Chapter IV (2)

The third person raised to divine honours by Coleridge was Bowyer, the master of Christ's Hospital, London--a man whose name rises into the nostrils of all who knew him with the gracious odour of a tallow-chandler's melting-house upon melting day, and whose memory is embalmed in the hearty detestation of all his pupils. Coleridge describes this man as a profound critic. Our idea of him is different. We are of opinion that Bowyer was the greatest villain of the eighteenth century. We may be wrong; but we cannot be _far_ wrong. Talk of knouting indeed! which we did at the beginning of this paper in the mere playfulness of our hearts--and which the great master of the knout, Christopher, who visited men's trespasses like the Eumenides, never resorted to but in love for some great idea which had been outraged; why, this man knouted his way through life, from bloody youth up to truculent old age. Grim idol! whose altars reeked with children's blood, and whose dreadful eyes never smiled except as the stern goddess of the Thugs smiles, when the sound of human lamentations inhabits her ears. So much had the monster fed upon this great idea of "flogging," and transmuted it into the very nutriment of his heart, that he seems to have conceived the gigantic project of flogging all mankind; nay worse, for Mr Gillman, on Coleridge's authority, tells us (p. 24) the following anecdote:--

"'_Sirrah, I'll flog you_,' were words so familiar to him, that
on one occasion some _female_ friend of one of the boys," (who
had come on an errand of intercession,) "still lingering at the
door, after having been abruptly told to go, Bowyer
exclaimed--'Bring that woman here, and I'll flog her.'"

To this horrid incarnation of whips and scourges, Coleridge, in his _Biographia Literaria_, ascribes ideas upon criticism and taste, which every man will recognise as the intense peculiarities of Coleridge. Could these notions really have belonged to Bowyer, then how do we know but he wrote _The Ancient Mariner_? Yet, on consideration, no. For even Coleridge admitted that, spite of his fine theorizing upon composition, Mr Bowyer did not prosper in the practice. Of which he gave us this illustration; and as it is supposed to be the only specimen of the Bowyeriana which now survives in this sublunary world, we are glad to extend its glory. It is the most curious example extant of the melodious in sound:--

"'Twas thou that smooth'd'st the rough-rugg'd bed of pain."

"Smooth'd'st!" Would the teeth of a crocodile not splinter under that word? It seems to us as if Mr Bowyer's verses ought to be boiled before they can be read. And when he says, '_Twas thou_, what is the wretch talking to? Can he be apostrophising the knout? We very much fear it. If so then, you see (reader!) that, even when incapacitated by illness from operating, he still adores the image of his holy scourge, and invokes it as alone able to smooth "his rough-rugg'd bed." Oh, thou infernal Bowyer! upon whom even Trollope (_History of Christ's Hospital_) charges "a discipline _tinctured_ with more than due severity;"--can there be any partners found for thee in a quadrille, except Draco, the bloody lawgiver, Bishop Bonner, and Mrs Brownrigg?

The next pet was Sir Alexander Ball. Concerning Bowyer, Coleridge did not talk much, but chiefly wrote; concerning Bell, he did not write much, but chiefly talked. Concerning Ball, however, he both wrote and talked. It was in vain to muse upon any plan for having Ball blackballed, or for rebelling against Bell. Think of a man, who had fallen into one pit called Bell, secondly falling into another pit called Ball. This was too much. We were obliged to quote poetry against them:--

"Letters four do form his name;
He came by stealth and unlock'd my den;
And the nightmare I have felt since then
Of thrice three hundred thousand men."

Not that we insinuate any disrespect to Sir Alexander Ball. He was about the foremost, we believe, in all good qualities, amongst Nelson's admirable captains at the Nile. He commanded a seventy-four most effectually in that battle; he governed Malta as well as Sancho governed Barataria; and he was a true practical philosopher--as, indeed, was Sancho. But still, by all that we could ever learn, Sir Alexander had no taste for the abstract upon any subject; and would have read, as mere delirious wanderings, those philosophic opinions which Coleridge fastened like wings upon his respectable, but astounded, shoulders.

We really beg pardon for having laughed a little at these crazes of Coleridge. But laugh we did, of mere necessity, in those days, at Bell and Ball, whenever we did not groan. And, as the same precise alternative offered itself now, viz., that, in recalling the case, we must reverberate either the groaning or the laughter, we presumed the reader would vote for the last. Coleridge, we are well convinced, owed all these wandering and exaggerated estimates of men--these diseased impulses, that, like the _mirage_, showed lakes and fountains where in reality there were only arid deserts, to the derangements worked by opium. But now, for the sake of change, let us pass to another topic. Suppose we say a word or two on Coleridge's accomplishments as a scholar. We are not going to enter on so large a field as that of his scholarship in connexion with his philosophic labours, scholarship in the result; not this, but scholarship in the means and machinery, range of _verbal_ scholarship, is what we propose for a moment's review.

For instance, what sort of a German scholar was Coleridge? We dare say that, because in his version of the _Wallenstein_ there are some inaccuracies, those who may have noticed them will hold him cheap in this particular pretension. But, to a certain degree, they will be wrong. Coleridge was not _very_ accurate in any thing but in the use of logic. All his philological attainments were imperfect. He did not talk German; or so obscurely--and, if he attempted to speak fast, so erroneously--that in his second sentence, when conversing with a German lady of rank, he contrived to assure her that in his humble opinion she was a ----. Hard it is to fill up the hiatus decorously; but, in fact, the word very coarsely expressed that she was no better than she should be. Which reminds us of a parallel misadventure to a German, whose colloquial English had been equally neglected. Having obtained an interview with an English lady, he opened his business (whatever it might be) thus--"High-born madam, since your husband have kicked de bucket"---- "Sir!" interrupted the lady, astonished and displeased. "Oh, pardon!--nine, ten tousand pardon! Now, I make new beginning--quite oder beginning. Madam, since your husband have cut his stick"---- It may be supposed that this did not mend matters; and, reading that in the lady's countenance, the German drew out an octavo dictionary, and said, perspiring with shame at having a second time missed fire,--"Madam, since your husband have gone to kingdom come"---- This he said beseechingly; but the lady was past propitiation by this time, and rapidly moved towards the door. Things had now reached a crisis; and, if something were not done quickly, the game was up. Now, therefore, taking a last hurried look at his dictionary, the German flew after the lady, crying out in a voice of despair--"Madam, since your husband, your most respected husband, have hopped de twig"---- This was his sheet-anchor; and, as this also _came home_, of course the poor man was totally wrecked. It turned out that the dictionary he had used (Arnold's, we think,)--a work of a hundred years back, and, from mere ignorance, giving slang translations from Tom Brown, L'Estrange, and other jocular writers--had put down the verb _sterben_ (_to die_) with the following worshipful series of equivalents--1. To kick the bucket; 2. To cut one's stick; 3. To go to kingdom come; 4. To hop the twig.

But, though Coleridge did not pretend to any fluent command of conversational German, he read it with great ease. His knowledge of German literature was, indeed, too much limited by his rare opportunities for commanding any thing like a well-mounted library. And particularly it surprised us that Coleridge knew little or nothing of John Paul (Richter.) But his acquaintance with the German philosophic masters was extensive. And his valuation of many individual German words or phrases was delicate and sometimes profound.

As a Grecian, Coleridge must be estimated with a reference to the state and standard of Greek literature at that time and in this country. Porson had not yet raised our ideal. The earliest laurels of Coleridge were gathered, however, in that field. Yet no man will, at this day, pretend that the Greek of his prize ode is sufferable. Neither did Coleridge ever become an accurate Grecian in later times, when better models of scholarship, and better aids to scholarship, had begun to multiply. But still we must assert this point of superiority for Coleridge, that, whilst he never was what may be called a well-mounted scholar in any department of verbal scholarship, he yet displayed sometimes a brilliancy of conjectural sagacity, and a felicity of philosophic investigation, even in this path, such as better scholars do not often attain, and of a kind which cannot be learned from books. But, as respects his accuracy, again we must recall to the reader the state of Greek literature in England during Coleridge's youth; and, in all equity, as a means of placing Coleridge in the balances, specifically we must recall the state of Greek metrical composition at that period.

To measure the condition of Greek literature even in Cambridge, about the initial period of Coleridge, we need only look back to the several translations of Gray's _Elegy_ by three (if not four) of the reverend gentlemen at that time attached to Eton College. Mathias, no very great scholar himself in this particular field, made himself merry, in his _Pursuits of Literature_, with these Eton translations. In that he was right. But he was _not_ right in praising a contemporary translation by Cook, who (we believe) was the immediate predecessor of Porson in the Greek chair. As a specimen of this translation,[27] we cite one stanza; and we cannot be supposed to select unfairly, because it is the stanza which Mathias praises in extravagant terms. "Here," says he, "Gray, Cook, and nature, do seem to contend for the mastery." The English quatrain must be familiar to every body:--

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour;
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

And the following, we believe, though quoting from a thirty-three years' recollection of it, is the exact Greek version of Cook:--

Ha charis eugeneôn, charis ha basilêidos archas,
Dôra tuchês chruseês, Aphroditês kala ta dôra,
Panth' hama tauta tethnêke, kai eiden morsimon hamar;
Hêrôôn kle' olôle, kai ôcheto xunon es Adên.

Now really these verses, by force of a little mosaic tesselation from genuine Greek sources, pass fluently over the tongue; but can they be considered other than a _cento_? Swarms of English schoolboys, at this day, would not feel very proud to adopt them. In fact, we remember (at a period say twelve years later than this) some iambic verses, which were really composed by a boy, viz. son of Dr Prettyman, (afterwards Tomline,) bishop of Winchester, and, in earlier times, private tutor to Mr Pitt; they were published by Middleton, first bishop of Calcutta, in the preface to his work on the Greek article; and for racy idiomatic Greek, self-originated, and not a mere mocking-bird's iteration of alien notes, are so much superior to all the attempts of these sexagenarian doctors, as distinctly to mark the growth of a new era and a new generation in this difficult accomplishment, within the first decennium of this century. It is singular that only one blemish is suggested by any of the contemporary critics in Dr Cook's verses, viz. in the word xunon, for which this critic proposes to substitute ôoinon, to prevent, as he observes, the last syllable of ôcheto from being lengthened by the x. Such considerations as these are necessary to the _trutinæ castigatio_, before we can value Coleridge's place on the scale of his own day; which day, _quoad hoc_, be it remembered, was 1790.

As to French, Coleridge read it with too little freedom to find pleasure in French literature. Accordingly, we never recollect his referring for any purpose, either of argument or illustration, to a French classic. Latin, from his regular scholastic training, naturally he read with a scholar's fluency; and indeed, he read constantly in authors, such as Petrarch, Erasmus, Calvin, &c., whom he could not then have found in translations. But Coleridge had not cultivated an acquaintance with the delicacies of classic Latinity. And it is remarkable that Wordsworth, educated most negligently at Hawkshead school, subsequently by reading the lyric poetry of Horace, simply for his own delight as a student of composition, made himself a master of Latinity in its most difficult form; whilst Coleridge, trained regularly in a great Southern school, never carried his Latin to any classical polish.

There is another accomplishment of Coleridge's, less broadly open to the judgment of this generation, and not at all of the next--viz. his splendid art of conversation, on which it will be interesting to say a word. Ten years ago, when the music of this rare performance had not yet ceased to vibrate in men's ears, what a sensation was gathering amongst the educated classes on this particular subject! What a tumult of anxiety prevailed to "hear Mr Coleridge"--or even to talk with a man who _had_ heard him! Had he lived till this day, not Paganini would have been so much sought after. That sensation is now decaying; because a new generation has emerged during the ten years since his death. But many still remain whose sympathy (whether of curiosity in those who did _not_ know him, or of admiration in those who _did_) still reflects as in a mirror the great stir upon this subject which then was moving in the world. To these, if they should enquire for the great distinguishing principle of Coleridge's conversation, we might say that it was the power of vast combination "in linked sweetness long drawn out." He gathered into focal concentration the largest body of objects, _apparently_ disconnected, that any man ever yet, by any magic, could assemble, or, _having_ assembled, could manage. His great fault was, that, by not opening sufficient spaces for reply or suggestion, or collateral notice, he not only narrowed his own field, but he grievously injured the final impression. For when men's minds are purely passive, when they are not allowed to re-act, then it is that they collapse most, and that their sense of what is said must ever be feeblest. Doubtless there must have been great conversational masters elsewhere, and at many periods; but in this lay Coleridge's characteristic advantage, that he was a great natural power, and also a great artist. He was a power in the art, and he carried a new art into the power.

But now, finally--having left ourselves little room for more--one or two words on Coleridge as an opium-eater.

We have not often read a sentence falling from a wise man with astonishment so profound, as that particular one in a letter of Coleridge's to Mr Gillman, which speaks of the effort to wean one's-self from opium as a trivial task. There are, we believe, several such passages. But we refer to that one in particular which assumes that a single "week" will suffice for the whole process of so mighty a revolution. Is indeed leviathan _so_ tamed? In that case the quarantine of the opium-eater might be finished within Coleridge's time, and with Coleridge's romantic ease. But mark the contradictions of this extraordinary man. Not long ago we were domesticated with a venerable rustic, strongheaded, but incurably obstinate in his prejudices, who treated the whole body of medical men as ignorant pretenders, knowing absolutely nothing of the system which they professed to superintend. This, you will remark, is no very singular case. No; nor, as we believe, is the antagonist case of ascribing to such men magical powers. Nor, what is worse still, the co-existence of both cases in the same mind, as in fact happened here. For this same obstinate friend of ours, who treated all medical pretensions as the mere jest of the universe, every third day was exacting from his own medical attendants some exquisite _tour-de-force_, as that they should know or should do something, which, if they _had_ known or done, all men would have suspected them reasonably of magic. He rated the whole medical body as infants; and yet what he exacted from them every third day as a matter of course, virtually presumed them to be the only giants within the whole range of science. Parallel and equal is the contradiction of Coleridge. He speaks of opium excess, his own excess, we mean--the excess of twenty-five years--as a thing to be laid aside easily and for ever within seven days; and yet, on the other hand, he describes it pathetically, sometimes with a frantic pathos, as the scourge, the curse, the one almighty blight which had desolated his life.

This shocking contradiction we need not press. All readers will see _that_. But some will ask--was Mr Coleridge right in either view? Being so atrociously wrong in the first notion, (viz. that the opium of twenty-five years was a thing easily to be forsworn,) where a child could know that he was wrong, was he even altogether right, secondly, in believing that his own life, root and branch, had been withered by opium? For it will not follow, because, with a relation to happiness and tranquillity, a man may have found opium his curse, that therefore, as a creature of energies and great purposes, he must have been the wreck which he seems to suppose. Opium gives and takes away. It defeats the _steady_ habit of exertion, but it creates spasms of irregular exertion; it ruins the natural power of life, but it developes preternatural paroxysms of intermitting power.

Let us ask of any man who holds that not Coleridge himself but the world, as interested in Coleridge's usefulness, has suffered by his addiction to opium; whether he is aware of the way in which opium affected Coleridge; and secondly, whether he is aware of the actual contributions to literature--how large they were--which Coleridge made _in spite_ of opium. All who were intimate with Coleridge must remember the fits of genial animation which were created continually in his manner and in his buoyancy of thought by a recent or by an _extra_ dose of the omnipotent drug. A lady, who knew nothing experimentally of opium, once told us, that she "could tell when Mr Coleridge had taken too much opium by his shining countenance." She was right; we know that mark of opium excesses well, and the cause of it; or at least we believe the cause to lie in the quickening of the insensible perspiration which accumulates and glistens on the face. Be that as it may, a criterion it was that could not deceive us as to the condition of Coleridge. And uniformly in that condition he made his most effective intellectual displays. It is true that he might not be happy under this fiery animation, and we fully believe that he was not. Nobody is happy under laudanum except for a very short term of years. But in what way did that operate upon his exertions as a writer? We are of opinion that it killed Coleridge as a poet. "The harp of Quantock" was silenced for ever by the torment of opium. But proportionably it roused and stung by misery his metaphysical instincts into more spasmodic life. Poetry can flourish only in the atmosphere of happiness. But subtle and perplexed investigations of difficult problems are amongst the commonest resources for beguiling the sense of misery. And for this we have the direct authority of Coleridge himself speculating on his own case. In the beautiful though unequal ode entitled _Dejection_, stanza six, occurs the following passage:

"For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient all I can;
_And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man_--
This was my sole resource, my only plan;
Till that, which suits a part, infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul."

Considering the exquisite quality of some poems which Coleridge has composed, nobody can grieve (or _has_ grieved) more than ourselves, at seeing so beautiful a fountain choked up with weeds. But had Coleridge been a happier man, it is our fixed belief that we should have had far less of his philosophy, and perhaps, but not certainly, might have had more of his general literature. In the estimate of the public, doubtless, _that_ will seem a bad exchange. Every man to his taste. Meantime, what we wish to show is, that the loss was not absolute, but merely relative.

It is urged, however, that, even on his philosophic speculations, opium operated unfavourably in one respect, by often causing him to leave them unfinished. This is true. Whenever Coleridge (being highly charged, or saturated, with opium) had written with distempered vigour upon any question, there occurred soon after a recoil of intense disgust, not from his own paper only, but even from the subject. All opium-eaters are tainted with the infirmity of leaving works unfinished, and suffering reactions of disgust. But Coleridge taxed himself with that infirmity in verse before he could at all have commenced opium-eating. Besides, it is too much assumed by Coleridge and by his biographer, that to leave off opium was of course to regain juvenile health. But all opium-eaters make the mistake of supposing every pain or irritation which they suffer to be the product of opium. Whereas a wise man will say, suppose you _do_ leave off opium, that will not deliver you from the load of years (say sixty-three) which you carry on your back. Charles Lamb, another man of true genius, and another head belonging to the Blackwood Gallery, made that mistake in his _Confessions of a Drunkard_. "I looked back," says he, "to the time when always, on waking in the morning, I had a song rising to my lips." At present, it seems, being a drunkard, he has no such song. Ay, dear Lamb, but note this, that the drunkard was fifty-six years old, the songster was twenty-three. Take twenty-three from fifty-six, and we have some reason to believe that thirty-three will remain; which period of thirty-three years is a pretty good reason for not singing in the morning, even if brandy has been out of the question.

It is singular, as respects Coleridge, that Mr Gillman never says one word upon the event of the great Highgate experiment for leaving off laudanum, though Coleridge came to Mr Gillman's for no other purpose; and in a week, this vast creation of new earth, sea, and all that in them is, was to have been accomplished. We _rayther_ think, as Bayley junior observes, that the explosion must have hung fire. But _that_ is a trifle. We have another pleasing hypothesis on the subject. Mr Wordsworth, in his exquisite lines written on a fly-leaf of his own _Castle of Indolence_, having described Coleridge as "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," goes on to say, "He" (viz. Coleridge) "did that other man entice" to view his imagery. Now we are sadly afraid that "the noticeable man with large grey eyes" did entice "that other man," viz. Gillman, to commence opium-eating. This is droll; and it makes us laugh horribly. Gillman should have reformed _him_; and lo! _he_ corrupts Gillman. S. T. Coleridge visited Highgate by way of being converted from the heresy of opium; and the issue is--that, in two months' time, various grave men, amongst whom our friend Gillman marches first in great pomp, are found to have faces shining and glorious as that of Æsculapius; a fact of which we have already explained the secret meaning. And scandal says (but then what will not scandal say?) that a hogshead of opium goes up daily through Highgate tunnel. Surely one corroboration of our hypothesis may be found in the fact, that Vol. I. of Gillman's Coleridge is forever to stand unpropped by Vol. II. For we have already observed--that opium-eaters, though good fellows upon the whole, never finish any thing.

What then? A man has a right never to finish any thing. Certainly he has; and by Magna Charta. But he has no right, by Magna Charta or by Parva Charta, to slander decent men, like ourselves and our friend the author of the _Opium Confessions_. Here it is that our complaint arises against Mr Gillman. If he has taken to opium-eating, can we help _that_? If _his_ face shines, must our faces be blackened? He has very improperly published some intemperate passages from Coleridge's letters, which ought to have been considered confidential, unless Coleridge had left them for publication, charging upon the author of the _Opium Confessions_ a reckless disregard of the temptations which, in that work, he was scattering abroad amongst men. Now this author is connected with ourselves, and we cannot neglect his defence, unless in the case that he undertakes it himself.

We complain, also, that Coleridge raises (and is backed by Mr Gillman in raising) a distinction perfectly perplexing to us, between himself and the author of the _Opium Confessions_ upon the question--Why they severally began the practice of opium-eating? In himself, it seems, this motive was to relieve pain, whereas the Confessor was surreptitiously seeking for pleasure. Ay, indeed--where did he learn _that_? We have no copy of the _Confessions_ here, so we cannot quote chapter and verse; but we distinctly remember, that toothach is recorded in that book as the particular occasion which first introduced the author to the knowledge of opium. Whether afterwards, having been thus initiated by the demon of pain, the opium confessor did not apply powers thus discovered to purposes of mere pleasure, is a question for himself; and the same question applies with the same cogency to Coleridge. Coleridge began in rheumatic pains. What then? That is no proof that he did not end in voluptuousness. For our parts, we are slow to believe that ever any man did, or could, learn the somewhat awful truth, that in a certain ruby-coloured elixir, there lurked a divine power to chase away the genius of ennui, without subsequently abusing this power. To taste but once from the tree of knowledge, is fatal to the subsequent power of abstinence. True it is, that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne, (for instance, hospital patients,) who have not afterwards courted its powers as a voluptuous stimulant; but that, be sure, has arisen from no abstinence in _them_. There are, in fact, two classes of temperaments as to this terrific drug--those which are, and those which are not, preconformed to its power; those which genially expand to its temptations, and those which frostily exclude them. Not in the energies of the will, but in the qualities of the nervous organization, lies the dread arbitration of--Fall or stand: doomed thou art to yield; or, strengthened constitutionally, to resist. Most of those who have but a low sense of the spells lying couchant in opium, have practically none at all. For the initial fascination is for _them_ effectually defeated by the sickness which nature has associated with the first stages of opium-eating. But to that other class, whose nervous sensibilities vibrate to their profoundest depths under the first touch of the angelic poison, even as a lover's ear thrills on hearing unexpectedly the voice of her whom he loves, opium is the Amreeta cup of beatitude. You know the _Paradise Lost_? and you remember, from the eleventh book, in its earlier part, that laudanum already existed in Eden--nay, that it was used medicinally by an archangel; for, after Michael had "purged with euphrasy and rue" the eyes of Adam, lest he should be unequal to the mere _sight_ of the great visions about to unfold their draperies before him, next he fortifies his fleshly spirits against the _affliction_ of these visions, of which visions the first was death. And how?

"He from the well of life three drops instill'd."

What was their operation?

"So deep the power of these ingredients pierced,
_Even to the inmost seat of mental sight_,
That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes
Sank down, and all his spirits became entranced.
But him the gentle angel by the hand
Soon raised"----

The second of these lines it is which betrays the presence of laudanum. It is in the faculty of mental vision, it is in the increased power of dealing with the shadowy and the dark, that the characteristic virtue of opium lies. Now, in the original higher sensibility is found some palliation for the _practice_ of opium-eating; in the greater temptation is a greater excuse. And in this faculty of self-revelation is found some palliation for _reporting_ the case to the world, which both Coleridge and his biographer have overlooked.

On all this, however, we need say no more; for we have just received a note from the writer of the _Opium Confessions_, more learned than ourselves in such mysteries, which promises us a sequel or _finale_ to those Confessions. And this, which we have reason to think a record of profound experiences, we shall probably publish next month.

_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._

Footnotes:

[1] Reynolds' Discourses, No. 16, _ad finem_.

[2] Macaulay.

[3] The finest design ever conceived by Michael Angelo was a cartoon representing warriors bathing, and some buckling on their armour at the sound of the trumpet, which summoned them to their standards in the war between Pisa and Florence. It perished, however, in the troubles of the latter city, but an engraved copy remains of part, which justifies the eulogiums bestowed upon it.

[4] The state of Missouri as almost entirely peopled by emigration from Kentucky.

[5] The Mississippi water, although slimy, becomes clear after it has stood few hours, and is then excellent to drink.

[6] An excellent map of Montenegro has been made by an Austrian officer of engineers, who resided there for the purpose--but I have not now the advantage of referring to it. This country is divided into twelve military departments; the natives reckon its extent about three days' journey in the longest, by two in the widest part. Those, of course, are foot or mule journeys.

[7] It was this man's father who, shortly before our arrival, having been entrusted to receive from Lloyd's Company a packet containing a large sum of money, converted the contents into two cannon-balls, and forwarded them to the Vladika.

[8] The late Vladika received the honours of sanctity after his death.

[9] Meaning dressed in the European or Frank costume.

[10] The Vladika bears the Russian eagle rising from a crown.

[11] He passed but one night in Montenegro, at Cettigna, and returned the following day to Cattaro.

[12] On the kalends of January the consuls-elect were formally installed; and on this occasion a procession was made to the Capitol, and sacrifice performed to Jupiter. The principal part of the procession, of course, was the consuls in their curule chair, preceded by the lictors bearing the _fasces_, or bundles of rods and axes.

[13] From _Janua_, a gate.

[14] The etymology of these old epithets, from _pateo_ (to open) and _claudo_ (to shut,) is obvious enough.

[15] The _lar familiaris_, or domestic god of the family, who had an altar in the inner part of the Roman house.

[16] The allusion here, and in the following lines, is to the different _strenæ_ or New-Year's gifts, which used to be given by the Romans.

[17] The old Roman _as_, with the double head on one side and a ship on the reverse, is well known among numismatists.

[18] The Tuscan flood is a common appellation for the Tiber, as rising in Etruria, and forming the ancient boundary between that country and Latium, opposite Rome.

[19] A silly etymology--from _lateo_, to lurk; mentioned also by Virgil.--_Æn_. viii. 323.

[20] "The Romans gave the name of _Jani_ to arches like that of Temple-Bar in London, under which people passed from one street into another. They were always double; people entering by one and going out by the other, every one keeping to the right. The temple or gateway mentioned in this place, adjacent to the ox and the fish markets, was built by Duilius."--KEIGHTLY.

[21] Although the allusion refers, in the verses, to Delphi, it was, I think, at Dodona, in the earliest period of oracular influence, that this belief prevailed.

[22] "And Mullah mine, whose waves whilome I taught to weep."--SPENSER.

[23] _The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_. By JAMES GILLMAN. Vol. I, London; 1838.

[24] "Jacob Boehmen." We ourselves had the honour of presenting to Mr Coleridge Law's English version of Jacob--a set of huge quartos. Some months afterwards we saw this work lying open, and one volume at least overflowing, in parts, with the commentaries and the _corollaries_ of Coleridge. Whither has this work, and so many others swathed about with Coleridge's MS. notes, vanished from the world?

[25] Malthus would have rejoined by saying--that the flower-pot limitation was the actual limitation of nature in our present circumstances. In America it is otherwise, he would say; but England _is_ the very flower-pot you suppose: she is a flower-pot which cannot be multiplied, and cannot even be enlarged. Very well; so be it: (Which we say in order to waive irrelevant disputes.) But then the true inference will be--not that vegetable increase proceeds under a different law from that which governs animal increase, but that, through an accident of position, the experiment cannot be tried in England. Surely the levers of Archimedes, with submission to Sir Edward B. Lytton, were not the less levers because he wanted the _locum standi_. It is proper, by the way, that we should inform the reader of this generation where to look for Coleridge's skirmishings with Malthus. They are to be found chiefly in the late Mr William Hazlitt's work on that subject: a work which Coleridge so far claimed as to assert that it had been substantially made up from his own conversation.

[26] _Vide_, in particular, for the most exquisite specimen of pig-headedness that the world can furnish, his perverse evidence on the once famous case at the Warwick assizes, of Captain Donelan for poisoning his brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Boughton.

[27] It was printed at the end of Aristotle's _Poetics_, which Dr Cook edited.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics indicated by underscore _italics_.

The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these
letters have been replaced with transliterations.

The original text includes missing printing represented by
_______________ in this text version.

Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate
both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as
presented in the original text.

Misprints corrected:
"noice" corrected to "noise" (page 24)
"opportunites" corrected to "opportunities" (page 33)
"susspected" corrected to "suspected" (page 61)
"d'Artagnan" standardized to "D'Artagnan" (page 69)
"henceforch" corrected to "henceforth" (page 79)
"Chapter IV" corrected to "Chapter II" (page 102)
"drunkark" corrected to "drunkard" (page 131)