To my daughter-in-law, Mary Coleridge, the wife of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, whom I bless God that I have been permitted to see, and to have so seen as to esteem and love on my own judgment, and to be grateful for her on my own account, as well as in behalf of my dear son, I give the interleaved copy of The Friend, corrected by myself, and with sundry notes and additions in my own hand-writing, in trust for my grandson, Derwent Coleridge, that if it should please God to preserve his life, he may possess some memento of the paternal grandfather, who blesses him unseen, and fervently commends him to the great Father in heaven, "whose face the angels evermore behold."-Mat. xviii. 10.

And further, as a relief to my own feelings by the opportunity of mentioning their names, I request of my executor, that a small plain gold mourning ring, with my hair, may be presented to the following persons; namely: 1. To my oldest friend and ever-loved schoolfellow, Charles Lamb; and in the deep and almost life-long affection of which this is the slender record, to his equally beloved sister, Mary Lamb will know herself to be included. 2. To my old and very kind friend, Basil Montague, Esq. 3. To Thomas Poole, Esq., of NetherStowey. The dedicatory poem to my Juvenile Poems, and my Tears in Solitude, render it unnecessary to say more than that what I then, in my early manhood, thought and felt, I now, a grey-headed man, still think and feel 4. To Mr. Josiah Wade, whose zealous friendship and important services during my residences at Bristol I never have forgotten, or, while reason and memory remain, can forget. 5. To my filial friend, dear to me by a double bond in his father's right, and in his own, Launcelot Wade. 6. To Miss Sarah Hutchison.

To Robert Southey and to William Wordsworth my

children have a debt of gratitude and reverential affection on their own account; and the sentiments I have left on record in my Literary Life, and in my poems, and which are the convictions of the present moment, supersede the necessity of any other memorial of my regard and esteem.

There is one thing yet on my heart to say, as far as it may consist with entire submission to the Divine will, namely, that I have too little proposed to myself any temporal interests, either of fortune or literary reputation, and that the sole regret I now feel at the scantiness of my means, arises out of my inability to make such present provision for my dear Hartley, my first-born, as might set his feelings at ease and his mind at liberty from the depressing anxieties of to-day, and exempt him from the necessity of diverting the talents, with which it has pleased God to intrust him, to subjects of temporary interests, knowing that it is with him, as it ever has been with myself, that his powers, and the ability and dispositions to exert them, are greatest where the motives from without are least, or of least urgency. But with earnest prayer, and through faith in Jesus the Mediator, I commit him, with his dear brother and sister, to the care and providence of the Father in heaven: and affectionately leave this my iast injunction,-My dear children, love one another.

Lastly, with awe and thankfulness, I acknowledge, that from God, who has graciously endowed me, a creature of the dust, with the distinction, with the glorious capability of knowing him the Eternal, as the Author of my being, and of desiring and seeking Him, as its ultimate end, I have received all good, and good alone; yea, the evil from my own corrupt yet responsible will He hath converted into mercies, sanctifying them as instruments of fatherly chastisement for instruction, preven

tion, and restraint. Praise in the highest, and thanksgiving and adoring love, to the "I AM," with the coeternal word, and the spirit proceeding, one God from everlasting to everlasting! His staff and His rod alike comfort me.

The original revised, interlined, and corrected by his own hand. Signed by himself, and witnessed by Ann Gillman and Henry Langley Porter.

Grove, Highgate, July 2nd, 1830.

This is a codicil to my last will and testament.

S. T. COLERidge.

Most desirous to secure, as far as in me lies, for my dear son, Hartley Coleridge, the tranquillity indispensable to any continued and successful exertion of his literary talents, and which, from the like characters of our minds in this respect, I know to be especially requisite for his happiness, and persuaded that he will recognize in this provision that anxious affection by which it is dictated, I affix this codicil to my last will and testament.

And I hereby give and bequeath to Joseph Henry Green, Esq., and to James Gillman, Esq., and the survivor of them, and the executor and assigns of such survivor, the sum, whatever it may be, which in the will aforesaid I bequeathed to my son, Hartley Coleridge, after the decease of his mother, Sarah Coleridge, upon trust. And I hereby request them, the said Joseph Henry Green, Henry Nelson Coleridge, and James Gillman, Esqrs., to hold the sum accruing to Hartley Coleridge, from the equal devision of my total bequest between him, his brother Derwent, and his sister, Sara Coleridge, after their mother's decease, to dispose of the interest or

proceeds of the same portion to or for the use of my dear son, Hartly Coleridge, at such time or times, in such manner, and under such conditions, as they, the trustees above named, know to be my wish, and shall deem conducive to the attaiment of my object in adding this codicil; namely, the anxious wish to insure for my son the continued means of a home, in which I comprise board, lodging, and raiment; providing that nothing in this codicil shall be so interpreted, as to interfere with my son Hartley Coleridge's freedom of choice, respecting his place of residence, or with his power of disposing of his portion by will after his decease, according as his own judgment and affections may decide.

S. T. COLEridge.

2nd July, 1830.

Witnesses,-Ann Gillman,

James Gillman, jun.

CONTEMPORARY NOTICES OF THE WRITINGS AND CHARACTER OF COLERIDGE.

"Idolized by many, and used without scruple by more, the poet of Christabel and the Ancient Mariner is but little truly known in that common literary world, which, without the prerogative of conferring fame hereafter, can most surely give or prevent popularity for the present. In that circle he commonly passes for a man of genius, who has written some very beautiful verses, but whose original powers, whatever they may be, have been long since lost or confounded in the pursuit of metaphysic dreams. We ourselves venture to think very differently of Mr. Coleridge, both as a poet and a philosopher, al

though we are well enough aware that nothing that we can say, will, as matters now stand, much advance his chance of becoming a fashionable author. Indeed, as we rather believe, we should earn small thanks from him for our happiest exertions in such a cause, for certainly, of all the men of letters it has been our fortune to know, we never met any one who was so utterly regardless of the reputation of the mere author as Mr. Coleridge-one so lavish and indiscriminate in the exhibition of his own intellectual wealth before any and every person, no matter who-one so reckless who might reap where he had most prodigally sown and watered. 'God knows,' as we once heard him exclaim upon the subject of his unpublished system of philosophy-'God knows, I have no author's vanity about it. I should be absolutely glad if I could hear that the thing had been done before me.' It is somewhere told of Virgil, that he took more pleasure in the good verses of Varius and Horace than in his own. We would not answer for that; but the story has always occurred to us, when we have seen Mr. Coleridge criticising and amending the work of a contemporary author with much more zeal and hilarity than we ever perceived him to display about any thing of his own.

Perhaps our readers may have heard repeated a saying of Mr. Wordsworth, that many men of this age had done wonderful things, as Davy, Scott, Cuvier, &c. &c. ; but that Coleridge was the only wonderful man he ever knew. Something, of course, must be allowed in this, as in all other such cases for the antithesis; but we believe the fact really to be, that the greater part of those, who have occasionally visited Mr. Coleridge, have left him with a feeling akin to the judgment indicated in the above remark. They admire the man more than his works, or they forget the works in the absorbing impres

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