I CANNOT describe the horror and disgust which I felt at hearing Mr. Perceval call upon the then ministry for measures of vigour in Ireland. If I lived at Hampstead upon stewed meats and claret;-if I walked to church every Sunday before eleven young gentlemen of my own begetting, with their faces washed, and their hair pleasingly combed; -if the Almighty had blessed me with every earthly comfort,-how awfully would I pause before I sent forth the flame and the sword over the cabins of the poor, brave, generous, open-hearted peasants of Ireland! How easy it is to shed human blood; how easy it is to persuade ourselves that it is our duty to do so, and that the decision has cost us a severe struggle;—how much in all ages have wounds and shrieks and tears been the cheap and vulgar resources of the rulers of mankind;-how difficult and how noble it is to govern in kindness, and to found an empire upon the everlasting basis of justice and affection! But what do men call vigour? To let loose hussars, and to bring up artillery; to govern with lighted matches, and to cut, and push, and prime-I call this, not vigour, but the sloth of cruelty and ignorance. The vigour I love, consists in finding out wherein subjects are aggrieved, in relieving them, in studying the temper and genius of a people, in consulting their prejudices, in selecting proper persons to lead and manage them, in the laborious, watchful, and difficult task of increasing public happiness by allaying each particular discontent. In this way Hoche pacified La Vendée, and in this way only will Ireland ever be subdued. But this, in the eyes of Mr. Perceval, is imbecility and meanness: houses are not broke open—

women are not insulted-the people seem all to be happy; they are not rode over by horses, and cut by whips. Do you call this vigour?-Is this government ?

I REMEMBER the death of many eminent Englishmen, but I can safely say, I never remember an impression so general as that excited by the death of Francis Horner. The public looked upon him as a powerful and a safe man, who was labouring not for himself or his party, but for them. They were convinced of his talents, they confided in his moderation, and they were sure of his motives; he had improved so quickly, and so much, that his early death was looked on as the destruction of a great statesman, who had done but a small part of the good which might be expected from him, who would infallibly have risen to the highest offices, and as infallibly have filled them to the public good. Then as he had never lost a friend, and made so few enemies, there was no friction, no drawback; public feeling had its free course; the image of a good and great man was broadly before the world, unsullied by any breath of hatred; there was nothing but pure sorrow! Youth destroyed before its time, great talents and wisdom hurried to the grave, a kind and good man, who might have lived for the glory of England, torn from us in the flower of his life!-but all this is gone and past, and, as Galileo said of his lost sight, 'It has pleased God it should be so, and it must please me also.'

LII.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

1772-1834.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born at the Vicarage of Ottery St. Mary's, Devonshire, on the 21st of October, 1772. From the age of nine he was educated at Christ's Hospital, where he already gave signs of his many-sided genius, as well as of that constitutional weakness which almost overpowered it. In 1791 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge; but he had anticipated life, and his mind was too much occupied with poetry, and with that new world of speculative politics opened up to mankind by the French Revolution, to allow him to attend to the regular studies of the University, which he left in 1794 without taking a degree.

The next few years he spent mainly at Bristol, in various ineffectual attempts to obtain an income as an author, a political lecturer, a Unitarian preacher, or the editor of a newspaper. He formed a close friendship with Southey and Wordsworth, and was excited by intercourse with the latter to write his best poetry. But the interest of ethical and political speculation was beginning to overpower in him the poetical impulse, and this tendency was very much increased by his visit to Germany in 1798. He found the German Universities in the fresh enthusiasm of speculative thought which Kant had awakened, and partook in it; and, though he never ceased to be original and independent, henceforward it became more or less consciously the work of his life to absorb German thought and reproduce it in English forms. And it was a task not unworthy of him, if he had been able to fulfil it. But he had been led to soothe

rheumatic pains by the use of opium, and this habit so utterly sapped all his vital energies, that for the next fifteen years he produced no work worthy of his genius, with the exception of the essays contained in the Friend. From 1816 till his death, on July 25th, 1834, he resided with a physician at Highgate, and under the restraint to which he there submitted, he partially recovered, and wrote most of his works, critical, theological, and philosophical. Moreover, his great reputation made his residence a kind of centre of literary pilgrimage, and by his wonderful conversation he probably exercised a wider influence than by his books, which, though highly suggestive, are rather collections of notes and essays than complete treatises on any subject.

His writings must be viewed as the great fragments of a genius which, for want of self-command, of health, of physical and moral energy, never produced a perfect result in any one direction, though giving promise of the highest kind in many. His thought is suggestive, stimulating rather than satisfying, and the greatest result of his life was the intellectual activity he awakened in England. He prepared the way for German literature and philosophy, and broke down the wall that kept England so long shut up from the influence of European culture. Even the imperfection of his works might be useful to this end. His persevering attempts to justify everything English on principles of pure reason, opened ears to reason that otherwise would have been shut. Above all, he shows always, and always inspires, that unmistakable love of light which makes even the mistakes of genius full of interest and instruction.

1. Of the Importance of Method.

WHAT is that which first strikes us, and strikes us at once, in a man of education, and which, among educated men, so instantly distinguishes the man of superior mind, that (as was observed with eminent propriety of the late Edmund

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Burke) we cannot stand under the same arch-way during a shower of rain, without finding him out?' Not the weight or novelty of his remarks; not any unusual interest of facts communicated by him; for we may suppose both the one and the other precluded by the shortness of our intercourse, and the triviality of the subjects. The difference will be impressed and felt, though the conversation should be confined to the state of the weather or the pavement. Still less will it arise from any peculiarity in his words and phrases. For if he be, as we now assume, a well-educated man as well as a man of superior powers, he will not fail to follow the golden rule of Julius Caesar, insolens verbum, tanquam scopulum, evitare. Unless where new things necessitate new terms, he will avoid an unusual word as a rock. It must have been among the earliest lessons of his youth, that the breach of this precept, at all times hazardous, becomes ridiculous in the topics of ordinary conversation. There remains but one other point of distinction possible; and this must be, and in fact is, the true cause of the impression made on us. It is the unpremeditated and evidently habitual arrangement of his words, grounded on the habit of foreseeing, in each integral part, or (more plainly) in every sentence, the whole that he then intends to communicate. However irregular and desultory his talk, there is method in the fragments.

Listen, on the other hand, to an ignorant man, though perhaps shrewd and able in his particular calling, whether he be describing or relating. We immediately perceive, that his memory alone is called into action; and that the objects and events recur in the narration in the same order, and with the same accompaniments, however accidental or impertinent, in which they had first occurred to the narrator. The necessity of taking breath, the efforts of recollection,