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Besides this essentially poetic gift of Imagination, I must not forget 

 to mention another characteristic of Coleridge's poetry. This, however, 

 has more to do with the form, than of the subject matter ; and therein, 

 too, we trace a vast influence which he has had upon the poetry of the 

 times that came after him. He restored music to metre. " In the hands 

 of that polished school," says Mr. Hort very happily, speaking of the 

 'Poets of Man,' "the art of versification consisted in cutting down the 

 pleasant hilly road into a level or decorously inclined railway, along 

 which the voice slid with gathering momentum to the grand shock at the 

 final goal." One great mechanical change made by Coleridge, was of 

 itself a thorough revolution : reckoning by accents instead of syllables. 

 By introducing at the same time new forms of metre, he became 

 indirectly the fashioner of the best known poetry of this century ; the 

 originator of some of the most charming compositions of Byron ; of all 

 those of Walter Scott. In the " Hints from Horace," Byron expressed 

 his preference for the octosyllabic metre : — 



"Tho' at first view, eight feet may seem in vain, 

 Formed, save in ode, to bear a serious strain ; 

 Yet Scott has shown our wondering isle of late, 

 This measure shirks not from a theme of weight ; 

 And, varied skilfully, surpasses far 

 Heroic rhyme, but most in love and war : 

 Yl'hoit flttcttiaiions, tender or sublime, 

 Are curbed too rnttck by long recurring rhyme." 



Lord Byron admits here that he borrowed from Scott this measure, as 

 Scott, in his turn, confessed to have derived it from the Ch7-istabel of 

 Coleridge. 



In 1798, after the pubHcation of his best poems, Coleridge was 

 rescued from much pecuniary embarrassment by the kindness of the two 

 celebrated potters, Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood. He had before 

 this, during his residence at Nether Stowey, been subsisting by writing 

 articles and verses for the London newspapers and magazines, till a 

 friend coming to live with him, relieved him in some degree ; but now 

 these generous benefactors wished the poet, whom they so much admired, 



