He

been taken to his height or age, he was asked his name. had previously determined to give one that was thoroughly Kamschatkian, but having noticed that morning, over a door in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or the Temple, the name of "Cumberbatch" (not Cumberback), he thought this word sufficiently outlandish, and replied "Silas Tomken Cumberbatch;" and such was the entry in the regimental book.

In one of the laborious duties of his new capacity-the drill, the poet so failed that the drill-sergeant, thought his professional character endangered; for, after using his utmost efforts to bring his raw recruit into something like training, he expressed the most serious fears, from his unconquerable awkwardness, that he should never be able to make a soldier of him.

Mr. C., it seemed, could not even rub down his own horse, which, however, it should be known, was rather a restive one. -This rubbing down of his horse was a constant source of annoyance to Mr. C., who thought the most rational way was to let the horse rub himself down, shaking himself clean, and so to shine in all his native beauty; but on this subject there were two opinions, and his that was to decide carried most weight. Mr. C. overcame this difficulty by bribing a young man of the regiment to perform the achievement for him, and that on very easy terms, namely, by writing him some love stanzas to send his sweetheart.

There was no man in the regiment who met with so many falls from his horse as Silas Tomken Cumberbatch. He often calculated, with so little precision, his due equilibrium, that, in mounting on one side-perhaps the wrong stirrup-the probability was, especially if his horse moved a little, that he lost his balance, and if he did not roll back on this side, came down ponderously on the other. Then the laugh spread amongst the men-"Silas is off again." Mr. C. had often heard of campaigns, but he never before had so correct an idea of hard service.

Some mitigation was now in store for Coleridge, arising out of a whimsical circumstance. He had been placed, as a sentinel, at the door of a ball-room, or some public place of resort, when two of his officers, passing in, stopped for a moment near him, talking about Euripides, two lines from whom one of them repeated.

At the sound of Greek, the sentinel instinctively turned

66

his ear, when he said, with all deference, touching his lofty сар, "I hope your honour will excuse me, but the lines you have repeated are not quite accurately cited. These are the lines," when he gave them in their more correct form. Besides," said Mr. C., "instead of being in Euripides, the lines will be found in the second antistrophe of the Edipus of Sophocles." "Why, man, who are you?" said the officer; "old Faustus ground young again?" "I am your honour's humble sentinel," said Coleridge, again touching his cap.

The officers hastened into the room, and inquired of one and another about that "odd fish" at the door, when one of the mess- -it is believed the surgeon-told them that he had his eye upon him, but he could neither tell where he came from, nor anything about his family of the Cumberbatches; "but," continued he, “instead of his being an 'odd fish,' I suspect he must be a 'stray bird' from the Oxford or Cambridge aviary." They learned also the laughable fact, that he was bruised all over by frequent falls from his horse. "Ah!" said one of the officers, "we have had, at different times, two or three of these 'university birds' in our regiment."

This suspicion was confirmed by one of the officers, Mr. Nathaniel Ogle, who observed that he had noticed a line of Latin chalked under one of the men's saddles, and was told, on inquiring whose saddle it was, that it was Cumberbatch's.

The officers now kindly took pity on the "poor scholar," and had Coleridge removed to the medical department, where he was appointed assistant in the regimental hospital. This change was a vast improvement in his condition; and happy was the day also, on which it took place, for the sake of the sick patients; for Silas Tomken Cumberbatch's amusing stories, they said, did them more good than all the doctor's physic.

In one of these interesting conversations, when Mr. C. was sitting on the foot of the bed, surrounded by his gaping comrades, the door was suddenly burst open, and in came two or three gentlemen, his friends: looking some time in vain, amid the uniform dresses for their man, at length they pitched on Mr. C., and, taking him by the arm, led him in silence out of the room. As the supposed deserter, passed the threshold, one of the astonished auditors uttered, with a sigh, "Poor Silas! I wish they may let him off with a cool five

hundred." Coleridge's ransom was soon joyfully adjusted by his friends, and he was soldier no more.

THE POETS IN A PUZZLE.

Cottle, in his Life of Coleridge, relates the following amusing incident:" I led my horse to the stable, where a sad perplexity arose. I removed the harness without difficulty; but after many strenuous attempts I could not remove the collar. In despair, I called for assistance, when Mr. Wordsworth brought his ingenuity into exercise; but after several unsuccessful efforts, he relinquished the achievement as a thing altogether impracticable. Mr. Coleridge now tried his hand, but showed no more skill than his predecessors; for, after twisting the poor horse's neck almost to strangulation and the great danger of his eyes, he gave up the useless task, pronouncing that the horse's head must have grown since the collar was put on; for he said, 'it was a downright impossibility for such a huge os frontis to pass through so narrow an aperture." Just at this instant, a servant-girl came near, and understanding the cause of our consternation, Ha! master,' said she, 'you don't go about the work in the right way. You should do like this,' when, turning the collar upside down, she slipped it off in a moment, to our great humiliation and wonderment, each satisfied afresh that there were heights of knowledge in the world to which we had not yet attained."

6

MEMORABILIA OF COLERIDGE.

He said of an old cathedral, that it always appeared to him. like a petrified religion.

Hearing some one observe that the religious sentiments introduced in Sheridan's Pizarro met with great applause on the stage, he replied that he thought this a sure sign of the decay of religion; for when people began to patronise it as an amiable theatrical sentiment, they had no longer any real faith in it.

He said of a Mr. H—, a friend of Fox's, who always put himself forward to interpret the great orator's sentiments, and almost took the words out of his mouth, that it put him in mind of the steeple of St. Martin, on Ludgate-hill, which is

constantly getting in the way when you wish to see the dome of St. Paul's.

He observed of some friend, that he had thought himself out of a handsome face, and into a fine one.

He said of the French, that they received and gave out sensations too quickly, to be a people of imagination. He thought Moliere's father must have been an Englishman.

According to Mr. Coleridge, common rhetoricians argued by metaphors; Burke reasoned in them.

He considered acuteness as a shop-boy quality compared with subtlety of mind; and quoted Paine as an example of the first, Berkeley as the perfection of the last.

He extolled Bishop Butler's Sermons at the Rolls' Chapel as full of thought and sound views of philosophy; and conceived that he had proved the love of piety and virtue to be as natural to the mind of man as the delight it receives from the colour of a rose or the smell of a lily. He spoke of the Analysis as theological special-pleading.

He had no opinion of Hume, and very idly disputed his originality. He said the whole of his argument on miracles was to be found stated (as an objection) somewhere in Barrow. He said Thomson was a true poet, but an indolent one. He seldom wrote a good line, but he rewarded resolution" by following it up with a bad one. Cowper he regarded as the reformer of the Della Cruscan style in poetry, and the founder of the modern school.

Being asked which he thought the greater man, Milton or Shakspeare, he replied that he could hardly venture to pronounce an opinion-that Shakspeare appeared to him to have the strength, the stature of his rival, with infinitely more agility; but that he could not bring himself after all to look upon Shakspeare as anything more than a beardless stripling, and that if he had ever arrived at man's estate, he would not have been a man but a monster of intellect.

Being told that Mrs. Woolstonecroft exerted a very great ascendancy over the mind of her husband, he said-" It was always the case: people of imagination naturally took the lead of people of mere understanding and acquirement."

He spoke of Mackintosh as deficient in original resources : he was neither the great merchant nor manufacturer of intellectual riches; but the ready warehouseman, who had a large assortment of goods, not properly his own, and who knew

where to lay his hand on whatever he wanted. An argument which he had sustained for three hours together with another erudite person on some grand question of philosophy, being boasted of in Coleridge's hearing as a mighty achievement, the latter bluntly answered, "Had there been a man of genius among you, he would have settled the point in five minutes." He used to speak with some drollery and unction of his meeting in his tour in Germany with a Lutheran clergyman, who expressed a great curiosity about the fate of Dr. Dodd in a Latin gibberish which he could not at first understand. "Doctorem Tott, Doctorem Tott! Infelix homo, collo suspensus!"—he called out in an agony of anxiety, fitting the action to the word, and the idea of the reverend divine just then occurring to Mr. Coleridge's imagination. The Germans have a strange superstition that Dr. Dodd is still wandering in disguise in the Hartz forest in Germany; and his Prison Thoughts is a favourite book with the initiated.

He once dined in company with a person who listened to him, and said nothing for a long time; but he nodded his head, and Coleridge thought him intelligent. At length, towards the end of the dinner, some apple-dumplings were placed on the table, and the listener had no sooner seen them than he burst forth "Them's the jockeys for me! Coleridge adds, "I wish Spurzheim could have examined the follow's head."

He was (as we have said) a remarkably awkward horseman. On a certain occasion he was riding along the turnpike road, in the county of Durham, when a wag, approaching him, noticed his peculiarity, and, quite mistaking his man, thought the rider a fine subject for a little sport; when, as he drew near, he thus accosted him: "I say, young man, did you meet a tailor on the road?" "Yes," replied Coleridge, "I did; and he told me if I went a little further, I should meet a goose!"

Thelwall and Coleridge were sitting once in a beautiful recess in the Quantock hills, when the latter said: "Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in! "Nay, citizen. Samuel," replied he, "it is rather a place to make a man forget that there is any necessity for treason!

"Alas!" says Coleridge, speaking of the difficulty of fixing the attention of men on the world within them, "the largest part of mankind are nowhere greater strangers than at home."