass

over for a moment to the hostile camp, and see what is going on there.

A beautiful young girl is sitting at a table, on which a number of

maps and plans are laid out; and, while her eyes are busily running

over the various lines and measurements, her small white hand is

resting we are sorry to say, without making the smallest effort for

liberty, within that of the very same young gentleman whose appearance

we have already commemorated. Beautiful blue eyes they are, and fitter

for other employment than to pore over architectural or horticultural

designs; and so she seems to think, for she occasionally lifts them to

those of her companion, and a sweet smile brightens over all her face.

That is Fanny Smith, the granddaughter of Thomas Roe--the child of a

Yorkshire parson, who had been lucky enough to win the heart of Mary

Roe--and wise enough not to despise her father, though he lived in

Riches Court.

"But grandpapa says it is of no use, Charles, to look at all these

plans for houses. He'll never build on the new ground, for he says he

is determined to establish us at Surbridge Hall."

"The old gentleman is too sanguine," replied Charles. "He will never

persuade the present proprietor to leave it."

"Oh, he will, though! You don't know what a determined man grandpapa

is. He'll weary them out--or shame them away."

"Shame!" enquired the other--"How do you think shame can have any

effect in people so lost to truth, and so encased in ignorance and

conceit?"

"But grandpapa will expose them--and, besides, he'll pay them

handsomely to go. I don't the least despair of getting quit of them."

"Why, if people would only take the trouble to enquire into the actual

facts of any part of their behaviour, and not take their own account

of it--the boastful falsehoods of the nephew, the malicious

insinuations of the aunt, their disregard of truth in serious affairs

as well as in trifles, their selfishness, narrow-mindedness, and want

of charity--they would hesitate before they countenanced such

characters, in spite of the dinners they occasionally give, and the

position they hold. But society winks on vices which it is the duty of

society to punish, since the law takes no cognizance of them, though

more hurtful and disgraceful than theft or swindling. And, I am

afraid, even if your grandfather unmasks the solemn pretender, he will

still carry his head as high as if he had a right from any quality but

his wealth to mix with honest men."

"Oh, never fear!" said Fanny, laughing; "those boastful people are

always easiest frightened, and a very short time will see us in

Surbridge Hall."

"Ah, Fanny, that would be too much happiness! I've heard of nothing

but Surbridge since I was a child; and if my father could but see me

in it, living there, my own property, or yours, Fanny, which is the

same thing, he would almost die with joy; but no, no, it is

impossible."

"Impossible! deuce a bit of it!" exclaimed the old gentleman himself;

bustling into the room. "I tell you that Surbridge is the house you

will take Fanny home to. I've a great mind to say you sha'n't marry

her at all unless she gives you Surbridge as part of her fortune."

"Oh, don't say that, sir!"

"No, don't say that, grandpapa, for you know those horrid people may

be obstinate," said Fanny.

"I should like to see them," said the old man knitting his brow. "No,

no, they must go. The bully is soon bullied. See, he has sent me a

flag of truce already; a note asking if I will allow him to call on me

at three o'clock to renew his old acquaintance."

"And will you let him?" enquired Fanny.

"To be sure I will; and I'll return his visit too; but he'll be here

in a few minutes now. I think you had better take a walk, Charles, and

leave Fanny and me to entertain them. You can go and take some more

lessons in sketching, eh? Don't keep your teacher waiting."

Charles looked at his watch, and then at Fanny, and finally hurried

away as he was ordered. The young lady also left the room.

The old man sat down, and sank in thought. He had his eye on the

conduct of his partner's grandson for forty years, though little did

that ostentatious individual suspect that any person saw within his

pharisaical exterior, and knew him for the mass of selfishness,

falsehood, and meanness, he actually was. Moreover the old gentleman

knew that his victim was not so rich as he appeared, and had struggled

in vain to better his fortunes by speculations of various kinds, and

even (the last refuge of the sinking respectables) by thrusting

himself into trusteeships. He felt an assurance, therefore, that his

threatened exposures--united to an offer of the full value of the

estate--would secure him the possession of Surbridge Hall; if it had

not been for the enjoyment he anticipated in uncloaking the hypocrite,

he might perhaps have contented himself with the acquisition of the

land.

A knock was heard at the door, and Mr Gillingham Howard and his aunt

walked into the room. Mr Gillingham Howard was very pale, and his eye

evidently quailed as it met the glance of Mr Thomas Roe. The little

fat Susannah was immensely red in the face, but whether from agitation

of mind, or the exertion of climbing the hall steps, it is impossible

to decide.

"I've called, my dear old friend, to take you by the hand," said Mr

Gillingham Howard. "I've long wished, I assure you, to renew our

acquaintance."

"That's a thumper!" replied the old man; "you have wished nothing of

the kind. Oh, Gus, haven't you conquered the horrid habit of

story-telling that used to make you the laughing-stock of all the

young men in the shop. And you, my little Two-to-the-Pound, what a

time it is since we've met, never since the exciseman died, I do

believe. Well, you've not grown thin on't. Do you study the ninth

commandment as much as you used to do?"

"The ninth commandment, sir," said the lady tossing her head. "I don't

know what you mean."

"Yes, you do, Susan; the ninth commandment is the one about false

witness, you know. And sich a gal as you used to be for slashing a

character, or trying to make your kindest friends ridiculous, there

wasn't in all the city. You were always so tremendously witty, you

never had a good word for any body; for witty gals, as you used to be,

thinks nothing funny that isn't what they calls severe. But you're a

old woman now, and I hope you're improved."

Miss Susannah had never been called an old woman before. If she had

seen Mr Gillingham Howard looking with his usual brazen assurance, she

would have broken out in a torrent of invective against her merciless

tormentor--but the fight was entirely out of that illustrious

character, and he stood in trembling silence before his opponent.

"My dear sir," he said at last, "you are too severe on my aunt--but

you were always a wag. I've heard my father say he never knew any one

so full of humour."

"Indeed?"

"And I myself remember how good-natured you used to be when you

visited my father in Harley Street."

"Ay, indeed--let me see. Had your father risen to be at the top of the

profession by that time, with a promise of the chancellorship in his

pocket when his father died?"

"My dear sir, I don't know what you mean--why--what"--

Haven't you been in the habit of telling your friends so after

dinner?" enquired Mr Roe; "now, remember."

"Well! I may perhaps have said that he hoped to be chancellor."

"No, no--you have uniformly stated as a fact that he had the written

promise of the office--and you have constantly appealed to your aunt

for the truth of your statement."

"La! Mr Roe--how should I know about law and chancellorships? It isn't

a lady's business."

"It is a lady's business not to corroborate a falsehood."

"Really, my good sir," said Mr Gillingham Howard, "you are too hard on

a little after-dinner talk."

"Not a bit, not a bit--that after-dinner talk, as you call it, for

forty years, day after day retailing falsehoods, and asseverating them

so constantly, that you at last almost succeed in deceiving yourself,

does away all the distinctions in your mind between truth and

falsehood--and when once the boundary is broke down, there is no

farther pause. A man may go on, and boast about his cricket and

shooting till he would not stick at a false oath."

"Sir! I bear many things from an old friend of our family, but an

imputation on my veracity is intolerable. Do I ever deviate from the

truth, Aunt Susan?"

"You! Oh, no! if there's any quality you excel in more than another,

it is your truth. Low people may tell lies, and of course do; but you!

Mr Gillingham Howard!--you are a perfect gentleman, from the crown of

your head to the sole of your foot."

"Omitting all the intermediate parts," replied Mr Roe. "You know very

well what I mean, sir; and, moreover, you know that what I say is

true--but I will spare you at present. I wish to purchase Surbridge

Hall. I will give you the full price. Will you sell it or not?"

"Why, sir, a place that has been long in one's family"----

"I was nearly forty years old when it was bought--and hope to live few

years yet," interposed Mr Roe.

"And I don't see what pleasure you could take in acquiring a place to

which you have no hereditary ties--my poor father--and my dear

grandfather"----continued Mr Gillingham Howard.

"Should have stuck to the melting tub, both of them--but it isn't for

myself I want the property. I have _a_ grandchild, sir; a

grandson--but that has nothing to do with it. Will you let me have

your answer soon? I will call on you, to hear your decision,

to-morrow."

"Always happy to see an old friend."

"Provided he come with a new face," interposed Mr Roe; "but you don't

much like the sight of my rough old phiz. At any rate, there's no

deceit in it, and now we understand each other."

CHAPTER IV.

It was on the day succeeding this visit of reconciliation, that Miss

Arabel and the stumpy Susannah pursued their way to the shrubbery

walk, in a rapid and mysterious manner, as if they hoped to escape

observation.

"Papa is so unreasonable, aunt," said the young lady. "Why should he

wish to leave Surbridge, just when"----

"You think you have caught a lover," interposed the aunt; "don't be

too sure. You've been deceived in that way before now."

"Oh, if you only saw him! He met me yesterday, and said he would see

me again to-day; and paid such compliments, and looked so handsome."

"But who is he? Is he a gentleman?"

"Of course he is," replied Miss Arabel; "or do you think he would

venture to speak to _me_?"

"Did he tell you his name?"

"No. All he has told me is--he is living with an old gentleman in one

of the villas in the neighbourhood."

"An old gentleman," mused Miss Susannah, "in a villa--it must be the

same--it must be old Roe's Grandson. If it is, and he takes a fancy to

this girl, it will be all well yet. What has he ever called you? Did

he ever say you were an angel?"

"No. He thought me one, though; and said he had heard of what a

treasure Surbridge contained; and yesterday he repeated it, and said

he would give the world to be able to call it his."

"That's something. You must get him to say something of the kind

before a witness."

"But how? What witness can there be, when I can never bring him to the

house?"

"Why not? Ah, how I recollect, in the back parlour," said Miss

Susannah, her memory unconsciously wandering back to the love

incidents of her youth.

"The back parlour?" enquired Miss Arabel.

"The back--I didn't say back parlour. I said black parlour--the oaken

dining-room in my father's house."

"And what of it, aunt? What made you think of the black parlour now?"

"Oh, it was a picture," stammered Miss Susan, inventing an excuse for

her mistake; "a beautiful old portrait--a sort of--I don't recollect

what it was."

"Ah! that puts me in mind of what he speaks of often--the pictures in

our house. I say, aunt," she continued, as if a thought had struck

her.

"Well?"

"Suppose I were to invite him to come into the Hall and see the

portraits?"

"Well, so you might. Your father would think he was as fond of drawing

as you are; and if he be the person I think he is, your father will be

delighted that you have made a friend of him."

"Indeed? Oh, I'm so happy! I'll ask him to the house this very day;

and perhaps if he says anything, aunt, about the treasure, you can be

in the way to hear it."

"That I will, and I'll bring your father, too. There's nothing like a

father or brother in cases of the kind. If I had had a brother that

would fight, I might have been married myself. Dear me, what an

uncommon handsome young man in the avenue! I know him to be a lord by

his walk."

Miss Arabel stretched her neck, and nearly strained her eyeballs in

the effort to follow the direction of Susannah's eyes.

"That's he," she said; "go now, and leave me to get him into the

house."

"He can't be any relation of Thomas Roe: he's too handsome for that,"

thought Miss Susannah; "but whoever he is, she'll be a lucky girl to

catch him. My Sam was a foot or two taller, but very like him in every

other respect--except the limp in the left leg."

As she turned back before entering the house, she saw the young people

in full conversation in the shrubbery walk.

"Well, if he _is_ old Thomas Roe's grandson, and Arabel can hook him

into a marriage, there will be no occasion to leave Surbridge Hall.

Does the monster wish us to be tallow-chandlers again?"

On hurrying to the drawing-room to communicate to her nephew the fact

that Mr Roe's heir was desperately in love with Arabel, she found Mr

Gillingham Howard endeavouring to carry on a conversation with the

very individual she most dreaded to see. Mr Roe had walked up,

accompanied by Fanny Smith, to return the visit of the day before.

"This is so kind," said Miss Susannah, "and so friendly to bring your

pretty grandchild. Our girls will be delighted to be her friends."

"Fanny's a good girl," replied the old man; "and you mustn't spoil

her. Gus was just going to tell me if he had made up his mind, when

you came in. You've thought of my offer, Gus?"

"Certainly; any thing you say shall always have my best consideration.

As far as I am concerned, I could settle in Bucks, where I have a

small estate, with satisfaction; but my girls are enthusiastically

attached to this place. Arabel would break her heart if we took her

away from Surbridge."

"I warrant her heart against all breakage and other damages, save and

except the ordinary wear and tear--as Puff says in letting a furnished

house; and, if it only depends on the young lady, I think I'll answer

for her being more anxious for the arrangement than I am. But here's

company coming, and I must have your answer before I go."

Mr Gillingham Howard heard the carriage stop at the door. He felt it

was impossible to present so rough-mannered a man as Mr Roe to any of

his friends without a certainty of exposure, and he was strongly

tempted to agree to his demand at once, if he would immediately leave

the house; but before he had time to arrange his thoughts, the door

opened, and the Rayleighs of Borley Castle were announced.

Mr Gillingham Howard, by a great effort, received them with his usual

courtesy.

"I have brought Mr Tinter with me," said Mrs Rayleigh, "and I hope you

will let him see your family portraits. We have told him so much of

them, that he is anxious to see them himself. He is writing a

description of the private collections in the county."

Mr Tinter bowed; and Mr Gillingham Howard, with an imploring look to

Mr Roe, who sat resting his chin upon his walking-stick, professed

himself highly honoured by Mrs Rayleigh's request.

"I believe you have portraits of the Sidney family, sir," said Mr

Tinter, "as I hear from Mrs Rayleigh--you are nearly related to them;

I should like very much to compare them with the pictures at

Penshurst."

"Oh! Mr Howard says the Penshurst pictures are only copies of his,"

said Mrs Rayleigh.

"Did I, madam? Did I say all?"

"If not all, you said most of them; and also, that you had some

originals of those in your distant relation, the Duke of Norfolk's

gallery."

Mr Gillingham Howard felt that Mr Roe's appalling eye was fixed upon

him, though he did not venture to look in the direction of where he

sat.

"Mr Tinter will tell you at once which are the copies. You can do

that, Mr Tinter?"

"I can guess at the age of the picture, and the name of the painter,

if he is a master," replied Mr Tinter.

"Oh! but Mr Howard has some pictures that Sir Thomas Lawrence said

were the finest in Europe. Didn't he say so, Mr Howard?"

"Why, ma'am--I think--at least, so I understood him. Didn't Sir Thomas

Lawrence praise some of my pictures, aunt?"

"I really don't remember," said Miss Susannah, looking more at Mr Roe

than at her nephew.

"Oh, I thought you told us last time we dined here, that Sir Thomas

stayed with you weeks at a time, and copied five or six of them

himself."

"P'r'aps I knows more of them family portraits," said Mr Roe with a

wilful exaggeration of accent and magnanimous contempt of

grammar--"than e'er a one on ye."

All eyes were immediately directed to the old man. Mrs Rayleigh, who

was a fine lady, and had never seen so queer a specimen of a critic as

Mr Roe, was a little alarmed at his uncouth pronunciation. And Mr

Gillingham Howard made a feeble and unsuccessful effort to deaden the

effect of his remarks.

"My friend is a remarkably good judge of the fine arts, but quite a

character. An amazing humourist, and very much given to quizzing.

You'll hear what fun he'll make of us all."

"Who is he?" enquired Mrs Rayleigh, in the same confidential whisper.

"A person who has grown very rich in some sort of trade. He was a

protege of a relation of mine."

"And you bear with his eccentricities in hopes of his succession?"

"Exactly."

"I minds the getting of the whole lot on 'em. I can give you the

birth, parentage, and edication, of every one on 'em."

"Of the pictures, sir?" enquired Mr Tinter, taking out his note-book.

"I shall be delighted with any information."

"But where is the gallery, Mr Howard?" enquired Mrs Rayleigh.

"Why, madam, many of the pictures--in fact, all the best of them are

in London at the cleaner's; but in the passage to the Conservatory

there are some remaining, but the place is dark. I hope you'll rather

look at them some other time."

"Now's the best," said Mr Roe, starting up. "Let's see the family

picters, Gus."

Mr Howard was forced by the entreaties of all the party, and led the

way to the passage where his pictures were hung, followed by Mrs

Rayleigh and her two daughters, and Mr Tinter, Mr Roe, and Fanny, and

Aunt Susannah.

"That seems a portrait of Queen Anne's time," said Mr Tinter, pointing

to a much bewigged old gentleman in an antique frame. "Pray, what is

its history?"

"Isn't that your grandfather's uncle, the general who won the battle

of Ramillies against Marlborough's orders?" enquired Mrs Rayleigh. "Do

tell Mr Tinter all about it."

"I reminds all about it," said Mr Roe, before the agonized Mr Howard

could make any reply. "One of our agents failed, and we seized on his

furniture, and old Bill Wilkins took this'n 'cause of the oak frame.

He was a grocer in the Boro', and his name was--was--but I forgets his

name."

"Who took the furniture?" asked Mr Tinter, "and who was a grocer in

the Boro'?"

"The man as had that picter, and a sight more besides. There's one on

'em; the young 'oman a holding an orange in her hand, and a parrot on

her shoulder."

"I thought that was the Saccharissa, Mr Howard, that had been in your

family ever since the time of Waller."

"I told you he was a wag," said Mr Howard, in the last desperate

struggle to avoid detection.

"But who is he? He is a very impudent old man to be so free."

"He is rich; the succession, you know," replied the gentleman with a

forced laugh; but before he could mumble any thing more, the party

turned round one of the corners of the passage, and heard voices in

earnest talk.

"How can I refuse, when you tell me your happiness depends on it?"

came distinctly to the ears of all, in the sharp clear tones of Miss

Arabel.

"You are too good," replied a voice, which Fanny Smith immediately

recognized as that of Charles. "You will make my whole family proud

and happy when they hear you have consented."

"But won't you think I yield too soon; and without having asked papa's

consent?"

"Ah--yes--I don't know how he will bear the loss of such a treasure.

But he will reconcile himself to the want of it when he knows how

happy it makes another in the possession. Say, when may I call it

mine?"

"Oh, now--this moment--any time"--said Arabel, who had heard a noise

in the passage, and concluded it was aunt Susannah enacting the part

of a witness.

"Again I thank you!"--exclaimed Charles. "I will take it in my arms

this instant, and carry it down the shrubbery walk to Mr Roe's."

"As you please--and wherever you like," said Arabel, throwing herself

upon his shoulder. "I'm your's."

"Why, what in the name of wonder is all this here?" cried Mr Roe,

hurrying on, and pouncing on the pair. "Are you making love to this

here gal in the very presence of Fanny Smith?"

"I, sir?"--said Charles, astonished at his situation, and still

supporting Miss Arabel, who pretended to be in a faint. "I asked this

young lady to show me the picture of my father's mother; and, to my

great delight, she said she would give it me; and, when I expressed my

gratitude, she flung herself upon my shoulder, and said she would give

me herself."

"And was it not me you meant by the treasure you talked of?" said Miss

Arabel, starting up.

"No, madam. 'Twas my grandmother's portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds."

"Now, that's all right," said Mr Roe. "This young gentleman is the one

I talked of, Gus--that I wants to buy this house for. I don't think

your daughter will care to give it up to poor Charles that she took

such a fancy to"----

"They seem attached, sir," replied Mr Howard. "And if they like to

marry"----

"Bah!--he's to be married next week to my little grandchild, Fanny

Smith, and we'll include the pictures in the purchase-money, for one

of them is a portrait that was left by mistake when Bill Wilkins

bought the hall, and he would never give it back to the real owners.

But, now that Charles Walrond is to be my grandson, I'll take good

care he recovers his grandmother's likeness. Come--shall I go on and

give these ladies the facts of some of your other stories, or will you

close with my terms at once?"

Mr Gillingham Howard did not take long to decide, and a very short

time saw Surbridge Hall once more in the ancient line; and old Mr Roe,

in relating the means he used to expel the vainglorious descendant of

his partner, generally concluded with the moral, if not the words of

Shakspeare--"Men's pleasant vices make whips to scourge them."

VANITIES IN VERSE.

BY B. SIMMONS.

LETTERS OF THE DEAD.

TO LIVIA.

I.

How few the moons since last, immersed

In thoughts of fev'rish, worldly care,

My casket's heap'd contents reversed,

I sought some scroll I wanted there;

How died at once abstraction's air--

How fix'd my frame, as by a spell,

When on THY lines, so slight, so fair,

My hurrying glance arrested fell!

II.

My soul that instant saw thee far

Sit in thy crown of bridal flowers,

And with Another watch the star

We watch'd in vanish'd vesper hours.

And as I paced the lonely room,

I wonder'd how that holy ray

Could with its light a world illume

So fill'd with falsehood and decay.

III.

Once more--above those slender lines

I bend me with suspended breath--

The hand that traced them now reclines

Clasp'd in th' unclosing hand of Death.

The worm hath made that brow its own

Where Love his wreath so lately set;

And in this heart survive alone

Forgiveness--pity--and regret.

IV.

'Twas 'mid the theatre's gay throng--

Life's loveliest colours round me spread--

That mid the pauses of a song,

I caught the careless "_She is dead!_"

The gaudy crowd--thy sudden grave--

I shrank in that contrasting shock,

Like midnight Listener by the wave,

When splits some bark upon the rock.

V.

This EARLY DEATH--within its pale

Sad air each angry feeling fades--

An evening haze, whose tender veil

The landscape's harsher features shades.

Ah, Scornful One--thy bier's white hue

Stole every earth-stain from thy cheek,

And left thee all to MEMORY'S view

That HOPE once dared in thee to seek.

1836.

PARTING PRECEPTS.

I.

How graceful was that Grecian creed

Which taught that tongues, of old,

Dwelt in the mountain and the mead,

And where the torrent roll'd,

And that in times of sacred fear,

With sweet mysterious moans,

They spoke aloud, while some pale Seer

Interpreted their tones.[21]

II.

And, LADY, why should we not deem

That in each echoing hill,

And sounding wood, and dancing stream,

A language lingers still?

No lovelier scenes round DELPHI spread

Than round thee stretch divine;

Nor Grecian maid bent brighter head

By haunted stream than thine.

III.

Then fancy thus that to thine ear,

While dies the autumn day,

The VOICES of THE WOODLANDS bear

This tributary lay.

Soft winds that steal from where the moon

Brightens the mountain spring,

Shall blend with Mulla's[22] distant tune,

And these the words they sing:--

1.

"Thou'st shared our thousand harmonies;

_At morn_ thy sleep we stirr'd

With sounds from many a balmy breeze,

And many a jocund bird;

And far from Us, when pleasure's lure

Around thy steps shall be,

Ah, keep thy soul as freshly pure

As We came pure to thee!

2.

"_At noon_, beneath September's heat,

Was it not sweet to feel,

Through shadowy grasses at thy feet,

Our silver waters steal?

Sparklingly clear, as now the truth

Seems in thy glance to glow;

So may, through worldly crowds, thy youth

A stainless current flow.

3.

"_At eve_, our hills for thee detain'd

The sun's departure bright.

He sank--how long our woods were stain'd

For thee with rosy light!

The worth, the warmth, the peace serene,

Thou'st known our vales among,

Say, shall they be reflected seen

Upon thy heart as long?

4.

"Morn, noon, and eve--bird, beam, and breeze,

Here blent to bless thy day;

May portion of their memories

Be ever round thy way!

Sweet waters for the weary Bark,

Through parching seas that sails;

Friends may grow false and fortune dark,

But NATURE never fails."

COLERIDGE AND OPIUM-EATING.[23]

What is the deadest of things earthly? It is, says the world, ever

forward and rash--"a door-nail!" But the world is wrong. There is a

thing deader than a door-nail, viz., Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I.

Dead, more dead, most dead, is Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I.; and this

upon more arguments than one. The book has clearly not completed its

elementary act of respiration; the _systole_ of Vol. I. is absolutely

useless and lost without the _diastole_ of that Vol. II., which is

never to exist. That is one argument, and perhaps this second argument

is stronger. Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I., deals rashly, unjustly, and

almost maliciously, with some of our own particular friends; and yet,

until late in this summer, _Anno Domini_ 1844, we--that is, neither

ourselves nor our friends--ever heard of its existence. Now a sloth,

even without the benefit of Mr Waterton's evidence to his character,

will travel faster than that. But malice, which travels fastest of all

things, must be dead and cold at starting, when it can thus have

lingered in the rear for six years; and therefore, though the world

was so far right, that people _do_ say, "Dead as a door-nail," yet,

henceforwards, the weakest of these people will see the propriety of

saying--"Dead as Gillman's Coleridge."

The reader of experience, on sliding over the surface of this opening

paragraph, begins to think there's mischief singing in the upper air.

No, reader--not at all. We never were cooler in our days. And this we

protest, that, were it not for the excellence of the subject,

_Coleridge and Opium-Eating_, Mr Gillman would have been dismissed by

us unnoticed. Indeed, we not only forgive Mr Gillman, but we have a

kindness for him; and on this account, that he was good, he was

generous, he was most forbearing, through twenty years, to poor

Coleridge, when thrown upon his hospitality. An excellent thing

_that_, Mr Gillman, and one sufficient to blot out a world of libels

on ourselves! But still, noticing the theme suggested by this unhappy

Vol. I., we are forced at times to notice its author. Nor is this to

be regretted. We remember a line of Horace never yet properly

translated, viz:--

"Nec scutica dignum horribili sectere flagello."

The true translation of which, as we assure the unlearned reader,

is--"Nor must you pursue with the horrid knout of Christopher that man

who merits only a switching." Very true. We protest against all

attempts to invoke the exterminating knout; for _that_ sends a man to

the hospital for two months; but you see that the same judicious poet,

who dissuades an appeal to the knout, indirectly recommends the

switch, which, indeed, is rather pleasant than otherwise, amiably

playful in some of its little caprices, and in its worst, suggesting

only a pennyworth of diachylon.

We begin by professing, with hearty sincerity, our fervent admiration

of the extraordinary man who furnishes the theme for Mr Gillman's

_coup-d'essai_ in biography. He was, in a literary sense, our

brother--for he also was amongst the contributors to _Blackwood_--and

will, we presume, take his station in that Blackwood gallery of

portraits, which, in a century hence, will possess more interest for

intellectual Europe than any merely martial series of portraits, or

any gallery of statesmen assembled in congress, except as regards one

or two leaders; for defunct major-generals, and secondary

diplomatists, when their date is past, awake no more emotion than last

year's advertisements, or obsolete directories; whereas those who, in

a stormy age, have swept the harps of passion, of genial wit, or of

the wrestling and gladiatorial reason, become more interesting to men

when they can no longer be seen as bodily agents, than even in the

middle chorus of that intellectual music over which, living, they

presided.

Of this great camp Coleridge was a leader, and fought amongst the

_primipili_; yet, comparatively, he is still unknown. Heavy, indeed,

are the arrears still due to philosophic curiosity on the real merits,

and on the separate merits, of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge as a

poet--Coleridge as a philosopher! How extensive are those questions,

if those were all! and upon neither question have we yet any

investigation--such as, by compass of views, by research, or even by

earnestness of sympathy with the subject, can, or ought to satisfy, a

philosophic demand. Blind is that man who can persuade himself that

the interest in Coleridge, taken as a total object, is becoming an

obsolete interest. We are of opinion that even Milton, now viewed from

a distance of two centuries, is still inadequately judged or

appreciated in his character of poet, of patriot and partisan, or,

finally, in his character of accomplished scholar. But, if so, how

much less can it be pretended that satisfaction has been rendered to

the claims of Coleridge? for, upon Milton, libraries have been

written. There has been time for the malice of men, for the jealousy

of men, for the enthusiasm, the scepticism, the adoring admiration of

men, to expand themselves! There has been room for a Bentley, for an

Addison, for a Johnson, for a wicked Lauder, for an avenging Douglas,

for an idolizing Chateaubriand; and yet, after all, little enough has

been done towards any comprehensive estimate of the mighty being

concerned. Piles of materials have been gathered to the ground; but,

for the monument which should have risen from these materials, neither

the first stone has been laid, nor has a qualified architect yet

presented his credentials. On the other hand, upon Coleridge little,

comparatively, has yet been written, whilst the separate characters on

which the judgment is awaited, are more by one than those which Milton

sustained. Coleridge, also, is a poet; Coleridge, also, was mixed up

with the fervent politics of his age--an age how memorably reflecting

the revolutionary agitations of Milton's age ________ridge, also, was

an extensive and brilliant scholar. Whatever might be the separate

proportions of the two men in each particular department of the three

here noticed, think as the reader will upon that point, sure we are

that either subject is ample enough to make a strain upon the amplest

faculties. How alarming, therefore, for any _honest_ critic, who

should undertake this later subject of Coleridge, to recollect that,

after pursuing him through a zodiac of splendours corresponding to

those of Milton in kind, however different in degree--after weighing

him as a poet, as a philosophic politician, as a scholar, he will have

to wheel after him into another orbit, into the unfathomable _nimbus_

of transcendental metaphysics. Weigh him the critic must in the golden

balance of philosophy the most abstruse--a balance which even itself

requires weighing previously, or he will have done nothing that can be

received for an estimate of the composite Coleridge. This astonishing

man, be it again remembered, besides being an exquisite poet, a

profound political speculator, a philosophic student of literature

through all its chambers and recesses, was also a circumnavigator on

the most pathless waters of scholasticism and metaphysics. He had

sounded, without guiding charts, the secret deeps of Proclus and

Plotinus; he had laid down buoys on the twilight, or moonlight, ocean

of Jacob Boehmen;[24] he had cruised over the broad Atlantic of Kant

and Schelling, of Fichte and Oken. Where is the man who shall be equal

to these things?

We at least make no such adventurous effort; or, if ever we should

presume to do so, not at present. Here we design only to make a

coasting voyage of survey round the headlands and most conspicuous

sea-marks of our subject, as they are brought forward by Mr Gillman,

or collaterally suggested by our own reflections; and especially we

wish to say a word or two on Coleridge as an opium-eater.

Naturally the first point to which we direct our attention, is the

history and personal relations of Coleridge. Living with Mr Gillman

for nineteen years as a domesticated friend, Coleridge ought to have

been known intimately. And it is reasonable to expect, from so much

intercourse, some additions to our slender knowledge of Coleridge's

adventures, (if we may use so coarse a word,) and of the secret

springs at work in those early struggles of Coleridge at Cambridge,

London, Bristol, which have been rudely told to the world, and

repeatedly told, as showy romances, but never rationally explained.

The anecdotes, however, which Mr Gillman has added to the personal

history of Coleridge, are as little advantageous to the effect of his

own book as they are to the interest of the memorable character which

he seeks to illustrate. Always they are told without grace, and

generally are suspicious in their details. Mr Gillman we believe to be

too upright a man for countenancing any untruth. He has been deceived.

For example, will any man believe this? A certain "excellent

equestrian" falling in with Coleridge on horseback, thus accosted

him--"Pray, sir, did you meet a tailor along the road?" "_A tailor_!"

answered Coleridge; "_I did meet a person answering such a

description, who told me he had dropped his goose; that if I rode a

little further I should find it; and I guess he must have meant you_."

In Joe Miller this story would read, perhaps, sufferably. Joe has a

privilege; and we do not look too narrowly into the mouth of a

Joe-Millerism. But Mr Gillman, writing the life of a philosopher, and

no jest-book, is under a different law of decorum. That retort,

however, which silences the jester, it may seem, must be a good one.

And we are desired to believe that, in this case, the baffled

assailant rode off in a spirit of benign candour, saying aloud to

himself, like the excellent philosopher the he evidently was, "Caught

a Tartar!"

But another story of a sporting baronet, who was besides a Member of

Parliament, is much worse, and altogether degrading to Coleridge. This

gentleman, by way of showing off before a party of ladies, is

represented as insulting Coleridge by putting questions to him on the

qualities of his horse, so as to draw the animal's miserable defects

into public notice, and then closing his display by demanding what he

would take for the horse "including the rider." The supposed reply of

Coleridge might seem good to those who understand nothing of true

dignity; for, as an _impromptu_, it was smart and even caustic. The

baronet, it seems, was reputed to have been bought by the minister;

and the reader will at once divine that the retort took advantage of

that current belief, so as to throw back the sarcasm, by proclaiming

that neither horse nor rider had a price placarded in the market at

which any man could become their purchaser. But this was not the

temper in which Coleridge either did reply, or could have replied.

Coleridge showed, in the _spirit_ of his manner a profound sensibility

to the nature of gentleman; and he felt too justly what it became a

self-respecting person to say, ever to have aped the sort of flashy

fencing which might seem fine to a theatrical blood.

Another story is self-refuted: "a hired partisan" had come to one of

Coleridge's political lectures with the express purpose of bringing

the lecturer into trouble; and most preposterously he laid himself

open to his own snare by refusing to pay for admission. Spies must be

poor artists who proceed thus. Upon which Coleridge remarked--"That,

before the gentleman kicked up a dust, surely he would down with the

dust." So far the story will not do. But what follows is possible

enough. The _same_ "hired" gentleman, by way of giving unity to the

tale, is described as having hissed. Upon this a cry arose of "turn

him out!" But Coleridge interfered to protect him; he insisted on the

man's right to hiss if he thought fit; it was legal to hiss; it was

natural to hiss; "for what is to be expected, gentlemen, when the cool

waters of reason come in contact with red-hot aristocracy, but a

hiss?" _Euge!_

Amongst all the anecdotes, however, of this splendid man, often

trivial, often incoherent, often unauthenticated, there is one which

strikes us as both true and interesting; and we are grateful to Mr

Gillman for preserving it. We find it introduced, and partially

authenticated, by the following sentence from Coleridge

himself:--"From eight to fourteen I was a playless day-dreamer, a

_helluo librorum_; my appetite for which was indulged by a singular

incident. A stranger, who was struck by my conversation, made me free

of a circulating library in King's Street, Cheapside." The more

circumstantial explanation of Mr Gillman is this: "The incident indeed

was singular. Going down the Strand, in one of his day-dreams,

fancying himself swimming across the Hellespont, thrusting his hands

before him as in the act of swimming, his hand came in contact with a

gentleman's pocket. The gentleman seized his hand, turning round, and

looking at him with some anger--'What! so young, and yet so wicked?'

at the same time accused him of an attempt to pick his pocket. The

frightened boy sobbed out his denial of the intention, and explained

to him how he thought himself Leander swimming across the Hellespont.

The gentleman was so struck and delighted with the novelty of the

thing, and with the simplicity and intelligence of the boy, that he

subscribed, as before stated, to the library; in consequence of which

Coleridge was further enabled to indulge his love of reading."

We fear that this slovenly narrative is the very perfection of bad

story-telling. But the story itself is striking, and, by the very

oddness of the incidents, not likely to have been invented. The

effect, from the position of the two parties--on the one side, a

simple child from Devonshire, dreaming in the Strand that he was

swimming over from Sestos to Abydos, and, on the other, the

experienced man, dreaming only of this world, its knaves and its

thieves, but still kind and generous--is beautiful and picturesque.

_Oh! si sic omnia_!

But the most interesting to us of the _personalities_ connected with

Coleridge are his feuds and his personal dislikes. Incomprehensible to

us is the war of extermination which Coleridge made upon the political

economists. Did Sir James Steuart, in speaking of vine-dressers, (not

_as_ vine-dressers, but generally as cultivators,) tell his readers,

that, if such a man simply replaced his own consumption, having no

surplus whatever or increment for the public capital, he could not be

considered a useful citizen? Not the beast in the Revelation is held

up by Coleridge as more hateful to the spirit of truth than the

Jacobite baronet. And yet we know of an author--viz. one S.T.

Coleridge--who repeated that same doctrine without finding any evil in

it. Look at the first part of the _Wallenstein_, where Count Isolani

having said, "Pooh! we are _all_ his subjects," _i. e._ soldiers,

(though unproductive labourers,) not less than productive peasants,

the emperor's envoy replies--"Yet with a difference, general;" and the

difference implies Sir James's scale, his vine-dresser being the

equatorial case between the two extremes of the envoy.--Malthus again,

in his population-book, contends for a mathematic difference between

animal and vegetable life, in respect to the law of increase, as

though the first increased by geometrical ratios, the last by

arithmetical! No proposition more worthy of laughter; since both, when

permitted to expand, increase by geometrical ratios, and the latter by

much higher ratios. Whereas, Malthus persuaded himself of his crotchet

simply by refusing the requisite condition in the vegetable case, and

granting it in the other. If you take a few grains of wheat, and are

required to plant all successive generations of their produce in the

same flower-pot for ever, of course you neutralise its expansion by

your own act of arbitrary limitation.[25] But so you would do, if you

tried the case of _animal_ increase by still exterminating all but

one replacing couple of parents. This is not to try, but merely a

pretence of trying, one order of powers against another. That was

folly. But Coleridge combated this idea in a manner so obscure, that

nobody understood it. And leaving these speculative conundrums, in

coming to the great practical interests afloat in the Poor Laws,

Coleridge did so little real work, that he left, as a _res integra_,

to Dr Alison, the capital argument that legal and _adequate_ provision

for the poor, whether impotent poor or poor accidentally out of work,

does not extend pauperism--no, but is the one great resource for

putting it down. Dr Alison's overwhelming and _experimental_

manifestations of that truth have prostrated Malthus and his

generation for ever. This comes of not attending to the Latin

maxim--"_Hoc_ age"--mind the object before you. Dr Alison, a wise man,

"_hoc_ egit:" Coleridge "_aliud_ egit." And we see the result. In a

case which suited him, by interesting his peculiar feeling, Coleridge

could command

"Attention full ten times as much as there needs."

But search documents, value evidence, or thresh out bushels of

statistical tables, Coleridge could not, any more than he could ride

with Elliot's dragoons.

Another instance of Coleridge's inaptitude for such studies as

political economy is found in his fancy, by no means "rich and rare,"

but meagre and trite, that taxes can never injure public prosperity by

mere excess of quantity; if they injure, we are to conclude that it

must be by their quality and mode of operation, or by their false

appropriation, (as, for instance, if they are sent out of the country

and spent abroad.) Because, says Coleridge, if the taxes are exhaled

from the country as vapors, back they come in drenching showers.

Twenty pounds ascend in a Scotch mist to the Chancellor of the

Exchequer from Leeds; but does it evaporate? Not at all: By return of

post down comes an order for twenty pounds' worth of Leeds cloth, on

account of Government, seeing that the poor men of the ----th regiment

want new gaiters. True; but of this return twenty pounds, not more

than four will be profit, _i. e._, surplus accruing to the public

capital; whereas, of the original twenty pounds, every shilling was

surplus. The same unsound fancy has been many times brought forward;

often in England, often in France. But it is curious, that its first

appearance upon any stage was precisely two centuries ago, when as yet

political economy slept with the pre-Adamites, viz. in the Long

Parliament. In a quarto volume of the debates during 1644-5, printed

as an independent work, will be found the same identical doctrine,

supported very sonorously by the same little love of an illustration

from the see-saw of mist and rain.

Political economy was not Coleridge's forte. In politics he was

happier. In mere personal politics, he (like every man when reviewed

from a station distant by forty years) will often appear to have

erred; nay, he will be detected and nailed in error. But this is the

necessity of us all. Keen are the refutations of time. And absolute

results to posterity are the fatal touchstone of opinions in the past.

It is undeniable, besides, that Coleridge had strong personal

antipathies, for instance, to Messrs Pitt and Dundas. Yet _why_, we

never could understand. We once heard him tell a story upon

Windermere, to the late Mr Curwen, then M.P. for Workington, which was

meant, apparently, to account for this feeling. The story amounted to

this: that, when a freshman at Cambridge, Mr Pitt had wantonly amused

himself at a dinner party in Trinity, in smashing with filberts

(discharged in showers like grape-shot) a most costly dessert set of

cut glass, from which Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued a principle of

destructiveness in his _cerebellum_. Now, if this dessert set belonged

to some poor suffering Trinitarian, and not to himself, we are of

opinion that he was faulty, and ought, upon his own great subsequent

maxim, to have been coerced into "indemnity for the past, and security

for the future." But, besides that this glassy _mythus_ belongs to an

aera fifteen years earlier than Coleridge's, so as to justify a shadow

of scepticism, we really cannot find, in such an _escapade_ under the

boiling blood of youth, any sufficient justification of that withering

malignity towards the name of Pitt, which runs through Coleridge's

famous _Fire, Famine, and Slaughter_. As this little viperous

_jeu-d'esprit_ (published anonymously) subsequently became the subject

of a celebrated after-dinner discussion in London, at which Coleridge

(_comme de raison_) was the chief speaker, the reader of this

generation may wish to know the question at issue; and in order to

judge of _that_, he must know the outline of this devil's squib. The

writer brings upon the scene three pleasant young ladies, viz. Miss

Fire, Miss Famine, and Miss Slaughter. "What are you up to? What's the

row?"--we may suppose to be the introductory question of the poet. And

the answer of the ladies makes us aware that they are fresh from

larking in Ireland, and in France. A glorious spree they had; lots of

fun; and laughter _a discretion_. At all times _gratus puellae risus ab

angulo_; so that we listen to their little gossip with interest. They

had been setting men, it seems, by the ears; and the drollest little

atrocities they do certainly report. Not but we have seen better in

the Nenagh paper, so far as Ireland is concerned. But the pet little

joke was in La Vendee. Miss Famine, who is the girl for our money,

raises the question--whether any of them can tell the name of the

leader and prompter to these high jinks of hell--if so, let her

whisper it.

"Whisper it, sister, so and so,

In a dark hint--distinct and low."

Upon which the playful Miss Slaughter replies:--

"Letters _four_ do form his name.

* * * *

He came by stealth and unlock'd my den;

And I have drunk the blood since then

Of thrice three hundred thousand men."

Good: But the sting of the hornet lies in the conclusion. If this

quadril_i_teral man had done so much for _them_, (though really, we

think, 6s. 8d. might have settled his claim,) what, says Fire, setting

her arms a-kimbo, would they do for _him_? Slaughter replies, rather

crustily, that, as far as a good kicking would go--or (says Famine) a

little matter of tearing to pieces by the mob--they would be glad to

take tickets at his benefit. "How, you bitches!" says Fire, "is that

all?

"I alone am faithful; I

_Cling to him everlastingly_."

The sentiment is diabolical. And the question argued at the London

dinner-table was--Could the writer have been other than a devil? The

dinner was at the late excellent Mr Sotheby's, known advantageously in

those days as the translator of Wieland's _Oberon_. Several of the

great guns amongst the literary body were present; in particular, Sir

Walter Scott; and he, we believe, with his usual good-nature, took the

apologetic side of the dispute. In fact, he was in the secret. Nobody

else, barring the author, knew at first whose good name was at stake.

The scene must have been high. The company kicked about the poor

diabolic writer's head as if it had been a tennis-ball. Coleridge, the

yet unknown criminal, absolutely perspired and fumed in pleading for

the defendant; the company demurred; the orator grew urgent; wits

began to _smoke_ the case, as active verbs; the advocate to _smoke_,

as a neuter verb; the "fun grew fast and furious;" until at length

_delinquent arose_, burning tears in his eyes, and confessed to an

audience, (now bursting with stifled laughter, but whom he supposed to

be bursting with fiery indignation,) "Lo! I am he that wrote it."

For our own parts, we side with Coleridge. Malice is not always of the

heart. There is a malice of the understanding and the fancy. Neither

do we think the worse of a man for having invented the most horrible

and old-woman-troubling curse that demons ever listened to. We are too

apt to swear horribly ourselves; and often have we frightened the cat,

to say nothing of the kettle, by our shocking [far too shocking!]

oaths.

There were other celebrated men whom Coleridge detested, or seemed to

detest--Paley, Sir Sidney Smith, Lord Hutchinson, (the last Lord

Donoughmore,) and Cuvier. To Paley it might seem as if his antipathy

had been purely philosophic; but we believe that partly it was

personal; and it tallies with this belief, that, in his earliest

political tracts, Coleridge charged the archdeacon repeatedly with his

own joke, as if it had been a serious saying, viz.--"that he could not

afford to keep a conscience;" such luxuries, like a carriage, for

instance, being obviously beyond the finances of poor men.

With respect to the philosophic question between the parties, as to

the grounds of moral election, we hope it is no treason to suggest

that both were perhaps in error. Against Paley, it occurs at once that

he himself would not have made consequences the _practical_ test in

valuing the morality of an act, since these can very seldom be traced

at all up to the final stages, and in the earliest stages are

exceedingly different under different circumstances; so that the same

act, tried by its consequences, would bear a fluctuating appreciation.

This could not have been Paley's _revised_ meaning. Consequently, had

he been pressed by opposition, it would have come out, that by _test_

he meant only _speculative_ test: a very harmless doctrine certainly,

but useless and impertinent to any purpose of his system. The reader

may catch our meaning in the following illustration. It is a matter of

general belief, that happiness, upon the whole, follows in a higher

degree from constant integrity, than from the closest attention to

self-interest. Now happiness is one of those consequences which Paley

meant by final or remotest. But we could never use this idea as an

exponent of integrity, or interchangeable criterion, because happiness

cannot be ascertained or appreciated except upon long tracts of time,

whereas the particular act of integrity depends continually upon the

election of the moment. No man, therefore, could venture to lay down

as a rule, Do what makes you happy; use this as your test of actions,

satisfied that in that case always you will do the thing which is

right. For he cannot discern independently what _will_ make him happy;

and he must decide on the spot. The use of the _nexus_ between

morality and happiness must therefore be inverted; it is not practical

or prospective, but simply retrospective; and in that form it says no

more than the good old rules hallowed in every cottage. But this

furnishes no practical guide for moral election which a man had not,

before he ever thought of this _nexus_. In the sense in which it is

true, we need not go to the professor's chair for this maxim; in the

sense in which it would serve Paley, it is absolutely false.

On the other hand, as against Coleridge, it is certain that many acts

could be mentioned which are judged to be good or bad only because

their consequences are known to be so, whilst the great catholic acts

of life are entirely (and, if we may so phrase it, haughtily)

independent of consequences. For instance, fidelity to a trust is a

law of immutable morality subject to no casuistry whatever. You have

been left executor to a friend--you are to pay over his last legacy to

X, though a dissolute scoundrel; and you are to give no shilling of it

to the poor brother of X, though a good man, and a wise man,

struggling with adversity. You are absolutely excluded from all

contemplation of results. It was your deceased friend's right to make

the will; it is yours simply to see it executed. Now, in opposition to

this primary class of actions stands another, such as the habit of

intoxication, which are known to be wrong only by observing the

consequences. If drunkenness did not terminate, after some years, in

producing bodily weakness, irritability in the temper, and so forth,

it would _not_ be a vicious act. And accordingly, if a transcendent

motive should arise in favour of drunkenness, as that it would enable

you to face a degree of cold, or contagion, else menacing to life, a

duty would arise, _pro hac vice_, of getting drunk. We had an amiable

friend who suffered under the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward

he was when sober; but, when very drunk, he had courage enough for the

Seven Champions of Christendom. Therefore, in an emergency, where he

knew himself suddenly loaded with the responsibility of defending a

family, we approved highly of his getting drunk. But to violate a

trust could never become right under any change of circumstances.

Coleridge, however, altogether overlooked this distinction; which, on

the other hand, stirring in Paley's mind, but never brought out to

distinct consciousness, nor ever investigated, nor limited, has

undermined his system. Perhaps it is not very important how a man

_theorizes_ upon morality; happily for us all, God has left no man in

such questions practically to the guidance of his understanding; but

still, considering that academic bodies _are_ partly instituted for

the support of speculative truth as well as truth practical, we must

think it a blot upon the splendour of Oxford and Cambridge that both

of them, in a Christian land, make Paley the foundation of their

ethics; the alternative being Aristotle. And, in our mind, though far

inferior as a moralist to the Stoics, Aristotle is often less a pagan

than Paley.

Coleridge's dislike to Sir Sidney Smith and the Egyptian Lord

Hutchinson fell under the category of Martial's case.

"Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare,

Hoc solum novi--non amo te, Sabidi."

Against Lord Hutchinson, we never heard him plead any thing of moment,

except that he was finically Frenchified in his diction; of which he

gave this instance--that having occasion to notice a brick wall,

(which was literally _that_, not more and not less,) when

reconnoitring the French defences, he called it a _revetement_. And we

ourselves remember his using the French word _gloriole_ rather

ostentatiously; that is, when no particular emphasis attached to the

case. But every man has his foibles; and few, perhaps, are less

conspicuously annoying than this of Lord Hutchinson's. Sir Sidney's

crimes were less distinctly revealed to our mind. As to Cuvier,

Coleridge's hatred of _him_ was more to our taste; for (though quite

unreasonable, we fear) it took the shape of patriotism. He insisted on

it, that our British John Hunter was the genuine article, and that

Cuvier was a humbug. Now, speaking privately to the public, we cannot

go quite so far as _that_. But, when publicly we address that most

respectable character, _en grand costume_, we always mean to back

Coleridge. For we are a horrible John Bull ourselves. As Joseph Hume

observes, it makes no difference to us--right or wrong, black or

white--when our countrymen are concerned. And John Hunter,

notwithstanding he had a bee in his bonnet,[26] was really a great

man; though it will not follow that Cuvier must, therefore, have been

a little one. We do not pretend to be acquainted with the tenth part

of Cuvier's performances; but we suspect that Coleridge's range in

that respect was not much greater than our own.

Other cases of monomaniac antipathy we might revive from our

recollections of Coleridge, had we a sufficient motive. But in

compensation, and by way of redressing the balance, he had many

strange likings--equally monomaniac--and, unaccountably, he chose to

exhibit his whimsical partialities by dressing up, as it were, in his

own clothes, such a set of scarecrows as eye has not beheld. Heavens!

what an ark of unclean beasts would have been Coleridge's private

_menagerie_ of departed philosophers, could they all have been trotted

out in succession! But did the reader feel them to be the awful bores

which, in fact, they were? No; because Coleridge had blown upon these

withered anatomies, through the blowpipe of his own creative genius, a

stream of gas that swelled the tissue of their antediluvian wrinkles,

forced colour upon their cheeks, and splendour upon their sodden eyes.

Such a process of ventriloquism never _has_ existed. He spoke by their

organs. They were the tubes; and he forced through their wooden

machinery his own Beethoven harmonies.

First came Dr Andrew Bell. We knew him. Was he dull? Is a wooden spoon

dull? Fishy were his eyes; torpedinous was his manner; and his main

idea, out of two which he really had, related to the moon--from which

you infer, perhaps, that he was lunatic. By no means. It was no craze,

under the influence of the moon, which possessed him; it was an idea

of mere hostility to the moon. The Madras people, like many others,

had an idea that she influenced the weather. Subsequently the

Herschels, senior and junior, systematized this idea; and then the

wrath of Andrew, previously in a crescent state, actually dilated to a

plenilunar orb. The Westmoreland people (for at the lakes it was we

knew him) expounded his condition to us by saying that he was

"maffled;" which word means "perplexed in the extreme." His wrath did

not pass into lunacy; it produced simple distraction; an uneasy

fumbling with the idea; like that of an old superannuated dog who

longs to worry, but cannot for want of teeth. In this condition you

will judge that he was rather tedious. And in this condition Coleridge

took him up. Andrew's other idea, because he _had_ two, related to

education. Perhaps six-sevenths of that also came from Madras. No

matter, Coleridge took _that_ up; Southey also; but Southey with his

usual temperate fervour. Coleridge, on the other hand, found celestial

marvels both in the scheme and in the man. Then commenced the

apotheosis of Andrew Bell; and because it happened that his opponent,

Lancaster, between ourselves, really _had_ stolen his ideas from Bell,

what between the sad wickedness of Lancaster and the celestial

transfiguration of Bell, gradually Coleridge heated himself to such an

extent, that people, when referring to that subject, asked each other:

"Have you heard Coleridge lecture on _Bel and the Dragon_?"

The next man glorified by Coleridge was John Woolman, the Quaker. Him,

though we once possessed his works, it cannot be truly affirmed that

we ever read. Try to read John, we often did; but read John we did

not. This however, you say, might be our fault, and not John's. Very

likely. And we have a notion that now, with our wiser thoughts, we

_should_ read John, if he were here on this table. It is certain that

he was a good man, and one of the earliest in America, if not in

Christendom, who lifted up his hand to protest against the

slave-trade. But still, we suspect, that had John been all that

Coleridge represented, he would not have repelled us from reading his

travels in the fearful way that he did. But, again, we beg pardon, and

entreat the earth of Virginia to lie light upon the remains of John

Woolman; for he was an Israelite, indeed, in whom there was no guile.

The third person raised to divine honours by Coleridge was Bowyer, the

master of Christ's Hospital, London--a man whose name rises into the

nostrils of all who knew him with the gracious odour of a

tallow-chandler's melting-house upon melting day, and whose memory is

embalmed in the hearty detestation of all his pupils. Coleridge

describes this man as a profound critic. Our idea of him is different.

We are of opinion that Bowyer was the greatest villain of the

eighteenth century. We may be wrong; but we cannot be _far_ wrong.

Talk of knouting indeed! which we did at the beginning of this paper

in the mere playfulness of our hearts--and which the great master of

the knout, Christopher, who visited men's trespasses like the

Eumenides, never resorted to but in love for some great idea which had

been outraged; why, this man knouted his way through life, from bloody

youth up to truculent old age. Grim idol! whose altars reeked with

children's blood, and whose dreadful eyes never smiled except as the

stern goddess of the Thugs smiles, when the sound of human

lamentations inhabits her ears. So much had the monster fed upon this

great idea of "flogging," and transmuted it into the very nutriment of

his heart, that he seems to have conceived the gigantic project of

flogging all mankind; nay worse, for Mr Gillman, on Coleridge's

authority, tells us (p. 24) the following anecdote:--

"'_Sirrah, I'll flog you_,' were words so familiar to him, that

on one occasion some _female_ friend of one of the boys," (who

had come on an errand of intercession,) "still lingering at the

door, after having been abruptly told to go, Bowyer

exclaimed--'Bring that woman here, and I'll flog her.'"

To this horrid incarnation of whips and scourges, Coleridge, in his

_Biographia Literaria_, ascribes ideas upon criticism and taste, which

every man will recognise as the intense peculiarities of Coleridge.

Could these notions really have belonged to Bowyer, then how do we

know but he wrote _The Ancient Mariner_? Yet, on consideration, no.

For even Coleridge admitted that, spite of his fine theorizing upon

composition, Mr Bowyer did not prosper in the practice. Of which he

gave us this illustration; and as it is supposed to be the only

specimen of the Bowyeriana which now survives in this sublunary world,

we are glad to extend its glory. It is the most curious example extant

of the melodious in sound:--

"'Twas thou that smooth'd'st the rough-rugg'd bed of pain."

"Smooth'd'st!" Would the teeth of a crocodile not splinter under that

word? It seems to us as if Mr Bowyer's verses ought to be boiled

before they can be read. And when he says, '_Twas thou_, what is the

wretch talking to? Can he be apostrophising the knout? We very much

fear it. If so then, you see (reader!) that, even when incapacitated

by illness from operating, he still adores the image of his holy

scourge, and invokes it as alone able to smooth "his rough-rugg'd

bed." Oh, thou infernal Bowyer! upon whom even Trollope (_History of

Christ's Hospital_) charges "a discipline _tinctured_ with more than

due severity;"--can there be any partners found for thee in a

quadrille, except Draco, the bloody lawgiver, Bishop Bonner, and Mrs

Brownrigg?

The next pet was Sir Alexander Ball. Concerning Bowyer, Coleridge did

not talk much, but chiefly wrote; concerning Bell, he did not write

much, but chiefly talked. Concerning Ball, however, he both wrote and

talked. It was in vain to muse upon any plan for having Ball

blackballed, or for rebelling against Bell. Think of a man, who had

fallen into one pit called Bell, secondly falling into another pit

called Ball. This was too much. We were obliged to quote poetry

against them:--

"Letters four do form his name;

He came by stealth and unlock'd my den;

And the nightmare I have felt since then

Of thrice three hundred thousand men."

Not that we insinuate any disrespect to Sir Alexander Ball. He was

about the foremost, we believe, in all good qualities, amongst

Nelson's admirable captains at the Nile. He commanded a seventy-four

most effectually in that battle; he governed Malta as well as Sancho

governed Barataria; and he was a true practical philosopher--as,

indeed, was Sancho. But still, by all that we could ever learn, Sir

Alexander had no taste for the abstract upon any subject; and would

have read, as mere delirious wanderings, those philosophic opinions

which Coleridge fastened like wings upon his respectable, but

astounded, shoulders.

We really beg pardon for having laughed a little at these crazes of

Coleridge. But laugh we did, of mere necessity, in those days, at Bell

and Ball, whenever we did not groan. And, as the same precise

alternative offered itself now, viz., that, in recalling the case, we

must reverberate either the groaning or the laughter, we presumed the

reader would vote for the last. Coleridge, we are well convinced, owed

all these wandering and exaggerated estimates of men--these diseased

impulses, that, like the _mirage_, showed lakes and fountains where

in reality there were only arid deserts, to the derangements worked by

opium. But now, for the sake of change, let us pass to another topic.

Suppose we say a word or two on Coleridge's accomplishments as a

scholar. We are not going to enter on so large a field as that of his

scholarship in connexion with his philosophic labours, scholarship in

the result; not this, but scholarship in the means and machinery,

range of _verbal_ scholarship, is what we propose for a moment's

review.

For instance, what sort of a German scholar was Coleridge? We dare say

that, because in his version of the _Wallenstein_ there are some

inaccuracies, those who may have noticed them will hold him cheap in

this particular pretension. But, to a certain degree, they will be

wrong. Coleridge was not _very_ accurate in any thing but in the use

of logic. All his philological attainments were imperfect. He did not

talk German; or so obscurely--and, if he attempted to speak fast, so

erroneously--that in his second sentence, when conversing with a

German lady of rank, he contrived to assure her that in his humble

opinion she was a ----. Hard it is to fill up the hiatus decorously;

but, in fact, the word very coarsely expressed that she was no better

than she should be. Which reminds us of a parallel misadventure to a

German, whose colloquial English had been equally neglected. Having

obtained an interview with an English lady, he opened his business

(whatever it might be) thus--"High-born madam, since your husband have

kicked de bucket"---- "Sir!" interrupted the lady, astonished and

displeased. "Oh, pardon!--nine, ten tousand pardon! Now, I make new

beginning--quite oder beginning. Madam, since your husband have cut

his stick"---- It may be supposed that this did not mend matters; and,

reading that in the lady's countenance, the German drew out an octavo

dictionary, and said, perspiring with shame at having a second time

missed fire,--"Madam, since your husband have gone to kingdom

come"---- This he said beseechingly; but the lady was past

propitiation by this time, and rapidly moved towards the door. Things

had now reached a crisis; and, if something were not done quickly, the

game was up. Now, therefore, taking a last hurried look at his

dictionary, the German flew after the lady, crying out in a voice of

despair--"Madam, since your husband, your most respected husband, have

hopped de twig"---- This was his sheet-anchor; and, as this also _came

home_, of course the poor man was totally wrecked. It turned out that

the dictionary he had used (Arnold's, we think,)--a work of a hundred

years back, and, from mere ignorance, giving slang translations from

Tom Brown, L'Estrange, and other jocular writers--had put down the

verb _sterben_ (_to die_) with the following worshipful series of

equivalents--1. To kick the bucket; 2. To cut one's stick; 3. To go to

kingdom come; 4. To hop the twig.

But, though Coleridge did not pretend to any fluent command of

conversational German, he read it with great ease. His knowledge of

German literature was, indeed, too much limited by his rare

opportunities for commanding any thing like a well-mounted library.

And particularly it surprised us that Coleridge knew little or nothing

of John Paul (Richter.) But his acquaintance with the German

philosophic masters was extensive. And his valuation of many

individual German words or phrases was delicate and sometimes

profound.

As a Grecian, Coleridge must be estimated with a reference to the

state and standard of Greek literature at that time and in this

country. Porson had not yet raised our ideal. The earliest laurels of

Coleridge were gathered, however, in that field. Yet no man will, at

this day, pretend that the Greek of his prize ode is sufferable.

Neither did Coleridge ever become an accurate Grecian in later times,

when better models of scholarship, and better aids to scholarship, had

begun to multiply. But still we must assert this point of superiority

for Coleridge, that, whilst he never was what may be called a

well-mounted scholar in any department of verbal scholarship, he yet

displayed sometimes a brilliancy of conjectural sagacity, and a

felicity of philosophic investigation, even in this path, such as

better scholars do not often attain, and of a kind which cannot be

learned from books. But, as respects his accuracy, again we must

recall to the reader the state of Greek literature in England during

Coleridge's youth; and, in all equity, as a means of placing Coleridge

in the balances, specifically we must recall the state of Greek

metrical composition at that period.

To measure the condition of Greek literature even in Cambridge, about

the initial period of Coleridge, we need only look back to the several

translations of Gray's _Elegy_ by three (if not four) of the reverend

gentlemen at that time attached to Eton College. Mathias, no very

great scholar himself in this particular field, made himself merry, in

his _Pursuits of Literature_, with these Eton translations. In that he

was right. But he was _not_ right in praising a contemporary

translation by Cook, who (we believe) was the immediate predecessor of

Porson in the Greek chair. As a specimen of this translation,[27] we

cite one stanza; and we cannot be supposed to select unfairly, because

it is the stanza which Mathias praises in extravagant terms. "Here,"

says he, "Gray, Cook, and nature, do seem to contend for the mastery."

The English quatrain must be familiar to every body:--

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Await alike the inevitable hour;

The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

And the following, we believe, though quoting from a thirty-three

years' recollection of it, is the exact Greek version of Cook:--

Ha charis eugeneon, charis ha basileidos archas,

Dora tuches chrusees, Aphrodites kala ta dora,

Panth' hama tauta tethneke, kai eiden morsimon hamar;

Heroon kle' olole, kai ocheto xunon es Aden.

Now really these verses, by force of a little mosaic tesselation from

genuine Greek sources, pass fluently over the tongue; but can they be

considered other than a _cento_? Swarms of English schoolboys, at this

day, would not feel very proud to adopt them. In fact, we remember (at

a period say twelve years later than this) some iambic verses, which

were really composed by a boy, viz. son of Dr Prettyman, (afterwards

Tomline,) bishop of Winchester, and, in earlier times, private tutor

to Mr Pitt; they were published by Middleton, first bishop of

Calcutta, in the preface to his work on the Greek article; and for

racy idiomatic Greek, self-originated, and not a mere mocking-bird's

iteration of alien notes, are so much superior to all the attempts of

these sexagenarian doctors, as distinctly to mark the growth of a new

era and a new generation in this difficult accomplishment, within the

first decennium of this century. It is singular that only one blemish

is suggested by any of the contemporary critics in Dr Cook's verses,

viz. in the word xunon, for which this critic proposes to substitute

ooinon, to prevent, as he observes, the last syllable of ocheto from

being lengthened by the x. Such considerations as these are necessary

to the _trutinae castigatio_, before we can value Coleridge's place on

the scale of his own day; which day, _quoad hoc_, be it remembered,

was 1790.

As to French, Coleridge read it with too little freedom to find

pleasure in French literature. Accordingly, we never recollect his

referring for any purpose, either of argument or illustration, to a

French classic. Latin, from his regular scholastic training, naturally

he read with a scholar's fluency; and indeed, he read constantly in

authors, such as Petrarch, Erasmus, Calvin, &c., whom he could not

then have found in translations. But Coleridge had not cultivated an

acquaintance with the delicacies of classic Latinity. And it is

remarkable that Wordsworth, educated most negligently at Hawkshead

school, subsequently by reading the lyric poetry of Horace, simply for

his own delight as a student of composition, made himself a master of

Latinity in its most difficult form; whilst Coleridge, trained

regularly in a great Southern school, never carried his Latin to any

classical polish.

There is another accomplishment of Coleridge's, less broadly open to

the judgment of this generation, and not at all of the next--viz. his

splendid art of conversation, on which it will be interesting to say a

word. Ten years ago, when the music of this rare performance had not

yet ceased to vibrate in men's ears, what a sensation was gathering

amongst the educated classes on this particular subject! What a tumult

of anxiety prevailed to "hear Mr Coleridge"--or even to talk with a

man who _had_ heard him! Had he lived till this day, not Paganini

would have been so much sought after. That sensation is now decaying;

because a new generation has emerged during the ten years since his

death. But many still remain whose sympathy (whether of curiosity in

those who did _not_ know him, or of admiration in those who _did_)

still reflects as in a mirror the great stir upon this subject which

then was moving in the world. To these, if they should enquire for the

great distinguishing principle of Coleridge's conversation, we might

say that it was the power of vast combination "in linked sweetness

long drawn out." He gathered into focal concentration the largest body

of objects, _apparently_ disconnected, that any man ever yet, by any

magic, could assemble, or, _having_ assembled, could manage. His great

fault was, that, by not opening sufficient spaces for reply or

suggestion, or collateral notice, he not only narrowed his own field,

but he grievously injured the final impression. For when men's minds

are purely passive, when they are not allowed to re-act, then it is

that they collapse most, and that their sense of what is said must

ever be feeblest. Doubtless there must have been great conversational

masters elsewhere, and at many periods; but in this lay Coleridge's

characteristic advantage, that he was a great natural power, and also

a great artist. He was a power in the art, and he carried a new art

into the power.

But now, finally--having left ourselves little room for more--one or

two words on Coleridge as an opium-eater.

We have not often read a sentence falling from a wise man with

astonishment so profound, as that particular one in a letter of

Coleridge's to Mr Gillman, which speaks of the effort to wean

one's-self from opium as a trivial task. There are, we believe,

several such passages. But we refer to that one in particular which

assumes that a single "week" will suffice for the whole process of so

mighty a revolution. Is indeed leviathan _so_ tamed? In that case the

quarantine of the opium-eater might be finished within Coleridge's

time, and with Coleridge's romantic ease. But mark the contradictions

of this extraordinary man. Not long ago we were domesticated with a

venerable rustic, strongheaded, but incurably obstinate in his

prejudices, who treated the whole body of medical men as ignorant

pretenders, knowing absolutely nothing of the system which they

professed to superintend. This, you will remark, is no very singular

case. No; nor, as we believe, is the antagonist case of ascribing to

such men magical powers. Nor, what is worse still, the co-existence of

both cases in the same mind, as in fact happened here. For this same

obstinate friend of ours, who treated all medical pretensions as the

mere jest of the universe, every third day was exacting from his own

medical attendants some exquisite _tour-de-force_, as that they should

know or should do something, which, if they _had_ known or done, all

men would have suspected them reasonably of magic. He rated the whole

medical body as infants; and yet what he exacted from them every third

day as a matter of course, virtually presumed them to be the only

giants within the whole range of science. Parallel and equal is the

contradiction of Coleridge. He speaks of opium excess, his own excess,

we mean--the excess of twenty-five years--as a thing to be laid aside

easily and for ever within seven days; and yet, on the other hand, he

describes it pathetically, sometimes with a frantic pathos, as the

scourge, the curse, the one almighty blight which had desolated his

life.

This shocking contradiction we need not press. All readers will see

_that_. But some will ask--was Mr Coleridge right in either view?

Being so atrociously wrong in the first notion, (viz. that the opium

of twenty-five years was a thing easily to be forsworn,) where a child

could know that he was wrong, was he even altogether right, secondly,

in believing that his own life, root and branch, had been withered by

opium? For it will not follow, because, with a relation to happiness

and tranquillity, a man may have found opium his curse, that

therefore, as a creature of energies and great purposes, he must have

been the wreck which he seems to suppose. Opium gives and takes away.

It defeats the _steady_ habit of exertion, but it creates spasms of

irregular exertion; it ruins the natural power of life, but it

developes preternatural paroxysms of intermitting power.

Let us ask of any man who holds that not Coleridge himself but the

world, as interested in Coleridge's usefulness, has suffered by his

addiction to opium; whether he is aware of the way in which opium

affected Coleridge; and secondly, whether he is aware of the actual

contributions to literature--how large they were--which Coleridge made

_in spite_ of opium. All who were intimate with Coleridge must

remember the fits of genial animation which were created continually

in his manner and in his buoyancy of thought by a recent or by an

_extra_ dose of the omnipotent drug. A lady, who knew nothing

experimentally of opium, once told us, that she "could tell when Mr

Coleridge had taken too much opium by his shining countenance." She

was right; we know that mark of opium excesses well, and the cause of

it; or at least we believe the cause to lie in the quickening of the

insensible perspiration which accumulates and glistens on the face. Be

that as it may, a criterion it was that could not deceive us as to the

condition of Coleridge. And uniformly in that condition he made his

most effective intellectual displays. It is true that he might not be

happy under this fiery animation, and we fully believe that he was

not. Nobody is happy under laudanum except for a very short term of

years. But in what way did that operate upon his exertions as a

writer? We are of opinion that it killed Coleridge as a poet. "The

harp of Quantock" was silenced for ever by the torment of opium. But

proportionably it roused and stung by misery his metaphysical

instincts into more spasmodic life. Poetry can flourish only in the

atmosphere of happiness. But subtle and perplexed investigations of

difficult problems are amongst the commonest resources for beguiling

the sense of misery. And for this we have the direct authority of

Coleridge himself speculating on his own case. In the beautiful though

unequal ode entitled _Dejection_, stanza six, occurs the following

passage:

"For not to think of what I needs must feel,

But to be still and patient all I can;

_And haply by abstruse research to steal

From my own nature all the natural man_--

This was my sole resource, my only plan;

Till that, which suits a part, infects the whole,

And now is almost grown the habit of my soul."

Considering the exquisite quality of some poems which Coleridge has

composed, nobody can grieve (or _has_ grieved) more than ourselves, at

seeing so beautiful a fountain choked up with weeds. But had Coleridge

been a happier man, it is our fixed belief that we should have had far

less of his philosophy, and perhaps, but not certainly, might have had

more of his general literature. In the estimate of the public,

doubtless, _that_ will seem a bad exchange. Every man to his taste.

Meantime, what we wish to show is, that the loss was not absolute, but

merely relative.

It is urged, however, that, even on his philosophic speculations,

opium operated unfavourably in one respect, by often causing him to

leave them unfinished. This is true. Whenever Coleridge (being highly

charged, or saturated, with opium) had written with distempered

vigour upon any question, there occurred soon after a recoil of

intense disgust, not from his own paper only, but even from the

subject. All opium-eaters are tainted with the infirmity of leaving

works unfinished, and suffering reactions of disgust. But Coleridge

taxed himself with that infirmity in verse before he could at all have

commenced opium-eating. Besides, it is too much assumed by Coleridge

and by his biographer, that to leave off opium was of course to regain

juvenile health. But all opium-eaters make the mistake of supposing

every pain or irritation which they suffer to be the product of opium.

Whereas a wise man will say, suppose you _do_ leave off opium, that

will not deliver you from the load of years (say sixty-three) which

you carry on your back. Charles Lamb, another man of true genius, and

another head belonging to the Blackwood Gallery, made that mistake in

his _Confessions of a Drunkard_. "I looked back," says he, "to the

time when always, on waking in the morning, I had a song rising to my

lips." At present, it seems, being a drunkard, he has no such song.

Ay, dear Lamb, but note this, that the drunkard was fifty-six years

old, the songster was twenty-three. Take twenty-three from fifty-six,

and we have some reason to believe that thirty-three will remain;

which period of thirty-three years is a pretty good reason for not

singing in the morning, even if brandy has been out of the question.

It is singular, as respects Coleridge, that Mr Gillman never says one

word upon the event of the great Highgate experiment for leaving off

laudanum, though Coleridge came to Mr Gillman's for no other purpose;

and in a week, this vast creation of new earth, sea, and all that in

them is, was to have been accomplished. We _rayther_ think, as Bayley

junior observes, that the explosion must have hung fire. But _that_ is

a trifle. We have another pleasing hypothesis on the subject. Mr

Wordsworth, in his exquisite lines written on a fly-leaf of his own

_Castle of Indolence_, having described Coleridge as "a noticeable man

with large grey eyes," goes on to say, "He" (viz. Coleridge) "did that

other man entice" to view his imagery. Now we are sadly afraid that

"the noticeable man with large grey eyes" did entice "that other man,"

viz. Gillman, to commence opium-eating. This is droll; and it makes us

laugh horribly. Gillman should have reformed _him_; and lo! _he_

corrupts Gillman. S. T. Coleridge visited Highgate by way of being

converted from the heresy of opium; and the issue is--that, in two

months' time, various grave men, amongst whom our friend Gillman

marches first in great pomp, are found to have faces shining and

glorious as that of AEsculapius; a fact of which we have already

explained the secret meaning. And scandal says (but then what will not

scandal say?) that a hogshead of opium goes up daily through Highgate

tunnel. Surely one corroboration of our hypothesis may be found in the

fact, that Vol. I. of Gillman's Coleridge is forever to stand

unpropped by Vol. II. For we have already observed--that opium-eaters,

though good fellows upon the whole, never finish any thing.

What then? A man has a right never to finish any thing. Certainly he

has; and by Magna Charta. But he has no right, by Magna Charta or by

Parva Charta, to slander decent men, like ourselves and our friend the

author of the _Opium Confessions_. Here it is that our complaint

arises against Mr Gillman. If he has taken to opium-eating, can we

help _that_? If _his_ face shines, must our faces be blackened? He has

very improperly published some intemperate passages from Coleridge's

letters, which ought to have been considered confidential, unless

Coleridge had left them for publication, charging upon the author of

the _Opium Confessions_ a reckless disregard of the temptations which,

in that work, he was scattering abroad amongst men. Now this author is

connected with ourselves, and we cannot neglect his defence, unless in

the case that he undertakes it himself.

We complain, also, that Coleridge raises (and is backed by Mr Gillman

in raising) a distinction perfectly perplexing to us, between himself

and the author of the _Opium Confessions_ upon the question--Why they

severally began the practice of opium-eating? In himself, it seems,

this motive was to relieve pain, whereas the Confessor was

surreptitiously seeking for pleasure. Ay, indeed--where did he learn

_that_? We have no copy of the _Confessions_ here, so we cannot quote

chapter and verse; but we distinctly remember, that toothach is

recorded in that book as the particular occasion which first

introduced the author to the knowledge of opium. Whether afterwards,

having been thus initiated by the demon of pain, the opium confessor

did not apply powers thus discovered to purposes of mere pleasure, is

a question for himself; and the same question applies with the same

cogency to Coleridge. Coleridge began in rheumatic pains. What then?

That is no proof that he did not end in voluptuousness. For our parts,

we are slow to believe that ever any man did, or could, learn the

somewhat awful truth, that in a certain ruby-coloured elixir, there

lurked a divine power to chase away the genius of ennui, without

subsequently abusing this power. To taste but once from the tree of

knowledge, is fatal to the subsequent power of abstinence. True it is,

that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne, (for instance,

hospital patients,) who have not afterwards courted its powers as a

voluptuous stimulant; but that, be sure, has arisen from no abstinence

in _them_. There are, in fact, two classes of temperaments as to this

terrific drug--those which are, and those which are not, preconformed

to its power; those which genially expand to its temptations, and

those which frostily exclude them. Not in the energies of the will,

but in the qualities of the nervous organization, lies the dread

arbitration of--Fall or stand: doomed thou art to yield; or,

strengthened constitutionally, to resist. Most of those who have but a

low sense of the spells lying couchant in opium, have practically none

at all. For the initial fascination is for _them_ effectually defeated

by the sickness which nature has associated with the first stages of

opium-eating. But to that other class, whose nervous sensibilities

vibrate to their profoundest depths under the first touch of the

angelic poison, even as a lover's ear thrills on hearing unexpectedly

the voice of her whom he loves, opium is the Amreeta cup of beatitude.

You know the _Paradise Lost_? and you remember, from the eleventh

book, in its earlier part, that laudanum already existed in Eden--nay,

that it was used medicinally by an archangel; for, after Michael had

"purged with euphrasy and rue" the eyes of Adam, lest he should be

unequal to the mere _sight_ of the great visions about to unfold their

draperies before him, next he fortifies his fleshly spirits against

the _affliction_ of these visions, of which visions the first was

death. And how?

"He from the well of life three drops instill'd."

What was their operation?

"So deep the power of these ingredients pierced,

_Even to the inmost seat of mental sight_,

That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes

Sank down, and all his spirits became entranced.

But him the gentle angel by the hand

Soon raised"----

The second of these lines it is which betrays the presence of

laudanum. It is in the faculty of mental vision, it is in the

increased power of dealing with the shadowy and the dark, that the

characteristic virtue of opium lies. Now, in the original higher

sensibility is found some palliation for the _practice_ of

opium-eating; in the greater temptation is a greater excuse. And in

this faculty of self-revelation is found some palliation for

_reporting_ the case to the world, which both Coleridge and his

biographer have overlooked.

On all this, however, we need say no more; for we have just received a

note from the writer of the _Opium Confessions_, more learned than

ourselves in such mysteries, which promises us a sequel or _finale_ to

those Confessions. And this, which we have reason to think a record of

profound experiences, we shall probably publish next month.

_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._

Footnotes:

[1] Reynolds' Discourses, No. 16, _ad finem_.

[2] Macaulay.

[3] The finest design ever conceived by Michael Angelo was a cartoon

representing warriors bathing, and some buckling on their armour at

the sound of the trumpet, which summoned them to their standards in

the war between Pisa and Florence. It perished, however, in the

troubles of the latter city, but an engraved copy remains of part,

which justifies the eulogiums bestowed upon it.

[4] The state of Missouri as almost entirely peopled by emigration

from Kentucky.

[5] The Mississippi water, although slimy, becomes clear after it has

stood few hours, and is then excellent to drink.

[6] An excellent map of Montenegro has been made by an Austrian

officer of engineers, who resided there for the purpose--but I have

not now the advantage of referring to it. This country is divided into

twelve military departments; the natives reckon its extent about three

days' journey in the longest, by two in the widest part. Those, of

course, are foot or mule journeys.

[7] It was this man's father who, shortly before our arrival, having

been entrusted to receive from Lloyd's Company a packet containing a

large sum of money, converted the contents into two cannon-balls, and

forwarded them to the Vladika.

[8] The late Vladika received the honours of sanctity after his death.

[9] Meaning dressed in the European or Frank costume.

[10] The Vladika bears the Russian eagle rising from a crown.

[11] He passed but one night in Montenegro, at Cettigna, and returned

the following day to Cattaro.

[12] On the kalends of January the consuls-elect were formally

installed; and on this occasion a procession was made to the Capitol,

and sacrifice performed to Jupiter. The principal part of the

procession, of course, was the consuls in their curule chair, preceded

by the lictors bearing the _fasces_, or bundles of rods and axes.

[13] From _Janua_, a gate.

[14] The etymology of these old epithets, from _pateo_ (to open) and

_claudo_ (to shut,) is obvious enough.

[15] The _lar familiaris_, or domestic god of the family, who had an

altar in the inner part of the Roman house.

[16] The allusion here, and in the following lines, is to the

different _strenae_ or New-Year's gifts, which used to be given by the

Romans.

[17] The old Roman _as_, with the double head on one side and a ship

on the reverse, is well known among numismatists.

[18] The Tuscan flood is a common appellation for the Tiber, as rising

in Etruria, and forming the ancient boundary between that country and

Latium, opposite Rome.

[19] A silly etymology--from _lateo_, to lurk; mentioned also by

Virgil.--_AEn_. viii. 323.

[20] "The Romans gave the name of _Jani_ to arches like that of

Temple-Bar in London, under which people passed from one street into

another. They were always double; people entering by one and going out

by the other, every one keeping to the right. The temple or gateway

mentioned in this place, adjacent to the ox and the fish markets, was

built by Duilius."--KEIGHTLY.

[21] Although the allusion refers, in the verses, to Delphi, it was, I

think, at Dodona, in the earliest period of oracular influence, that

this belief prevailed.

[22] "And Mullah mine, whose waves whilome I taught to

weep."--SPENSER.

[23] _The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_. By JAMES GILLMAN. Vol. I,

London; 1838.

[24] "Jacob Boehmen." We ourselves had the honour of presenting to Mr

Coleridge Law's English version of Jacob--a set of huge quartos. Some

months afterwards we saw this work lying open, and one volume at least

overflowing, in parts, with the commentaries and the _corollaries_ of

Coleridge. Whither has this work, and so many others swathed about

with Coleridge's MS. notes, vanished from the world?

[25] Malthus would have rejoined by saying--that the flower-pot

limitation was the actual limitation of nature in our present

circumstances. In America it is otherwise, he would say; but England

_is_ the very flower-pot you suppose: she is a flower-pot which cannot

be multiplied, and cannot even be enlarged. Very well; so be it:

(Which we say in order to waive irrelevant disputes.) But then the

true inference will be--not that vegetable increase proceeds under a

different law from that which governs animal increase, but that,

through an accident of position, the experiment cannot be tried in

England. Surely the levers of Archimedes, with submission to Sir

Edward B. Lytton, were not the less levers because he wanted the

_locum standi_. It is proper, by the way, that we should inform the

reader of this generation where to look for Coleridge's skirmishings

with Malthus. They are to be found chiefly in the late Mr William

Hazlitt's work on that subject: a work which Coleridge so far claimed

as to assert that it had been substantially made up from his own

conversation.

[26] _Vide_, in particular, for the most exquisite specimen of

pig-headedness that the world can furnish, his perverse evidence on

the once famous case at the Warwick assizes, of Captain Donelan for

poisoning his brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Boughton.

[27] It was printed at the end of Aristotle's _Poetics_, which Dr Cook

edited.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics indicated by underscore _italics_.

The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these

letters have been replaced with transliterations.

The original text includes missing printing represented by

_______________ in this text version.

Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate

both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as

presented in the original text.

Misprints corrected:

"noice" corrected to "noise" (page 24)

"opportunites" corrected to "opportunities" (page 33)

"susspected" corrected to "suspected" (page 61)

"d'Artagnan" standardized to "D'Artagnan" (page 69)

"henceforch" corrected to "henceforth" (page 79)

"Chapter IV" corrected to "Chapter II" (page 102)

"drunkark" corrected to "drunkard" (page 131)