the promotion of a friendly intercourse amongst the members, which may tend to draw together persons whom slight differences of opinion have often too much separated.

Blackfordby has immemorially been a hamlet of Ashby; and its ecclesiastical endowments, with those of the latter, were given, in A. D. 1145, to the Abbey of Lilleshul, which retained them until the dissolution of monastic establishments. Under the year 1220, it is recorded that the abbot of Lilleshul, who held the patronage of Ashby to his own use "ab antiquo," had also the chapel of Blackford by, where divine service was performed three times in the week from the mother church.

The Marquis of Hastings is lord of the manor of Blackfordby, and patron of the living. On alternate Sundays, the vicar of Ashby does duty in the chapel, which is a very ancient structure, consisting of a nave and chancel. The lancet windows, the old round font of stone, and the stand for an hour-glass near the pulpit, are objects of interest. Originally, its site must have been chosen on account of its secluded beauties and salubrity. It overlooks an extensive and luxuriant landscape, and rests upon a rock which pours forth a copious spring, whose waters were never known to freeze.

Ashby-de-la-Zouch is the largest parish in the county of Leicester. Anciently it included eight separate hamlets, two only of which-Blackfordby and Boothorpe-now remain distinct. It consists of eleven thousand two hundred computed acres, and

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,

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has nearly six thousand inhabitants; for whom much additional church accommodation is manifestly most necessary. Instead, therefore, of not discountenancing the clamour and rapacity of the church's ill-wishers, as the fashion has been of late years, it would be wise, as well as just, if the British legislature would restore the property of which she had been plundered; or, as an atonement for a nationally sanctioned robbery, to assist this and many other parishes of the empire in obviating the reluctant defection of their people from a venerable mother-church, whose faithful ministers conducted our forefathers and their children's children through the severest trials, to the highest enjoyment of liberty and religion.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. THESE two names have long been associated by more than one tie of connexion in the minds of those who are at all familiar with the writings of the latter; and it can scarcely have been without some degree of pleasure that the admirers of Coleridge saw the announcement of an article upon him by the English Opium-eater, in "Tait's Magazine" for the month of September. For the powerful writer, who has unfortunately chosen to designate himself by that ill-boding alias of evil record, is, in many respects, fitted above most other men for comprehending the full stature of the mighty spirit who has just passed away from the earth. If his heart would but give his head fair play, if he would allow a generous love to wean him from the idolatry of his own talents, the self-fascination under which he so often seems to be lying, and to strengthen them with the inspiration which nothing else can bestow, the picture could not fail to be a noble one. Hardly any one owes Coleridge more. Hardly any one has learnt more from him. No one is so well quali fied, from his own studies and pursuits, to track him along the endless meanderings of his all-embracing speculations. In almost every thing the Opiumeater has written, one sees marks of the influence that Coleridge has exerted on the shaping of his mind. In fact, it has seemed almost to haunt him like a spell, against which ever and anon he has struggled, and which he would gladly have shaken off; but, in spite of himself, the yoke was upon him; and, though often restive, ere long he was forced to submit to it. He first tried to shove his master out of his chair, and then was fain to sit down at his feet; being constrained by his understanding to yield him an however unwilling homage. These symptoms, it is true, did not promise well. Still one could not but hope that, at a moment when all who knew Coleridge were bowed down in spirit by the loss which Christian philosophy had just sustained—at such a moment one could not but hope that the venerable form of his old teacher would have "come back upon his heart again;" and that the very consciousness of the wrong he had hitherto done him, would have rendered him the more anxious to make amends for it by a splendid incenseoffering on his tomb.

The first sentence appeared to bid fair that he would do so. It contains an ample acknowledgment-such, indeed, as the Opium-eater has never been

No reader who is aware how much influence the writings of Coleridge possess on the minds of the best and most promising young men of the day, will think that a defence of the character of this Christian Philosopher is out of place in the British Magazine. The most appropriate place for it appeared to be at the conclusion of the Original Articles.

slow to utter-of Coleridge's vast intellectual power; declaring him to have been, in his judgment, "the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and the most comprehensive, that has yet existed amongst men." This, to be sure, is enough. Coleridge's most devout disciple could not wish for more. After such an opening, he would expect that the rest of the article would be of a piece with it; that Coleridge's claims to this high praise would be duly set forth and established; and that a writer, who has often shewn such acuteness and discernment in speaking of inferior men, would on this occasion rise above himself that the very grandeur of his subject would lift him up. Has it done so ? We have heard of an eagle bearing a tortoise up aloft, that it may be the surer of dashing it to pieces; and this is an example which men too, when they have wished to destroy a great reputation, have not seldom had the craft to follow. We have read of "a jewel of gold in a swine's snout;" and we are now and then reminded of this image, when we see an invective tipped with a flaming eulogium.

The Opium-eater's essay on Coleridge, in the September Number of "Tait's Magazine," has been continued in the October and November Numbers, and the conclusion is still to come. May it be totally different in tone and spirit from the parts which have hitherto appeared! Never before did an able man, in speaking of a great man, who had been his friend, betray less of friendship. "For it is not an open enemy that has done him this dishonour; for then we could have borne it." In no part of the three articles now before us is there any trace of that reverence which is due to God's noblest gifts, when employed upon the worthiest objects. In no part of them do we see any mark of that affectionate love which Coleridge won from all about him, even from such as could least appreciate his genius. As to the solemn feelings which are wont to rise from the grave even of the meanest, when dust is let down to dust, the writer must needs have cast them behind him, if indeed he has ever heard that there are such. Nay, after reading all he has said, one might be left in doubt whether he had even heard of Coleridge's death; except that, had Coleridge been alive, he would not have dared thus to prate and chatter about him. As yet he has made no attempt to portray Coleridge, or to give an estimate of him, either as a poet or as a philosopher, either as he was in himself, or as he stands before the world in the fragmentary image of his works-an image in which the Opium-eater's intimate acquaintance with him might have enabled him to supply many of the finer features. It may be that this is reserved for the conclusion. I heartily hope it is; though the character of the three articles already published does not encourage such an expectation. These are doubly offensive; both negatively, from the absence of all right and seasonable feeling; and positively, from the nature of the materials of which they are made up. No one, who was not aware of the Opium-eater's voracity for what he has called anecdotage, would conceive it possible that, with such a subject as Coleridge, and at the very moment when his mortal had just put on immortality, and death was thus drawing away our thoughts from that which was perishable in him to that which was undying, he, himself a lover of poetry, himself a metaphysician, should have scribbled three articles, one after another, with Coleridge's name at the head of them, and should have stuffed them mainly with wretched petty anecdotes, of no importance or interest to any thing above tea-table curiosity. Nor are these impertinences strung together solely with reference to the great philosopher himself. His venerable name serves as a pretext for scraping up rubbish of the same sort about such other persons as happen to be mentioned; and we find, as might well be expected, that a writer who has stripped himself naked before the eyes of the world, and made such a parade of his infirmities in his Confessions, has no very nice discernment as to what is fit for the public ear or not. Even women, as well as men, fall under the lash of his loquacity. Poor Mary of Buttermere has to pay for her hapless celebrity, by becoming the subject of a story charging her with a brutish

want of feeling, a story which, at the very time he is repeating it, the writer expresses his hope may be exaggerated. Why on earth then does he repeat iti In order that Mary of Buttermere may have an opportunity of contradicting it? Is it so very material to the well-being of mankind, that no illBatured tale should sink into oblivion?

About Mrs. Coleridge there is a long passage, in which domestic trifles are detailed, such as a discarded chambermaid would be thought worse of for teifing. All that was necessary on this subject might have been said discreetly in a couple of sentences, without a wound to any feeling that we are bound to respect, and without any pandering to the baneful lust of prying into the privacies of family life. What makes this passage still worse, is the apology offered for it. Without that apology, it might have been supposed that the writer said what he said from deeming it requisite for Coleridge's vindication. But personal animosity mixes up with his motives. "An insult," he tells us, "once offered by Mrs. Coleridge to a female relative of his, as much superior to Mrs. Coleridge in the spirit of courtesy and kindness which ought to preside in the intercourse between females, as she was in the splendour of her beauty, would have given me a dispensation from all terms of consideration beyond the restraints of striet justice." Pity that this female relative did not inoculate her male relative with some portion of that spirit of courtesy and kindness which ought to preside in the intercourse with females! Had she done so, it is possible he might not have given vent to his spleen, by telling any woman in print, that another woman is far superior to her both in courtesy and in the splendour of her beauty. For what other purpose can such an assertion be meant to answer, except that very manly and courteous one of mortifying Mrs. Coleridge? Surely it cannot be designed for the edification or the instruction of the readers of Tait's Magazine. They do not even know the name of this lady, who is so much handsomer than Mrs. Coleridge; nor, if they did, would the information profit them much. This female relative might also have taught her male relative, that, even though a lady of our acquaintance should, once in a way, betray an infirmity of temper in her intercourse with some member of our family, she is not thereby outlawed all at once from the humanities of social life; nor do we thereby forthwith acquire the right of spreading out the whole story of her life on the table of the public press, and trumpeting all her foibles in the ears of every scandalmonger in the island. Another lesson too might have been given, and perhaps not without advantage, namely, that, when an offence of this sort is of many, probably of some twenty years standing, the raking it forth is not an infallible mark of a sweet and placable disposition.

Again, opinions expressed in conversation by Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Southey are brought forward, no way discreditable to either indeed, but which would seem to have been repeated with no other view than that of disturbing the harmony of their friendship; and which the writer would no more have been allowed to hear, had he been esteemed capable of seasoning an article in a magazine with them, than he would have been allowed to exhibit those illustrious men, along with their wives and children, at Bartholomew Fair. We are told what Mr. Wordsworth thought of Mr. Southey twenty years ago, and what Mr. Southey said of Mr. Wordsworth in August 1812. We are told that "up to 1815 they viewed each other with mutual dislike, almost with mutual disgust." The word will do. Both of them can feel it both those pure-souled men recoil with instinctive disgust from every violation of the sanctuary of private life; and both most assuredly have felt disgust, or will feel it, even to loathing, if the articles which have called forth these remarks ever come under their eyes. I can well imagine the indignation with which Wordsworth would view them. As to the Opium-eater's statement, the reader will soon be better able to judge how much credit is due to an assertion which has nothing beyond his word to rest on. In the present instance, one may feel sure that he misrepresents the truth, at least by omission, VOL. VII.-Jan. 1835.

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if not by actual exaggeration. Everybody knows that, in speaking of others to those who are acquainted with and concur in our general opinion of them, expressions of partial disapprobation will often drop, which may be quite consistent with the sincerest admiration and esteem. No one who does not deem himself, not merely faultless, but so manifestly and indisputably so, that his faultlessness cannot even be called in question by others, would look for the contrary. Yet, if a person to whom we have spoken of a friend in this way, with a certain degree of qualification, goes to that friend, and tells him of the evil we may have said of him, suppressing all the rest,-why, Fielding has shewn us the regard and respect which a Blifil is entitled to. And is such a betrayal of confidence much mended, when the public is called in to witness in what an ungentle spirit one friend may blame another?

"

These are incidental offences. The main one, that which disfigures the whole of the three articles, is the unworthy, degrading representation given in them of Coleridge himself. Not indeed of his intellect; that is spoken of several times in the same strain of admiration as in the first sentence. For intellect-many kinds of it, at least-the Opium-eater knows how to appreciate and admire; though nothing seems so to sharpen and embitter his animosity, especially when he is stung by the consciousness of owing anything to its possessor; witness his attack on Kant, in p. 515. Yet, even toward Coleridge's intellect his admiration is rather for an antenatal state of it, and he seldom talks of it but as “a wreck,” as “dark,” “extinct,” “ burnt out." The aim, however, which he has set himself in these articles, is not to delineate Coleridge's intellect, or his character, or to mark out the place he fills in the map of the human mind, or to determine the value of his labours in untwisting the gordian knot of thought, or to lead us to those spots in the dark forest of nature on which he has shed the sunshine of truth, or even to ascertain the influence which his writings, full of seeds as they are, have exercised, and are likely to exercise, on his countrymen-an influence which, though in the first instance it may have been felt by few, is not therefore slight or powerless, inasmuch as among those few there is no small portion of such as are designed to be the teachers and enlighteners of their brethren. These are subjects which well deserved the Opium eater's best pen; but he has turned away from them to ransack the Monmouth-street of his memory for all the tattered tinsel he could pick up there-black patches and white, red patches and grey-which he has stitched together and furbished up as he best could; never scrupling to draw from his invention, when he wanted gall to dye a piece with. Among the anecdotes related of Coleridge there are very few, of which the tendency is not to lower him in some way or other, to impair his claims to respect, to display his weaknesses, his failings, his distresses. The very first thing we are told about him, even before he comes on the stage the theme of two long, almost folio, pages, immediately after the first paragraph, which is principally taken up with a picture of the writer's own mild and amiable temper-is, that he was not very regardful of truth, and often guilty of plagiarism. Be it so: suppose that all the Opium-eater says on this head is strictly, accurately true: grant that in a just and complete estimate of Coleridge's character it was necessary and fitting that all his sins, down to the minutest peccadillo, should be diligently scored up-that no ephemeron should be let die, without being pinned and ticketed in the cabinet of history for the instruction of after ages: was it necessary and fitting that these matters should be thus stuck in the van, as if they were the most prominent things about him, the things that rise uppermost in the minds of all who knew him the moment his name is mentioned? Would it be a fair account of Cicero, that he was a wonderfully great orator, that he had a vetch on his nose-an anecdote which, for its truth and importance, is well worthy of a place in the Opium-eater's budget, and which no doubt is now lying treasured up there, and will probably be pulled out of it before long-and that he behaved with great weakness in the affair of his friend