knowledge of human nature enables us to enter into finer gradations of character in all the relations of life, whilst youth rejoices only in the passionate.' Of tragic heroes, Aristotle says they should not be quite innocent, for then we are indignant at their cruel, unjust destiny; nor should they be complete villains, for then we have no compassion with them; but men of mixed qualities, who have drawn their fate on themselves without entirely deserving it. This is well said; but we may add the remark that, as Christians, we can bear to see the misfortune of a perfectly innocent person, since we no longer doubt of retributive justice, and a life of felicity beyond the grave. Even among the Greeks, the Antigone of Sophocles is perfectly innocent, and yields to no Christian in nobility of soul." After passing briefly in review the principal dramatists of modern nations-Shakspeare, Calderon, Goethe, Schiller, &c.-he proceeds : "I convinced myself thus, that the aesthetic can by no means dispense with the ethical, since that is the object of the rational will. All human actions tend either to promote or to destroy the moral order of society; and since the drama is the ideal representation of human actions, moral relations must take an important place in it. The dramatic poet ought to be an enthusiast for moral order. He must not play with his subject with cold, impartial irony, or conjure up images merely to allow them to vanish again; he must not merely agitate and excite; for in the mere pleasure in that which awakens horror, without at the same time calling forth any noble feelings, lies the germ of all cruelty." We point emphatically to this remark, because it is one which especially requires to be kept in mind in judging many imaginative productions of our day, perhaps even more than those of Oehlenschläger's. It is not only in an aesthetic point of view that it is desirable to analyze the nature of the emotions called forth by works of fiction, since they are unquestionably among the most powerful influences at our disposal in the moral training of individuals or nations. From the Examiner. POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. ters recollections of those among whom his latter life was passed-this, as it seems to us, should have sufficed. Mr. Derwent Coleride brings too many church-bred and town-bred notions to the grave design of moralizing and philosophizing his brother's simple life and wayward self-indulgences. His motives will be respected, and his real kindness not misunderstood; but it will be felt that a quiet and unaffected little memoir of that strange and sorry career, and of those noble nor wholly wasted powers, remains still to be written. THESE poems will be read with great and | stances, a mindful recollection of what his general admiration; and, wherever the name father was in physical as well as mental orof Hartley Coleridge was known, with poig-ganization, extracts from Hartley's own letnant sorrow and regret. The book establishes the fame of a poet whose life was so deplorable a contradiction to the strength and subtlety of his genius, and the capability and range of his intellect, that perhaps no such sad example has ever found similar record. Indeed we are obliged with sincere grief to doubt, whether, as written here, the memoir should have been written at all. With much respect for Mr. Derwent Coleridge, who is himself no unworthy inheritor of a great name, his white neckcloth is somewhat too prominently seen in the matter. There are too many labored explainings, starched apologies, and painful accountings for this and that. The writer was probably not conscious of the effort he was making, yet the effort is but too manifest. A simple statement of facts, a kindly allowance for circum Meanwhile we gratefully accept the volumes before us, which in their contents are quite as decisive of Hartley Coleridge's genius as of what it might have achieved in happier circumstances. A more beautiful or sorrowful book has not been published in our day. Cut is the branch that might have grown full And burned is Appollo's laurel-bough, Hartley Coleridge was the eldest son of the poet, and with much of his father's genius (which in him, however, took a more simple and practical shape than consisted with the wider and more mystical expanse of his father's mind), inherited also the defects of his organization and temperament. What would have become of the elder Coleridge but for the friends in whose home his later years found a refuge, no one can say. With no such friends or home, poor Hartley became a castaway. After a childhood of singular genius, manifested in many modes and forms, and described with charming effect by his brother in the best passages and anecdotes of the memoir, he was launched without due discipline or preparation into the University of Oxford, where the catastrophe of his life befell. He had first fairly shown his powers when the hard doom went forth which condemned them to waste and idleness. He obtained a fellowship-elect at Oriel, was dismissed on the ground of intemperance before his probationary year had passed, and wandered for the rest of his days by the scenes with which his father most wished to surround his childhood (But thou my babe, shall wander like a breeze -listening with hardly less than his father's Well, it would be perhaps too much to say that he continued to justify the rejection of the Oriel fellows. Who knows how largely that event may itself have contributed to what it too hastily anticipated and too finally condemned? It appears certain that the weakness had not thus early made itself known to Hartley's general acquaintance at the University. Mr. Dyce had nothing painful to remember of him, but describes him as a young man possessing an intellect of the highest order, with great simplicity of character and considerable oddity of manner; and he hints that the college authorities had probably resented, in the step they took, certain attacks more declamatory than serious which Hartley had got into the habit of indulging against all established institutions. Mr. Derwent Coleridge touches this part of the subject very daintily. "My brother was, however, I am afraid, more sincere in his invectives against establishments, as they appeared to his eyes at Oxford and elsewhere, than Mr. Dyce kindly supposes." How poor Hartley would have laughed at that! One thing to the last he continued. The simplicity of character which Mr. Dyce attributes to his youth remained with him till long after his hair was prematurely white. As Wordsworth hoped for him in his childhood, he kept A young lamb's heart among the full grown flock; and some delightful recollections of his ordinary existence from day to day among the lakes and mountains, and in the service of the village schools, are contributed to his brother's Memoir. Here is one, from one of the scholars he taught: 66 "I first saw Hartley in the beginning, I think, of 1837, when I was at Sedbergh, and he heard us our lesson in Mr. Green's parlor. My impression of him was what I conceived Shakspeare's idea of a gentleman to be, something which we like to have in a picture. He was dressed in black, his hair, just touched with grey, fell in thick waves down his back, and he had a frilled shirt on; and there was a sort of autumnal ripeness and brightness about him. His shrill voice, and his quick authoritative "right! right!" and the chuckle with which he translated "rerum repetundarum" as peculation, a very common vice in governors of all ages," after which he took a turn round the sofa-all struck me amazingly; his readiness astold me; for during the time he was at the school, he tonished us all, and even himself, as he afterwards never had to use a dictionary once, though we read Dalzell's selections from Aristotle and Longinus, and several plays of Sophocles. He took his idea, so he said, from what De Quincy says of one of the Eton masters fagging the lesson, to the great the lesson, he used to read a newspaper. amusement of the class, and, while waiting for acting as second master he seldom occupied the While master's de-k, but sat among the boys on one of the school benches. He very seldom came to school in a morning, never till about eleven, and in the afternoon about an hour after we had begun. I never knew the least liberty taken with him, then the fashion with masters. though he was kinder and more familiar than was His translations were remarkably vivid; of μογερά μογερῶς “toiling and moiling;" and of some ship or other in the Philoctetes, which he pronounced to be "scudding under main-top sails," our conceptions became intelligible. Many of his translations were writ ten down with his initials, and I saw some, not a long while ago, in the Sophocles of a late Tutor at Queen's College, Oxford, who had them from tradition. He gave most attention to our themes; out of those sent in he selected two or three, which he then read aloud and criticised; and once, when they happened to agree, remarked there was always a coincidence of thought amongst great men. Out of school he never mixed with the boys, but was sometimes seen, to their astonishment, running along the fields with his arms outstretched, and talking to himself. He had no pet scholars except one, a little fair-haired boy, who he said ought to have been a girl. He told me that was the only boy he ever loved, though he always loved little girls. He was remarkably fond of the travelling shows that occasionally visited the village. I have seen him clap his hands with delight; indeed, in most of the simple delights of country life, he was like a child. This is what occurs to me at present of what he was when I first knew him; and, indeed, my after recollections are of a similarly fragmentary kind, consisting only of those little, numerous, noiseless, every-day acts of kindness, the sum of which makes a christian life. His love of little children, bis sympathy with the poor and suffering, his hatred of oppression, the beauty and the grace of his politeness before women, and his high manliness,-these are the features which I shall never forget while I have anything to remember." The same writer afterwards tells us : "On his way to one of those parties, he called on me, and I could not help saying. How well you look in a white neckcloth!' I wish you could see me sometimes,' he replied; if I had only black silk stockings and shoe-buckles, I should be quite a gentleman.' Those who had only seen him in the careless dress that he chose to adopt in the lanes his trowsers, which were generally too long, doubled half way up the leg, unbrushed, and often splashed; his hat brushed the wrong way, for he never used an umbrella; and his wild, unshaven, weather-beaten look-were amazed at bis metamorphose into such a faultless gentleman as he appeared when he was dressed for the evening. "I hate silver forks with fish,' he said; I can't manage them.' So did Dr. Arnold, I told him. That's capital; I am glad of such an authority. Do you know I never understood the gladiator's excellence till the other day? The way in which my brother eats fish with a silver fork made the thing quite clear.' "He often referred to his boyish days, when he told me he nearly poisoned half the house with his chemical infusions, and spoiled the pans, with great delight. The Pilgrim's Progress' was an early favorite with him. It was strange,' he said, how it had been overlooked. Children are often misunderstood. When I was a baby, I have often been in the greatest terror, when, to all appearance, I was quite still;-so frightened that I could not make a noise. Crying, I believe, is oftener a sign of happiness than the reverse. was looked upon as a remarkable child. My mo 1 ther told me, when I was born she thought me an ugly red thing but my father took me up and said, 'There's no sweeter baby anywhere than this.' He always thought too much of me. I was very dull at school, and hated arithmetic I always had to count on my fingers. He once took me to the little cottage where he lived by the Brathay, when Charles Lloyd and he were school-companions. Mrs. Nicholson, of Ambleside, told me of a donkey-race which they had from the market-cross to the end of the village and back, and how Hartley came in last, and minus his white straw hat." Those who remember the ordinary (and) most extraordinary) dress that hung about his small eager person, will smile at this entry in his journal of a visit to Rydal chapel, and the reflections awakened therein : 17th.-Sunday.--At Rydal chapel. Alas! I have been Parcus Deorum cultor et infrequens of late. Would I could say with assurance, Nunc interare cursus cogor relictos. I never saw Axiologus (Wordsworth) look so venerable. His cape cloak has such a gravity about it. Old gentlemen should never wear light great-coats unless they be military; and even then, Uncle Toby's Roquelaure would be more becoming than all the frogs in Styx. On the other hand, loose trowsers should never invest the nether limbs of the old. It looks as if the Septuagenarian were ashamed of a diminished calf. The sable silk is good and clerical, so are the grey pearl and the partridge. I revere grey worsted and ridge and furrow for ὁμακαρίτες his sake, but perhaps the bright white lamb's wool doth most set off the leg of an elderly man. The hose should be drawn over the knees, unless the rank and fortune require diamond buckles. Paste or Bristol stones should never approach a gentleman of any age. Roomy shoes, not of varnished leather. Broad shoe-buckles, well polished. Cleanliness is an ornament to youth, but an indispensable necessity to old age. Breeches, velvet or velveteen, or some other solid stuff. There may be serious objections to reviving the trunk breeches of our ancestors. I am afraid that hoops would follow in their train. But the flappeď waistcoat, the deep cuffs, and guarded pocketholes, the low-collar, I should hail with pleasure; that is, for grandfathers, and men of grandfatherly years. I was about to add the point-lace ruffles, cravat, and frill, but I pause in consideration of the miseries and degraded state of the lacemakers." happy. But perhaps it is as well to let it alone. The writer might be some one in whom my kindred are interested; for I am as much alone in my revolt as Abdiel in his constancy." We are glad to see valuable testimony borne by Mr. James Spedding as to his habits having left unimpaired his moral and spiritual sensibility: "Of his general character and way of life I might have been able to say something to the purpose, if I had seen more of him. But though he was a person so interesting to me in himself, and with so many subjects of interest in common with me, that a little intercourse went a great way; so that I feel as if he knew him much better than many persons of whom I have seen much more; yet I have, in fact, been very seldom in his company. If I should say ten times altogether, should not be understating the number; and this is not enough to qualify me for a reporter, when there must be so many competent observers living who really knew him well. One very strong im pression, however, with which I always came away from him, may be worth mentioning; I mean, that his moral and spiritual sensibilities seemed to be absolutely untouched by the life he was leading. The error of his life sprung, I suppose, from moral incapacity of some kind-his way of life seemed in some things destructive of self-respect; and was certainly regarded by himself with a feeling of shame, which in his seasons of self-communion became passionate; and yet it did not at all degrade his mind. It left, not his understanding only, but also his imagination and feelings, perfectly healthy,-free, fresh, and pure. His language might be sometimes what some people would call gross, but that I think was not from any want of true delicacy, but from a masculine disdain of false delicacy; and his opinions, and judgment, and speculations, were in the highest degree refined and elevated-full of chivalrous generosity, and purity, and manly tenderness. Such, at least, was my invariable impression. It always surprised me, but fresh observations always confirmed it." When Wordsworth heard of his death, he was much affected, and gave the touching direction to his brother-" Let him lie by us: he would have wished it." It was accordingly so arranged. "The day following he walked over with me to Grassmere-to the churchyard, a plain enclosure of the olden time, surrounding the old village church, in which lay the remains of his wife's sister, his nephew, and his beloved daughter. Here, having desired the sexton to measure out the ground for his own and for Mrs. Wordsworth's grave, he bade him measure out the space of a third grave for my brother, immediately beyond. When I lifted up my eyes from my daughter's grave,' he exclaimed, he was standing here! pointing to the spot where my brother had 666 We have often expressed a high opinion of Hartley Coleridge's poetical genius. It was a part of the sadness of his life that he could not concentrate his powers, in this or any other department of his intellect, to high and continuous aims-but we were not prepared for such rich proof of its exercise, within the limited field assigned to it, as these volumes offer. They largely and lastingly contribute to the rare stores of true poetry. In the sonnet Hartley Coleridge was a master unsurpassed by the greatest. To its "narrow plot of ground" his habits, when applied in the cultivation of the muse, most naturally led him-and here he may claim no undeserved companionship even with Shakspeare, Milton, and Wordsworth. We take a fewwith affecting personal reference in all of them. Hast thon not seen an aged rifted tower, Pains I have known, that cannot be again, A lonely wanderer upon earth am I, Where is my sister's smile? my brother's boisterous din ? Ah! nowhere now. A matron grave and sage, How shall a man fore-doom'd to lone estate, Here is another poem of very touching reference to his personal story: "When I received this volume small, My years were barely seventeen ; When it was hoped I should be all May never be what now I am. But yet should any chance to look On the strange medley scribbled here, Oh! tell them though my purpose lame Before we shut the volumes-which will often and often be re-opened by their readers we may instance, in proof of the variety of his verse, some masterly heroic couplets on the character of Dryden, which will be seen in a series of admirable "sketches of English poets" found written on the fly-leaves and covers of his copy of Anderson's British Poets. The successors of Dryden are not less admirably handled, and there are sketches of Wilkie, Dodsley, Langhorne, and rhymers of that class, inimitable for their truth and spirit. some DEATH OF SIGNORA GRASSINI.-Signora | Grassini, the great singer, who died a few months since at Milan, was distinguished not only for her musical talents, but also for her beauty and powers of theatrical expres sion. One evening in 1810, she and Signor Crescentini performed together at the Tuileries, and sang in "Romeo and Juliet." At the admirable scene in the third act, the Emperor Napoleon applauded vociferously, and Talma, the great tragedian, who was among the audience, wept with emotion. After the performance was ended, the Emperor conferred the decoration of a high order on Crescentini, and sent Grassini a scrap of paper, on which was written, "good for 20,000 livres--NAPOLEON." "Twenty thousand francs!" said one of her friends, "the sum is a large one." "It will serve as a dowry for one of my little nieces," replied Grassini, quietly. Indeed, few persons were ever more gen erous, tender, and considerate, toward their family, than this great singer. Many years afterward, when the Empire had crumbled into dust, carrying with it in its fall, among other things, the rich pension of Signora Grassini, she happened to be at Bologna. There another of her nieces was for the first time presented to her, with a request that she would do something for her young relative. The little girl was extremely pretty, but not, her friends thought, fit for the stage, as her voice was a feeble contralto. Her aunt asked her to sing; and when the timid voice had sounded a few notes, " Dear child,' said Grassini, embracing her, "you will not want me to assist you. Those who called your voice a contralto were ignorant of music. You have one of the finest sopranos in the world, and will far excel me as a singer. courage, and work hard, my love; your throat will win a shower of gold." The young girl did not disappoint her aunt's prediction. She still lives, and her name is Giulia Grisi. Take |