SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 179 



most exalted affection in " Genevieve : " that chaste, correct and 

 elevated sentiments characterize " Religious Musings : ^' that in- 

 tenseness of sublimity clothes his apostrophe to " Sovran Blanc," 

 and the " Cataracts of Chamonix :" — 



" To you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad ! " 



That extraordinary vigour and power of description glov^ in the 

 " Rime of the Ancient Mariner : " and that the chastest and 

 most lovely delicacy pervades that singular fragment " Christabel," 

 very far outbalancing its occasional quaintness, puerility and 

 (apparent) want of perspicuity. 



In his " Remorse," " Robespierre," &c., he has shown that he 

 was intimately acquainted with the working of Humanity's sternest 

 and most gentle feelings and that he was capable of pourtraying 

 them with fidelity. 



" Wallenstein" may be mentioned as a most effective and finely 

 executed, though free, translation from Schiller. 



But whatever the enemies of Coleridge may deny him, they must 

 admit that he did not interweave libertinism with the honied lies 

 of rhyme ; that he did not endeavour to make Vice alluring, by 

 throwing over her the vesture of modesty : and that he did not 

 seek to develope the minutiae of immorality, under the pretence 

 of unfolding, as a moral lesson, its subsequent punishment. 



If the use of the supernatural in poetry is to be considered as 

 metaphysics, and the user to be condemned accordingly, then, 

 with Coleridge, -ffischylus. Homer, Virgil, Milton, and many 

 others, who have been hitherto reputed to possess a knowledge 

 of the essentials of poetry, must be denounced. 



Among certain critics, it is the fashion to expose and dilate 

 upon an author's peculiarities or eccentricities, in order to fling 

 ridicule over his writings ; and to measure a man's literary ca- 

 pability by his political opinions. It is no very unusual matter to 

 find that the Whig Solomon of one Review is written down a 

 most brainless jackass by a contemporary Tory publication. Even 

 that magazine, which has assumed to itself the Queendom of 

 monthly periodicals, would consignevery whig writer in existence 

 to everlasting damnation : yet this is the age of liberality. 



Few felt the effects of this mean and reprobate system of judi- 

 cature more than Coleridge ; at least as to the opinion which has 

 been formed of his writings, by those who have not had the 

 honesty or hardihood to think for themselves. 



Some of those, who have been most caustically critical on 

 Coleridge, had the talent to mix up so much highly spiced mer- 



