from the country. Unless that child, over whose untimely and disastrous fate the poet's broken heart beat its last throbs, inherited some of the parent's spirit, his boundless imagination came not down to others of the name. Milton's son--John Milton, Junior--died in his infancy; but we dare say had he lived longer, he would have been literally "a mute, inglorious Milton." Certainly his early death is not to be deplored, if we may conjecture what his character would have been from that of Milton's daughters, who grew a-weary of their intellectual attendance upon the blind old bard, and longed for the humbler tasks of needle-work. It is an ugly page in female history that records how they turned away from their communion with the spirit of their sire. "The irksomeness of their employment could not be always concealed, but broke out more and more into expressions of uneasiness; so that at length they were all sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts of manufactures, that are proper for women to learn, particularly embroideries in gold or silver." (Life of Milton, by his nephew, Edward Philips.) The glory of Shakspeare's name began and ended with himself-his own unheritable self. We hope that the name is not desecrated by the wear of any modern mortal, for it has passed above the common uses of men's names. How anomalous would a " Mr. or Mrs. Shakspeare" sound, and what perfect contradictions in terms would "the little Shakspeares" be! When the Rev. Mr. Dyce, one of Shakspeare's biographers, visited Stratford-on-Avon, in 1820, for the purpose of gathering traditions, he found a woman upwards of eighty years of age, named Mary Hornby, who gained a livelihood by showing the house in which the bard was born. She claimed a descent from Shakspeare, her maiden name being Hart, and had evidently inherited a full share of his love of the drama. Her high ancestral feeling manifested itself by her saying, "I writes plays, sir," and producing a tragedy entitled, "The Battle of Waterloo." The old woman, who had better been at her prayers, was, we presume, well read in the three parts of Henry VI.; she had assuredly selected a famous theme for "Alarums --Enter English and French, fighting--Exeunt, fighting-Alarums." So far as syntax is concerned, she seems to have been what the French critics in their ignorance are so fond of calling her great progenitor,--" a wild, irregular genius." Such fallings off may well serve to rebuke man's pride. It was one of the trials of the calamitous life of the sainted Jeremy Taylor

This calamity is mentioned by Southey, in his notices of the early British poets, in a manner rather peculiar:-" When Tyrone's rebellion broke out, Spenser's house was burnt by the rebels, and in it his papers and one of his children."-Southey's "British Poets."

to witness the debased career of his own children,—who could have thought that the offspring of one whose spirit dwelt so habitually in the regions of an aspiring devotion would have declined to such degenerate ways,-one fell in a duel, staining his dying hand with the blood of his antagonist--the other, with a slower but as deep a perfidy, became a favourite companion of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. One more of these melancholy instances of degeneracy,-Izaak Walton, the great piscator, left an only son, bearing too his honoured name. He, an Izaak Walton, turned away from the banks of the sedgy Lea --became a traveled gentleman-studied the fine arts in Italy --returned to one of the English universities, and devoted himself to assisting in the compilation of an ecclesiastical history. There is no record of his having ever angled for a single fish. Another of old Izaak's, "honest Mr. Walton's," descendants, but fortunately, not bearing the name, which in this instance was spared the degradation, strayed still further from the harmless paths of his forefather, and acquired some notoriety among that craft who after a fashion are fishers of men, by the authorship of the work, doomed to most criminal associations, entitled, "Hawkins' Pleas of the Crown."

But we are loth to dwell longer on this sad topic. The frequent occurrences of such instances of degeneracy as we have adverted to, would almost justify a congratulation on those cases where the race of an illustrious individual has become extinct with him. There would seem to be a tendency in nature to transmit the weaknesses and infirmities rather than the nobler parts of our being. Of this there is so much hazard, that whenever great powers are blended with any defects, we are tempted to rejoice in our hearts on finding that the line of succession is broken. It would be difficult, for instance, to fancy any being more superlatively disagreeable than a young Dr. Johnson would in all probability have been; and surely, if nature had furnished such an individual, she would have been bound to supply a young Boswell to match him. It was wisely ordained, no doubt, that the late Miss Hannah More lived and died an "unwedded maiden old." We must pause a moment to make our acknowledgment to Mr. Wordsworth for that phrase; for, having a profound affection for several of the class in question, we have long felt the need of some term as a substitute for that other one which has become somewhat tinctured with reproach. The lovely piety which adorned the life of Hannah More might, in the second generation, have subsided into a residuum of mere starch; or if the aberration had been to the opposite extreme, and as wide as in the family of the good Jeremy Taylor, her descendant might have been an opera singer or a figurante.

We have been led into these trains of reflection by taking up the volume of Mr. Hartley Coleridge's poems. A literary effort by a son of Coleridge was calculated to attract attention. The influence exerted by the father's writings was deeper than that of most authors; the readers that were moved by him were strongly moved, and we could hardly believe that their influence would be inoperative on his own household. We had anticipations, therefore, of Hartley Coleridge before we knew of his literary pursuits. What he has so far accomplished may be considered chiefly as experiment for him, and promise to the world. But enough, we think, has been done to show that the Coleridge name has not yet reaped the whole harvest of its fame. Hartley Coleridge has appeared as the author of the volume of poetry which we purpose examining in this article, and of a volume of biography, "The Lives of Distinguished Northerns," a work of very considerable attractions, with a vein of pleasant writing on the surface, and of fine philosophy beneath. The compliment has also been paid of throwing upon him suspicions of the authorship of that extraordinary and delightful production "The Doctor," and although the proofs seem to have accumulated more upon Southey than upon any one else, we are very reluctant to give up a belief of ours that Hartley Coleridge has a hand in it, participating, probably, with the Laureate, and thus reviving that fine old custom of joint authorship which was of no uncommon occurrence in the early days of English literature.

Hartley Coleridge is, by a sort of necessity, a poet, and the lovers of his father's melodious imaginings had a right to indulge great hopes of him. His father's prayers and teachings marked him for the high converse of poesy; and the beautiful allusions to him, when yet an infant, have kept a place in the hearts of the admirers of the sire open for the son.

We feel

towards Hartley Coleridge as if we could say that we knew him when a child. What happier introduction could he have had than by the little incident narrated with such true parental as well as poetic feeling in Coleridge's exquisite poem "The Nightingale?"

"Farewell, O warbler! till to-morrow eve.

And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!
We have been loitering long and pleasantly,
And now for our dear homes. That strain again!
Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,
Who, capable of no articulate sound,
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
How he would place his hand beside his ear,
His little hand, the small forefinger up,
And bid us listen! And I deem it wise

To make him nature's playmate. He knows well

The evening star; and once, when he awoke
In most distressful mood (some inward pain

Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream)
I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,

And he beheld the moon, and, hushed at once,
Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,
While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped tears,
Did glitter in the yellow moonbeam! Well!—
It is a father's tale. But if that Heaven
Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up
Familiar with these songs, that with the night
He may associate joy!-Once more, farewell,
Sweet nightingale! Once more, my friends, farewell!"
And again, in the lines entitled "Frost at Midnight”–
"Dear babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image, in their bulk, both lakes and shores
nd mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shades and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore, all seasons shall be sweet to thee;
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon."

Such aspirations must have shed a prosperous influence upon the expanding spirit of him whose childhood was thus watched over. The interest of this home story is completed by the sweet response of the son to the aged parent, upon whose ear-soon after sealed by death-it may have sounded as an earnest of his early prayer. It is impossible not to be most favourably prepossessed by the dedication of these poems, not merely for the

admirable simplicity of the expression, but for the pure and right-hearted feeling which pervades it.

DEDICATORY SONNET,

"TO S. T. COLERIDGE.

"Father, and bard, revered! to whom I owe,
What'er it be, my little art of numbers,

Thou, in thy night-watch, o'er my cradled slumbers
Didst meditate the verse that lives to show,
(And long shall live, when we alike are low,)
Thy prayer how ardent, and thy hope how strong,
That I should learn of nature's self the song,
The lore which none but nature's pupils know.
"The prayer was heard: I 'wander'd, like a breeze,'
By mountain brooks and solitary meres,
And gather'd there the shapes and fantasies
Which, mix'd with passions of my sadder years,
Compose this book. If good therein there be,
That good, my sire, I dedicate to thee.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE."

The feeling with which the volume is offered to the public discovers the same good sense and feeling :

:-

"Of the verses contained in this volume, none, with a single exception, can claim the privilege of juvenile poems. I neither deprecate nor defy the censure of the critics. No man can know, of himself, whether he is, or is not, a poet. The thoughts, the feelings, the images, which are the material of poetry, are accessible to all who seek for them; but the power to express, combine, and modify-to make a truth of thought -to earn a sympathy for feeling-to convey an image to the inward eye, with all its influences and associations-can only approve itself by experiment; and the result of the experiment may not be known for years. Such an experiment I have ventured to try, and I wait the result with patience. Should it be favourable, the present volume will shortly be followed by another, in which, if no more be accomplished, a higher strain is certainly attempted."-Preface.

This is language very appropriate to the modesty of a first effusion; but the time will come, we are inclined to think, when Hartley Coleridge will feel that "a man can know of himself whether he is, or is not, a poet." When he rises, as we trust he will, into that promised higher strain, he must rely upon his own consciousness rather than upon the appreciations of others. The poet, who talks of high strains, must not wait for results; "soaring in the high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him," he must not look too often on the world that he leaves beneath him. But diffidence is a good fault at any time.

This volume of poems has given us assurance against a misgiving that has occasionally insinuated itself into our minds-

1 Milton.