réason and expand the understandings of men; deep calleth unto deep; and if the teaching of Paul and John is now in a wonderful manner apprehended by peasants and children, who hear the Gospel habitually, St. Jerome's notions of Inspiration, if truly divine and evangelical, would by this time be generally apprehended by Christians in the same way, and by the wise and learned would be comprehended more intellectually and systematically. Whereas, can it be denied, that no consistent scheme of Inspiration has ever been gathered from the teaching of those ancient Fathers? They who believe that such a scheme is contained in their writings, explicitly or implicitly, will do well to unfold it. Merely to talk about such a thing in a style of indefinite grandeur is but to conjure up a mist, by the spell of solemn sounding words, to mock the eyes of men with a cloud castle for a season-a very little season it is during which any such piece of mist-magnificence can remain undispersed in times like the present, except for those who had rather gaze on painted vapors than on realities of a hue to which their eyes are unaccustomed.

I have not been able to obtain any exact account of all my Father's courses of lectures, given after his visit to Germany, but find, from letters and other sources of information, that he lectured in London, before going to Malta, in 1804; on his return from Malta, in 1807; again in 1808; in 1811; in 1814, in which year he also lectured at Bristol; in 1817; and, for the last time, I believe, in 1819. His early lectures at Bristol are mentioned in the biographical sketch.

The poetic or imitative art, an ancient critic has observed, must needs describe persons either better than they are, at the present time, or worse, or as they are exactly. The fact is, however, that in literary fiction individuals can seldom be exhibited exactly such as they are, the subtle interminglings of good and evil, the finely balanced qualities that exist in the actual characters of men, even those in whom the colors are deepest and the lines most strongly traced, being too fine and subtle for dramatic effect. Indeed it is scarcely possible to present a man as he truly is except in plain narrative; his mind can not be properly manifested save in and through the very events and circumstances which give utterance to his individual being and which his peculiar character helped to mould and produce. When taken out of these and placed in the alien framework of the novelist or dramatist it becomes another thing; the representation may convey truth of human nature in a broad way, and seem drawn to the life, if the writer have a lively wit, but as a portrait of a particular person it is often the more a falsehood the more natural it appears.

To poetic descriptions these remarks do not apply. They are, for

the most part, mere views of a character in its elevated and poetic aspects-tributes of admiration to its beautiful qualities. Such are the fine stanzas, already quoted, in which the poet Coleridge is described by the great Poet, his Friend: and such are some less known, composed by a poet of a later generation, who never saw my Father face to face. Of these the last four will serve for a conclusion to this sketch. I give them here for the sake of their poetic truth and the earnest sympathy they manifest with the studious poet-

Philosopher contemning wealth and death,

Yet docile, childlike full of life and love,

though they are not among the very finest parts of their author's thoughtful and beautiful poetry.

No loftier, purer soul than his hath ever
With we revolved the planetary page

(From infancy to age)

Of knowledge: sedulous and proud to give her

The whole of his great heart for her own sake;

For what she is; not what she does, or what can make.*

And mighty voices from afar came to him;
Converse of trumpets held by cloudy forms,
And speech of choral storms.

Spirits of night and noontide bent to woo him

He stood the while, lonely and desolate

As Adam when he ruled a world, yet found no mafe.

His loftiest Thoughts were but like palms uplifted;
Aspiring, yet in supplicating guise-

His sweetest songs were sighs.

Adown Lethean streams his spirit drifted,
Under Elysian shades from poppied bank
With Amaranths massed in dark luxuriance dank.

Coleridge, farewell! The great and grave transition
Which may not Priest or King or Conqueror spare,
And yet a Babe can bear,

Has come to thee. Through life a goodly vision
Was thine; and time it was thy rest to take.

Soft be the sound ordained thy sleep to break

When thou art waking, wake me, for thy Master's sake!†

* Here seems an allusion to an anti-utilitarian maxim of Bacon's, which is very expressive of my Father's turn of mind:-Et tamen quemadmodum luci magnam habemus gratiam, quod per eam vias inire, artes exercere, legere, nos invicem dignoscere possimus, et nihilominus ipsa visio lucis res præstantior est et pulchrior, quam multiplex ejus usus; ita eerte ipsa contemplatio rerum, prout sunt, sine superstitione aut impostura, errore aut confusione, in se ipsa magis digna est, quam universus inventorum fructus. Novum Organum, Part of Aph. cxxix.

+ From a volume containing The Search after Proserpine. Recollections of Greece and other Poems by Aubrey de Vere, author of The Fall of Rora.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX.

I.

THE following marginalia of Mr. Coleridge's, which were spoken of in a note to chap. ix. were transcribed for a new edition of the Biographia by Mr. C.'s late editor, with the passages referred to in the original German. These passages are here given upon the whole a little more at large, and in English, but with a clear understanding that entire justice can not in this way be done to the notions of Schelling, which, to be perfectly estimated, must be considered in the disquisitions to which they belong, as plants and flowers must be viewed in their native situations in order to be fully understood and admired.* S. C.

MS. note on Schelling's Philosoph. Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freyheit und die damit Zusammenhängenden Gegenstände. Phil. Schrift. p. 397.

There are indeed many just and excellent observations in this work of Schelling's, and yet even more than usual over-meaning or unmeaning quid pro quos-thing-phrases, such as "Licht," "Finsterniss," 66 Feuer," ""centre," ""circumference,' 99.66 ground," and the like-which seem to involve the dilemma, that either they are mere similes, where that which they are meant to illustrate has never been stated, or that they are degrees of a kind, which kind has not been defined. Hence Schelling seems to be looking objectively at one thing, and imagining himself thinking of another; and after all this mysticism, what is the result? Still the old questions return, and I find none but the old anThis ground to God's existence either lessens, or does not lessen, his power. In the first case it is, in effect, a co-existent God,— evil, because the ground of all evil;-in the second it leaves us as before. With that "before" my understanding is perfectly satisfied;

swers.

* I wish the reader to know before perusing these notes, on the authority of Archdeacon Hare, that "for the last twelve years Schelling has been strongly contending against Hegel, and has made, or at all events professes to make, the idea of personality and of a personal God the central principle of his system." Quoted from the Archdeacon's admirable defence of Tnther, Mission of the Comforter. Vol. ii. note 10, p. 800.