us to assign to Mr. Coleridge a distinguished place among its professors. That verse is not poetry we have abundant evidence daily; and that poetry of a very high order may be written in prose is a proposition which it is scarcely needful to back by the authority of Wordsworth, or the example of Jeremy Taylor. The metrical arrangement of words, however, is so pleasurable in itself, and has so close an affinity with the other elements of poetical enjoyment, that it may fairly be required of the professed poet; and we place it first because it is the most mechanical, and stands at the bottom of an ascending scale of qualities. Whether in prose or verse, a sentence should be grammatically constructed and convey a distinct meaning to the understanding, but when it is also rendered harmonious to the ear, when it gratifies the musical sense, there is a clear gain of so much pleasure. The man who makes a flowing verse benefits the world by the aggregate of all the enjoyment which the organs of speech and hearing receive in repeating it, and in listening to its repetition. The poet must not stop here. He is but at the very threshold of the temple. The eye is a far nobler inlet of pleasure than the ear. He must be a painter as well as a musician. He must give us pictures. The actual sight of lovely forms and colouring is beyond his art; but he must stimulate us to their mental reproduction, and that in new and becoming combinations. His words should be such as are associated with the most common and most vivid recollections of those external objects whose presence most gratifies the senses. This end is not best gained by laboured and minute description. It rather requires a felicitous selection of expressions; such as we shall presently have occasion to exemplify. There is a yet higher source of pleasure in sympathy, emotion, passion. The poet's melody, like the musician's, should express, recall, or excite a sentiment. The poet's sketch, as well as the painter's, should touch the heart; penetrating thither through the imagination as that does through the sight. A great master of the art can play upon the nervous system, and produce and control its vibrations as easily as the well-practised performer can try the compass and power of a musical instrument, and with a produce of enjoyment, which seems a combination of animal and intellectual, not easily calculated. Then a poem, however short, should be a narrative, or a drama, and have something of that sort of interest, and consequently of pleasure, which we experience in being conducted through a train of events to a catastrophe, in which, whether joyous or mournful, the mind rests as in the close of that portion of Nature's annals. By dramatic we do not mean that the poet should have recourse to persona and dialogue; but he should at least employ those defined and contrasted feelings which will, in very narrow space, shadow forth the strivings of the external and literal drama; and his narrative will be not the less efficient for not being the current of outward circumstances, but that of the phantoms which are ever passing in long procession through the brain. And over the whole, to crown the work, there should be the charm of "divine philosophy;" truth should be there in the wildest fictions, and wisdom in the gayest sportings: the whole should be based upon a profound knowledge of human nature, its constitution and history, its strength and weaknesses, its capabilities and its destiny; and where there is this science of man in the poet's mind, its existence will be ever felt; it will breathe a pervading spirit of power into his compositions; of power which is yielded to with a sort of solemn gladness; which almost identifies poetical with religious inspiration, raises the pleasure of fanciful reveries into the delight of holy musings, and makes us worshippers in that "metropolitan temple" which God hath built and sanctified to himself "in the hearts of mighty poets." Our standard of excellence in poetry is, then, a very high one, and we have a corresponding estimate of its worth as a means of enjoyment. It is an essence distilled from the fine arts and liberal sciences; nectar for the gods. It tasks the senses, the fancy, the feelings, and the intellect, and employs the best powers of all in one rich ministry of pleasure. It must be by a rare felicity, that the requisite qualities for its production are found in a man; and when they are, we should make much of him he is a treasure to the world. He does that immediately which other benefactors of mankind only expect to accomplish in the remote consequences of their exertions. The legislator proposes to increase men's happiness, by his enactments, in the course of years. The philosopher will advance it by his speculations in the lapse of generations. The divine promises it in the world to come. But the poet seizes upon the soul at once and "laps it in Elysium." High as our standard is, Mr. Coleridge comes up to it; and we rejoice in the facilities afforded for substantiating his claims, by the collection of his compositions now before us. Such a collection was needful to make the full extent of his powers felt, and render us aware of the amount of enjoyment for which we are his debtors. How could he be rightly judged of, by the public generally, when they had only now and then a stray scrap, one forgotten before another came, "like angel visits, few and far between," too short and too distant to leave any distinct and permanent impression of the splendid visitant? But now it is incumbent on us to do him justice. We shall proceed to indicate in his works, following the order of their arrangement in these volumes, the several qualities of genuine and excellent poetry which have been just enumerated, as they may present themselves to notice. The first division consists of poems, which are only distinguished from the rest as Juvenile. The term very accurately characterizes them. They are the effusions of a mind yet unformed and immature; and shew that the author's powers were of slow development. Most of them might as well have been suppressed. At least we perceive but one good reason for their retention. The number of fragments in the collection, gives an impression of the author's indolence, which is greatly counteracted by a comparison of these poems with his subsequent productions. The mind which made such advances as that comparison indicates, could not be an indolent mind, to whatever infirmity of purpose it might sometimes be liable. The happier choice and greater command of words; the superior sweetness and richness of the melody of the versification; reflections more profound, and illustrations more vivid; combinations more striking and original; and a more continuous flow of true, and affecting, and picturesque, and powerful thought, are conclusive evidence that the mental faculties had been actively, and laboriously, and successfully exercised. Of whatever other purposes they might have failed, the important one of their own improvement had been achieved. This improvement is particularly apparent in the pictorial faculty. The imagery in the Juvenile poems is comparatively common-place. With some beautiful exceptions, of which we know not exactly how many, some we are aware, are the additions of a later period, it chiefly consists of those cold personifications of qualities which never live in the mind, nor become any more objects of interest, admiration, or affection, than so many wax-work figures. Thus; 'TOIL shall call the charmer HEALTH his bride, And he shews" Remorse" with "the poisoned arrow in his side," and "bids Vanity her filmy network spread," and the like. This automaton manufactory was fashionable when Mr. Coleridge was a reading boy, and these lay figures were thought bold creations by the generation of versifiers who preceded him. Happily he soon ascended into a purer region of fancy; and that not without leaving the print of his steps in the clay from which he sprung. The personifications in his Sonnet on the expatriation of Dr. Priestley, are as good as such things can be. The concluding reference to Priestley's philosophical discoveries, might suggest a noble group for the sculptor. 'Though rous'd by that dark Vizir RIOT rude Have driven our PRIESTLEY o'er the ocean swell; Starts with mild anger from the papal spell, p. 56. There are other instances in these Juvenile Poems, of the felicity with which our author could employ a kind of imagery which he had soon the sound judgment to discard: And the stern FATE transpierc'd with viewless dart Before dismissing the Juvenile Poems, it should be observed, that they contain both the principle and the practice of that truer poetical faith which is the great charm of the maturer productions. The old personifiers were quite mistaken in supposing they could make a living soul, by merely misusing a pronoun. When the poet would incorporate his thoughts so as to render them visible and tangible to the mind, he must make them assume and animate the forms of natural objects. Genius must breathe its breath of life into some one of the innumerable shapes of loveliness which are scattered around us in the material universe. It can give a soul better than it can mould a body. It can animate the human frame with fire from heaven, like Prometheus; but if, with Frankenstein, it pretends to create, it only produces a monster. It must identify itself with nature; and then it will behold there its own thoughts and emotions already embodied : For all that meets the bodily sense, I deem For infant minds And he who uses that alphabet in a poetical spirit, need no more be afraid of the imputation of common-place in the employment of the simplest objects, than in that of the letters by which every blockhead expresses his truisms or his blunders. How beautiful is the everlasting simile of the flower in the well-known Epitaph on an Infant, "Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade;" and yet more the as common streamlet in the last line of the religious musings; 'Till then I discipline my young noviciate thought As the great sun, when he his influence Sheds on the frost-bound waters-The glad stream The Sibylline leaves constitute the next portion of this publication, consisting of political, amatory, and meditative poems. Of the "Poems occasioned by political events or feelings connected with them," there are two which particularly deserve notice, the "Fears in Solitude," written in April 1798, and the celebrated "War Eclogue." The first of these is the most perfect specimen of Mr. Coleridge's manner and powers, at which we have yet arrived. It is a narrative of thought and emotion, as complete in its construction as ever epic was; the chain of association is unbroken, and every link is bright; the ideas follow in that natural succession in which they would present themselves to the mind of a man of genius, in a solitude at once profound and beautiful, with the love of his country and his kind strong at his heart, and intensely interested in the important movements of the busy world, yet who seeks not to guide the current of his feelings, but gives himself up to the influence of the scene around, and the spontaneous workings of the principle within. Accordingly it begins with mere description. A green and silent spot, amid the hills, A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place A few touches, few but graphic, conjure up before us the complete localities of this "quiet spirit-healing nook ;" and we are then introduced to one Who, in his youthful years Knew just so much of folly as had made |