tion. He thus speaks of it:-"I made the best use of my time and means, and there is therefore no period of my life on which I can look back with such unmingled satisfaction. After acquiring a tolerable sufficiency in the German language at Ratzeburg, which with my voyage and journey thither I have described in The Friend, I proceeded through Hanover to Gottingen.

"Here I regularly attended the lectures on physiology in the morning, and on natural history in the evening, under Blumenbach, a name as dear to every Englishman who has studied at that university, as it is venerable to men of science throughout Europe. Eickhorn's lectures on the New Testament were repeated to me from notes by a student from Ratzeburg, a young man of sound learning and indefatigable industry, who is now, I believe, a professor of the Oriental languages at Heidelberg. But my chief efforts were directed towards a grounded knowledge of the German language and literature. From professor Tychsen I received as many lessons in the Gothic of Ulphilas as sufficed to make me acquainted with its grammar, and the radical words of most frequent occurrence; and with the occasional assistance of the same philosophical linguist, I read through Ottfried's metrical paraphrase of the Gospel, and the most important remains of the Theotiscan, or the transitional state of the Teutonic language, from the Gothic to the old German of the Swabian period. Of this period (the polished dialect of which is analogous to that of our Chaucer, and which leaves the philosophic student in doubt, whether the language has not since then lost more in sweetness and flexibility, than it has gained in condensation and copiousness) I read with sedulous accuracy the Minnesinger (or singers of love, the Provençal poets of the Swabian court) and the Metrical Romances; and the

laboured through, sufficient specimens of the Master Singers, their degenerate successors, not however without occasional pleasure from the rude, yet interesting strains of Hans Sachs, the cobler of Nuremberg. Of this man's genius, five folio volumes with double columns are extant in print, and nearly an equal number in manuscript; yet the indefatigable bard takes care to inform his readers, that he never made a shoe the less, but had virtuously reared a large family by the labour of his hands.

In Pindar, Chaucer, Dante, Milton, &c. &c. we have instances of the close connection of poetic genius with the love of liberty and of genuine reformation. The moral sense at least will not be outraged, if I add to the list the name of this honest shoemaker (a trade, by the bye, remarkable for the production of philosophers and poets). His poem, entitled the Morning Star, was the very first publication that appeared in praise and support of Luther; and an excellent hymn of Hans Sachs, which has been deservedly translated into almost all the European languages, was commonly sung in the Protestant churches, whenever the heroic reformer visited them."Biog. Lit. vol. 1. p. 201.

On his return from Germany, in 1800, he went to reside at Keswick, in Cumberland; his friends Southey and Wordsworth having previously settled there. He had made a great addition to his stock of knowledge, and he seems to have spared no pains to store up what was either useful or speculative. He had become master of most of the early German writers, or rather of the state of early German literature. He dived deeply into the mystical stream of Teutonic philosophy. There the predilections of his earlier years, no doubt, came upon him in aid of his researches into a labyrinth, which no human

being can ever unravel; or which, were one found capable of so doing, would reveal a mighty nothing. Long, he says, while meditating in England, had his heart been with Paul and John, and his head with Spinoza. He then became convinced of the doctrine of St. Paul, and from an Anti-trinitarian became a believer in the Trinity, and in Christianity, as commonly received; or to use his own word, found a re-conversion." In this belief he continued the remainder of his life.

In the same year he translated, and published, both parts of Schiller's Wallenstein. A writer in the Quarterly Review says, "many beautiful passages of this translation are exclusively the property of the English poet, who used a MS. copy of the German text, before its publication by the author; and it is a curious anecdote in literature, that Schiller, in more instances than one, afterwards adopted the hints, and translated in turn the interpolations of his own translator. Hence it is also, that there are passages in the German editions of the present day, which are not found in the English version; they were in almost every case, the subsequent additions of the German poet." It has been pronounced, by an eminent critic, to be the best translation in the English language. It alone would have carried the name of Coleridge down to posterity. It is a disgrace to the age that it should have been twenty-eight years in reaching a second edition; but, it is beginning to be appreciated, this being the third edition since 1828.

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The next step in the life of our poet was, to undertake the political and literary departments of The Morning Post newspaper. Soon after my return from Germany, I was solicited to undertake the literary and political departments of The Morning Post; and I acceded to the proposal, on condition that the paper should thenceforward

be conducted on certain fixed principles, and that I should be neither obliged nor requested to deviate from them in favour of any party, or in any event. In consequence, that journal became, and for many years continued, antiministerial; indeed, yet with a very qualified approbation of the opposition, and with greater earnestness and zeal, both anti-jacobin and anti-Gallican. From the commencement of the Addington administration to the present day, whatever I have written in The Morning Post, or, after that paper was transferred to other proprietors, in The Courier, has been in defence or furtherance of the measures of government.

'Things of this nature scarce survive the night
That gives them birth: they perish in the light,
Cast by so far from after-life, that there

Can scarcely ought be said but that they were.'

Cartwright.

"Yet in these labours I employed, and, in the belief of partial friends, wasted the prime and manhood of my intellect. Most assuredly they added nothing to my fortune or reputation. The industry of the week supplied the necessities of the week. From government, or the friends of government, I not only never received remuneration, or ever expected it, but was never honoured with a single acknowledgment or expression of satisfaction. Yet the retrospect is far from painful, or matter of regret. I am not, indeed, silly enough to take as any thing more than a violent hyperbole of party debate Mr Fox's assertion, that the late war was a war produced by The Morning Post, or 1 should be proud to have the words inscribed upon my tomb. As little do I regard the circumstance, that I was a specified object of Buonaparte's resentment, during my residence in Italy, in consequence of those essays in The Morning Post, during the peace

of Amiens. Nor do I lay any greater weight on the confirming fact, that an order for my arrest was sent from Paris, from which danger I was rescued by the kindness of a noble Benedictine, and the gracious contrivance of that good old man the pope; for the late tyrant's vindictive appetite was omnivorous, and preyed equally on a Duc d'Enghien and the writer of a newspaper. But I do derive a gratification from the knowledge, that my essays contributed to introduce the practice of placing the questions and events of the day in a moral point of view; in giving a dignity to particular measures, by tracing their policy or impolicy to permanent principles, and an interest to principles by the application of them to individual measures."-Biog. Lit. vol. 1. p. 207.

In 1804 he went to Malta, on a visit to his friend Dr. Stoddart. Sir Alexander Ball was then governor there, and was greatly pleased with his conversation and manners. Being in want of a secretary, he appointed Coleridge to that office; but he was quite unfit for office business, and did not keep the situation more than nine months, although the salary was 800l. a-year. On his way home he passed through Italy, and visited Rome. In 1808 he delivered, at the Royal Institution, a course of Lectures on Poetry and the Fine Arts; for this he received a hundred guineas.

His next undertaking was The Friend, which was issued from Grasmere, in the winter of 1809; it went on poorly as a periodical, and was dropped at the twentyeighth number. Some years after it was re-written and published in three volumes. In 1816 he published Christabel; and The Statesman's Manual; or, the Bible the best Guide to political Skill and Foresight; a Lay Sermon. In 1817 appeared A Second Lay Sermon, addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes, on the existing