time an undoubting Socinian; and the holders of that faith wish to see him an occupant of their pulpit, for preachers of their doctrines are quite too few, owing, as we are told we hope with a spice of exaggeration — to the fact that the greater number of the young men who commence the study of that form of doctrine, turn out infidels in the course of their studies. Coleridge canvasses and preaches, with rather indifferent success in both departments of exertion. The "Watchman" makes its appearance, but breaks down at the close of the tenth number. It does not pay expenses; and Mr. Cottle pockets the loss, without a murmur.

The glorious scheme of Pantisocracy does not in the meanwhile succeed well. The projectors of the new golden age have bickerings. Coleridge and Lovell meet without speaking like perfect strangers. Lovell thinks the marriage of his friend is hardly a prudent thing. Coleridge is outraged, and calls him a villain. Kind Mr. Cottle acts the part of peacemaker, and effects a reconciliation; and in good time too, for in a few days after, Lovell is attacked by a fever, and sets forth on the long voyage for the Silent Land. Mr. Southey also grows cold in the faith of Pantisocracy, and informs Coleridge that he has abandoned the scheme of American Colonization, and shall accompany his uncle to Portugal. Coleridge is wrathful, charges his associate with desertion, and they part in anger. When Southey returns, after an absence of a year, he makes overtures for a reconciliation. He sends to Coleridge a slip of paper upon which he has written in German, a line from Schiller: "Fiesco, Fiesco, thou leavest a void in my bosom, which the whole world, thrice-told, cannot replace." The overture is accepted, and a reconciliation takes place, much to the joy of their friend Cottle. But the old terms of cordial intimacy appear never to have been fully re-established; and each goes on in his own separate path of life.

Upon the morning of his embarkation, Southey was privately married to his Edith. The ever-helpful Cottle furnished the means for paying the wedding fees and purchasing the wedding-ring, and afterward received the young wife into his own loving household, as Southey long after, when he had won for himself a name and station, gratefully acknowledged. And the young wife, suspending her wedding-ring from her neck, parts at the church-door from her husband. This marriage under such untoward circumstances was no idle freak of passion. Southey knew that the delicate feelings of his beloved would shrink from receiving support from one not, legally her husband; and besides he was assured that in the event of his death while abroad, the prejudices of his kindred would yield to the anguish of affection, and they would love and cherish his widow on account of the dead husband. The union consummated under such ill auspices proved the joy of the poet's life. For more than forty years Edith proved herself a true helpmate through joy and through sorrow.

In these days another poet is added to the list of Mr. Cottle's friends. He is a tall, quiet, self-composed young man, with a countenance indicative of calm contemplation rather than of genius. He has already published a couple of small volumes of poetry; and is now meditating another volume of poems, and a tragedy of which Coleridge speaks in terms of enthusiastic admiration. It is wonderful; there are touches of humanity in it which he finds three or four times in Schiller, often in Shakespeare, but not elsewhere. He has, moreover, written twelve hundred lines of blank verse superior to anything in the language which at all resembles it. His name is Wordsworth.

Mr. Cottle desires to publish the "Lyrical Ballads" which Wordsworth has nearly ready for the press. If, his verses and epics notwithstanding, he is himself destitute of the true poetic fire, he can appreciate poetry; and he wisely thinks it will be no small credit to a provincial bookseller to introduce to the world three such poets as

Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth. The volume accordingly appears; but for any immediate honor which the author receives, he might as well have been a prophet. So slow is their sale that when, a few years after, the publisher upon retiring from business disposes of his copyrights, that of the "Ballads" is reckoned as of no value. Mr. Cottle thereupon requests the purchaser, the great London publisher, Longman, to give it to him, that he may present it to the author. "You are quite welcome to it," replies the famous bibliopole.

The name of Charles Lamb now begins to be spoken among the circle of the friends of Mr. Cottle, though he is personally known only to Coleridge; for Lamb is a clerk in London, and is tied to his daily task at the desk of the India House. He had been a schoolfellow of Coleridge, and reverences him almost to idolatry. Slight in form, awkward in demeanor, and afflicted with an impediment in his speech, none as yet recognize in him one of the most genial spirits and delicate humorists of the time.

Few who listened to the quaint conceits and delicate fancies of Lamb, knew that he was endowed with a moral heroism which enabled him cheerfully to fulfil the sternest duties ever imposed upon man; that he was daily enacting a part in one of the deepest tragedies of human life; and that over him and his brooded a more unrelenting fate than that which in the old Greek drama overhung the doomed house of Atreus. He was now just entering upon manhood, and his scanty salary as a junior clerk was the chief support of his family. His father had fallen into a state of almost utter imbecility; his mother was afflicted with a disease which deprived her of the use of her limbs; and his sister, ten years older than himself, in addition to daily attendance and nightly watching with their mother, endeavored to add to their resources by needlework. There was a hereditary taint of insanity in the family, which had not long before developed itself in Charles Lamb. To Coleridge he writes, at this time: I know not what suffering scenes you have gone through at Bristol. My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and began this, your very humble servant passed very agreeably in a mad-house. I am somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. But mad I was. It may convince you of my regard for you when I tell you that my head ran on you in my madness almost as much as on another person, who, I am inclined to think, was the more immediate cause of my temporary phrensy." A recurrence of these attacks was reasonably to have been anticipated. But any tendency to mental aberration was crushed by the weight of a great calamity which suddenly fell upon him, and by the pressure of the duties which it involved.

Those who in after years win their way to the friendship of Lamb are impressed by the anxious and yearning love which exists between him and his sister. They are all the world to each other. But it is fully a half century before any, save the most select few, know the nature of the mournful tie that binds them together. It was only when the death of the survivor removed the obstacles which tenderness for the living interposed, that the publication of Talfourd's "Final Memorials of Lamb" unvailed the mystery.

Mary Lamb, one of the gentlest and most loving souls that ever breathed, had more than once manifested the taint of insanity latent in her family. At the period of which we speak, in one of these paroxysms, induced by incessant toil and watchfulness, she had stabbed her own mother to the heart, and inflicted a wound upon her father. Lamb writes to Coleridge: "My poor, dear, dearest sister has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad-house, from whence I fear she must be

removed to a hospital. I am very composed and calm, and able to do the best that remains to do. Write me as religious a letter as possible, but no mention of what is gone and done with. With me the 'former things are passed away,' and I have some. thing more to do than to feel. You look after your own family. I have my reason and strength left me to take care of mine. I charge you don't think of coming to see me. Write. I will not see you if you come. God Almighty love you and all of us." And again: "God be praised, wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once been otherwise than collected and calm, even on that dreadful day; even in the midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquillity which bystanders may have construed into indifference -a tranquillity not of despair. I felt that I had something else to do than to regret. I closed not my eyes in sleep that night, but lay without terrors and without despair. I have lost no sleep since."

Need enough was there that Lamb should possess his soul in calmness, for everything rested upon him. So deeply had his father sunk into dotage that in a single day he had wholly forgotten what had occurred, and while the coroner's inquest was sitting, he was playing at cribbage in the next room. Lamb stands alone in the world to confront this terrible fate, and he does it unflinchingly. His dead are buried from his sight; his sister is removed to the asylum, where she soon recovers from the paroxysm of insanity, and rightly looks upon what has occurred as a calamity, not as a crime; but for her own and her father's sake she must not return home at present. From his scanty earnings the brother makes liberal provision for her wants, and himself toils at his desk till far into the night. When he comes home, faint and overwearied, he must play at cribbage with his father. "If you won't play with me, you might as well not come home at all," says the poor old man.

In the course of a few months, death relieves the father from his weary and unprofitable life, and Lamb resolves to bring his sister to his home. This wish meets with opposition. It is hinted that she should be kept in perpetual confinement, for no assurance can be afforded against the return of her insanity. But Lamb persists, and by entering into a solemn engagement to take her for life under his charge, succeeds in effecting her release. And so, at the age of twenty-two, with an income of barely a hundred pounds, hardly won at the desk, he binds upon himself the cross of daily martyrdom, crushes within his heart the germs of a first love, and sets out upon the long pilgrimage of life, a man foredoomed to lone estate. How nobly and unflinchingly this self-imposed task was fulfilled, and what a rich return of love was given back to him, the "Life of Lamb," as recorded by his loving biographer, will inform us. For almost half a century this unwearied care was continued; and as the fortunes of the brother improved, his first solicitude was to make provision that in the event of her surviving him, as she did for many years, her comfort should be secured. To the lasting honor of the East India Company, in whose service he was, be it recorded, that upon his death the pension which, according to their rules, would have been paid to his widow, had he left one, was continued to his sister.

The paroxysms of insanity of his sister returned through life with increasing frequency and duration. It is impossible to read with dry eyes, in his published letters, the touching allusions to her illness, and the fervent prayers for her recovery, when we know that these illnesses were returns of her insanity. The recurrences of these paroxysms were forewarned by certain premonitory symptoms, which grew to be too well known. When these symptoms made their appearance, the sister took her way, accompanied by her brother, to the mad-house, where she remained till the madness had passed, when she again returned to their home. More than once were they seen together on their way in this touching pilgrimage.

Coleridge at this period passed some time in London, and Lamb's chief delight was in his conversation; when he returns to the country the lonely clerk writes to him the most touching expressions of love and homage: "You are the only correspondent, and, I might add, the only friend I have in the world. I go nowhere, and have no acquaintance. Slow of speech and reserved of manners, no one seeks or cares for my society, and I am left alone." Poor Lamb!

By-and-by Coleridge proposes that a few poems which Lamb has written should be printed in a volume with his own, to be published by the kindly Cottle. This is acceded to, and Lamb inscribes his portion "with all a brother's fondness to Mary Ann Lamb, the Author's best Friend and Sister."

Let us now overleap a score of years, and look again upon the fair brotherhood of poets. Southey has long ago taken up his residence in his beautiful home at Keswick, where he labors as diligently and persistently with his pen as does any laborer in broad England with spade or hammer. Yet he is changed. The Robert Southey of the olden time, the man of high hopes and brilliant aspirations, is dead. The poetical fire has burnt itself out. The verse which he will yet write compares sadly with the productions of his youth: with "Joan of Arc" and "Madoc," with the wonderful creation of "Thalaba" and the gorgeous Oriental splendor of the "Curse of Kehama." Instead of these he produces the feeble "Vision of Judgment," an apotheosis of the third and most stupid of the Georges. The Pantisocrat has subsided into the strict Conservative and rigid Churchman. The author of "Wat Tyler" has grown into a firm upholder of the powers that be; and, for the rest, is one of the main writers for the Ultra-Tory "Quarterly Review."

Wordsworth has calmly and conscientiously fathomed his own powers; and from his still retreat among the lakes has sent forth to the world those poems which, falling at first unheeded, have now, like the winged seed, sprung up into so glorious a harvest of renown. The "Excursion" has just made its appearance. The "Edinburgh Review" has oracularly pronounced that it will never do. But the critic might as well attempt to crush the Alps by stamping his foot upon them, as to crush that poem by a sneer. Unmoved alike by calumny or neglect, the great philosophical poet goes serenely on his way, confident of future fame. He asks "fit audience though few" for his strains, and gains far more than he asks.

This year, 1816, marks the darkest period in the life of Coleridge. That wonderful genius which, in its youth, had created the "Ancient Mariner" and "Christabel," which in its glorious prime had given birth to the solemn "Ode to the Departing Year," and the sublime "Hymn in the Vale of Chamouny;" which had reproduced the great work of Schiller's manhood so grandly that we know not which most to admire, the original or the translation; which had uttered the serene and stately wisdom of the "Friend;" which had apparently swept the circle of metaphysical inquiry, and flung a bridge of light across the abysses of "fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute:" that genius which had done all this, and which had shown itself adequate to achievements far higher than any or all of these, was now suffering under disastrous eclipse. This year is the crisis and culminating point of Coleridge's opiumeating.

Biography has few pages so mournful as those which relate this passage in the life of Coleridge. Cottle, who has for years lost sight of his early friend, learned a couple of years ago that he would soon make his appearance at Bristol as an itinerant lecturer. When he comes, the fearful state to which he is reduced becomes apparent. Most earnestly does Cottle remonstrate with him, urging him to abandon the pernicious habit, and to return to that family whom for years he has utterly abandoned.

What a depth of tragedy lies in Coleridge's letters on this subject. "For ten years," he says, "the anguish of my spirit has been indescribable, the sense of my danger staring, but the consciousness of my guilt worse. I have prayed with drops of agony on my brow, trembling not only before the justice of my God, but even before the mercy of my Redeemer." Try to abstain from the use of the drug! He has tried, till life itself has seemed to him at peril. Could he but obtain a paltry sum of money to maintain him in a private mad-house, how gladly would he add external restraint to his shattered will, and then there might be hope. For his disorder is madness-a derangement not of the intellect, but of the will. You bid me rouse myself, he says; "Go bid a man paralytic in both arms to rub them briskly together, and that will cure him. 'Alas!' he would reply, 'that I cannot move my arms is my complaint and my misery.' May God bless you, and your unfortunate and most miserable S. T. Coleridge." Again: "You have no conception of the dreadful hell of my mind, and conscience, and body. You bid me to pray. Oh, I do pray to be able to pray." . . . "I have resolved to place myself in any situation in which I can remain for a month or two, as a child, wholly in the power of others; but alas, I have no money;" and then follow entreaties that this old schoolfellow and that other "affectionate friend to worthless me," would consult together on his behalf. Does not this exceed in tragic pathos the spectacle of Swift in his old age of madness? Swift was mad, but unconscious of his fate. Coleridge was a conscious, remorseful madman, praying for the restraint of an asylum.

Southey's narrower but well-balanced mind cannot comprehend this state of Coleridge. He is not a proper object for charitable aid; he can work, and find profitable employment, if he will. "I work, and by my daily labor win bread for myself and those dependent upon me, including even the wife and children of Coleridge, who has absolutely forsaken them. He promises, but does nothing. New friends may perhaps aid him with money, but those who know him well know his habits. All that he needs is to leave off opium, and do his duty." Yes! All that a man dying of consumption needs, is to breathe deeply and freely-all that a lunatic needs, is to act sanely! It is useless, and worse than useless, he thinks, to supply Coleridge with money to expend himself. But let him come to him and his own family at Keswick. "Here he ought to be. He knows in what manner he would be received: by his children with joy; by his wife not with tears, if she can control them-certainly not with reproaches; by myself only with encouragement."

In this sad wreck of the vital power of the will, it is not strange that the moral nature of Coleridge in a measure participated. While throwing himself on the charity of his old friends, professing, and doubtless feeling, the deepest anxiety to reform, he was secretly and by stealth procuring the drug, whose use was both consequence and cause of his ruin. What a mournful letter is that to a friend whom he had thus deceived: "Dear sir—for I am unworthy to call any good man friend- much less you, whose hospitality and love I have abused; accept, however, my entreaties for your forgiveness and for your prayers. Conceive a poor miserable wretch who for many years has been attempting to beat off pain by a constant recurrence to the vice that reproduces it. Conceive a spirit in hell, employed in tracing out for others the road to that heaven from which his crimes exclude him. In short, conceive whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hopeless, and you will form as tolerable a notion of my state as it is possible for any good man to have. . . . In the one crime of Opium what crime have I not made myself guilty of? Ingratitude to my Maker, and to my benefactors-injustice and unnatural cruelty to my poor children - self-contempt for my repeated promise-breach; nay, too often, actual falsehood."