ing thus, we think we have acted rightly. For why should a man, who has been more highly gifted than his fellows, be therefore held less amenable than they to the laws which ought to bind all human beings, and regulate their relations and their dealings with one another? It is high time that genius should cease to be

scattering well.

The sun clothes thee

In rays of glory;

He paints with the colours of the heaven

ly bow

from the plain path of rectitude, or be held up as a precedent which the leading men of future generations may avail themselves of, should they be inclined to depart from the strict standards of propriety and truth.

The wavering clouds of the dust-flood." Having alluded to the Quarterly Review, we shall here take the liberty of extracting part of a sentence, from that very able work, touching another of Coleridge's coincidences:" We cannot" (says the Quarterly, vol. lii. p. 21)-" we cannot miss this opportunity of mentioning the curious fact, that, long before Goethe's Faust had appeared in a complete state-indeed before Mr Coleridge had ever seen any part of it he had planned a work upon the same, or what he takes to be the same, idea." This is certainly a curious fact; but we do not think our readers will consider it so very curious, now that a good deal of light has been thrown upon the nature of his other "coincidences."

We have now done with our subject. We have set forth and argued the case of Coleridge's plagiarisms, precisely as we should have done that of any other person who had carried them on to the same extent. By this we mean to say, that we have accorded to him on the plea of peculiar habits, or peculiar intellectual confor mation-no privilege, or immunity, or indulgence, which we would not equally have accorded to any plagiarist of the most methodical ways and of the most common clay. And in act

* "Unsterblicher Jüngling! Du strömest hervor

Aus der Felsenkluft.

Kein Sterblicher sah

Die Wiege des Starken:

Es hörte kein Ohr,

Das Lallen des Edlen im sprudelnden
Quell.

That Coleridge was tempted into this course by vanity, by the paltry desire of applause, or by any direct intention to defraud others of their due, we do not believe: this never was believed, and never will be believed. But still he was seduced into it-God knows how he did defraud others of their due, and therefore we have considered it necessary to expose his proceedings, and to vindicate the rights of his victims. Perhaps we might have dwelt more than we have done upon what many may consider the extenuating circumstances of his case-we mean his moral and intellectual conformation, originally very peculiar, and further modified by the effects of immoderate opium-taking. But this would only take us out of one painful subject into another still more distressing. We therefore say no more. Our purpose will have been answered, should any future author who may covet his neighbour's Pegasus or prose-nag, and conceive that the high authority of Coleridge may, to a certain extent, justify him in making free with them, be deterred from doing so by the example we have now put forth in terrorem. Let all men know and consider that plagiarism, like murder, sooner or later will out.

Dich kleidet die Sonne

In Strahlen des Ruhmes!

Sie mahlet mit Farben des himmlischen Bogens

Die schwebenden Wolken der staüdenden Fluth."

LEIGH HUNT is now a successful dramatist, and we rejoice in his success as cordially as his best friends can do for he deserves it. We are about to praise, but not to flatter him; and, when we think we see occasion, shall be free in our strictures, knowing that he has an independent spirit, and that, like all men of real genius, he would prefer from a disinterested critic his sincere opinion, formed in a genial spirit, to more extravagant encomiums not bearing the unequivocal impress of the love of truth. Nor with the congratulatory acclamations of sympathizing gods and men yet ringing in his ears, will he be regardless of a voice from far-off Scotland. We seldom go to the theatre now-a-days; but when Murray brings out on the Edinburgh stage The Legend of Florence, Christopher North will be in No. Three, topher right-hand side, with his court-crutch -crimson velvet and gold and the house, at each soul-stirring or soul. subduing hit, will time its thunders to the beck of THE BALD-HEAD.

"A word," says Mr Hunt, in his pleasant preface, "respecting the story of my play. When I resided near Florence, some years ago, I was in the habit of going through a streetin that city called the Street of Death,' (Via della Morte,)-a name given it from the circumstance of a lady's having passed through it at night-time in her graveclothes, who had been buried during a trance. The story, which in its mortal particulars resembles several of the like sort that are popular in other countries, and which indeed are no less probable than romantic, has been variously told by Italian authors, and I have taken my own liberties with it accordingly." No less probable than romantic? What! being buried alive, and undergoing resurrection! Even so. For in that coun

try the corpse is not coffined-we forget that dreadful word-and there is room for re-awakening life to breathe freely in the vault of death. But is such a strange event a fit story for a play? Yes; every popular legend is so, with hardly any exception; and

that this one is peculiarly so, is proved by the play being throughout most interesting, and the pathos towards the close profound. There needs no other proof of the fitness of the story for tragedy, than that it here affects us with terror and pity-but pity predominates, that other passion is here transient; while there is no end to our tears but "in thoughts that lie too deep" for such effusion, and that finally settle down into assured peace.

How beautiful a picture!

Colonna. I heard, as I came in, one who had seen her

Laid on the bier, say that she looks most heavenly.

Da Riva. I saw her lately, as you'll see her now,

Lying but newly dead, her blind sweet looks Border'd with lilies, which her pretty maiden, 'Twixt tears and kisses, put about her hair To show her spotless life, and that wrong

man

Dared not forbid, for very piteous truth;
And as she lay thus, not more unresisting
Than all her life, I pitied even him,
To think, that let him weep or ask her

pardon

Never so much, she would not answer more. As she was buried, so did she arise.

But let us begin at the beginning, and not at the end. The play opens well with a lively and spirited colloquy between Fulvio da Riva, a poet, and Cæsare Colonna, an officer of the Pope- (his Holiness being on his way to visit his native city)-who meet on the high-road from Florence to Rome. From it we get an insight into the character of Agolanti, a noble Florentine, who has been for some four years married to Ginevra-and who, it is happily said,

"Is as celestial out of his own house As he is devil within it."

So says Da Riva, and Colonna takes up the word.

Col. The devil it is! (Looking after him.) Methinks he casts a blackness Around him as he walks, and blights the vineyards. And all is true then, is it, which they tell

me?

NO, CCXCIII, VOL. XLVII.

U