A fearful succession of conflicts between Michael and the devil takes place, in which Agatha helps and suffers. In the end, after subjecting his hero to every imaginable or unimaginable horror, the poet in nubibus made him triumphant, and poured peace into his soul in the conviction of a salvation for sinners through God's grace. Of this sketch we will only say, what probably the warmest admirers of Faust' will admit, that Goethe might have taken some valuable hints from it. It is a literary curiosity at least, and so we leave it.

The Remorse' and ' Zapolya' strikingly illustrate the predominance of the meditative, pausing habit of Mr. Coleridge's mind. The first of these beautiful dramas was acted with success, although worse acting was never seen. Indeed, Kelly's sweet music was the only part of the theatrical apparatus in any respect worthy of the play. The late Mr. Kean made some progress in the study of Ordonio, with a view of reproducing the piece; and we think that Mr. Macready, either as Ordonio or Alvar, might, with some attention to music, costume, and scenery, make the representation attractive even in the present day. But in truth, taken absolutely and in itself, the Remorse' is more fitted for the study than the stage; its character is romantic and pastoral in a high degree, and there is a profusion of poetry in the minor parts, the effect of which could never be preserved in the common routine of representation. What this play wants is dramatic movement; there is energetic dialogue and a crisis of great interest, but the action does not sufficiently grow on the stage itself. Perhaps, also, the purpose of Alvar to waken remorse in Ordonio's mind is put forward too prominently, and has too much the look of a mere moral experiment to be probable under the circumstances in which the brothers stand to each other. Nevertheless, there is a calmness as well as superiority of intellect in Alvar which seem to justify, in some measure, the sort of attempt on his part, which, in fact, constitutes the theme of the play; and it must be admitted that the whole underplot of Isidore and Alhadra is lively and affecting in the highest degree. We particularly refer to the last scene between Ordonio and Isidore in the cavern, which we think genuine Shakspeare; and Alhadra's narrative of her discovery of her husband's murder is not surpassed in truth and force by anything of the kind that we know. The passage in the dungeon scene, in which Alvar rejects the poisoned cup, always struck us as uncommonly fine, although we think the conclusion weak. The incantation scene is a beautiful piece of imagination, and we are inclined to think a quotation of a part of it will put Mr. Coleridge's poetical power before many of our readers in a new light:

• REMORSE

'REMORSE-Act III. sc. 1.

[A Hall of Armory, with an altar at the back of the stage. Soft music from an instrument of glass or steel.]

VALDEZ, ORDONIO, and ALVAR in a Sorcerer's robe.

ORD. This was too melancholy, father.

VAL.

Nay,

My Alvar loved sad music from a child.
Once he was lost; and after weary search
We found him in an open place in the wood,
To which spot he had followed a blind boy,
Who breathed into a pipe of sycamore
Some strangely-moving notes; and these, he said,
Were taught him in a dream. Him first we saw
Stretch'd on the broad top of a sunny heath-bank;
And lower down poor Alvar, fast asleep,
His head upon the blind boy's dog. It pleased me
To mark how he had fasten'd round the pipe
A silver toy his grandam had late given him.
Methinks I see him now as he then look'd-
Even so!-He had outgrown his infant dress,
Yet still he wore it.

ALV. (aside.) My tears must not flow!

I must not clasp his knees, and cry, My Father!
Enter TERESA.

TER. Lord Valdez, you have ask'd my presence here,
And I submit; but heaven bear witness for me,
My heart approves it not. 'Tis mockery!

ORD. Believe you, then, no preternatural influence?
Believe you not that spirits throng around us?-
TER. Say rather that I have imagined it
A possible thing ;—and it has sooth'd my soul
As other fancies have, but ne'er seduced me
To traffic with the black and frenzied hope
That the dead hear the voice of witch or wizard.

(To Alvar.) Stranger, I mourn and blush to see you here
On such employment. With far other thoughts

I left you.

ORD. (aside.) Ha! he has been tampering with her!—
ALV. O high-soul'd maiden! and more dear to me

Than suits the stranger's name !-I swear to thee

I will uncover all concealed guilt.

Doubt, but decide not! Stand ye from the altar. [Strain of music.
With no irreverent voice or uncouth charm

I call up the departed.

Soul of Alvar!

Hear our soft suit, and heed my milder spell;-
So may the gates of Paradise, unbarr'd,
Cease thy swift toils! Since haply thou art one

Of

Of that innumerable company

head!

Who in broad circle, lovelier than the rainbow,
Girdle this round earth in a dizzy motion,
With noise too vast and constant to be heard—
Fitliest unheard!-For oh! ye numberless
And rapid travellers, what ear unstunn'd,
What sense unmadden'd, might bear up against
The rushing of your congregated wings?
Even now your living wheel turns o'er my
Ye, as ye pass, toss high the desart sands,
That roar and whiten, like a burst of waters,
A sweet appearance, but a dread illusion
To the parch'd caravan that roams by night!
And ye build up on the becalmed waves
That whirling pillar, which from earth to heaven
Stands vast, and moves in blackness! Ye too split
The ice-mount, and with fragments many and huge
Tempest the new-thaw'd sea, whose sudden gulfs
Suck in, perchance, some Lapland wizard's skiff!
Then round and round the whirlpool's marge ye dance,
Till from the blue-swoln corse the soul toils out,
And joins your mighty army!

[Music.

[Voice behind sings, Hear, sweet spirit.'
Soul of Alvar!

Hear the mild spell, and tempt no blacker charm!
By sighs unquiet, and the sickly pang
Of a half dead, yet still undying hope,
Pass visible before our mortal sense!

So shall the church's cleansing rites be thine,
Her knells and masses that redeem the dead!
(Song behind.)

Hear, sweet spirit, hear the spell,
Lest a blacker charm compel!

So shall the midnight breezes swell
With thy deep, long lingering knell.
And at evening evermore,
In a chapel on the shore,

Shall the chanters sad and saintly,
Yellow tapers burning faintly,
Doleful masses chant for thee,

Miserere Domine !

Hark! the cadence dies away
On the quiet moonlight sea;-

The boatmen rest their oars and say,

Miserere Domine !

ORD. The innocent obey nor charm, nor spell.

My brother is in heaven. Thou sainted spirit,

Burst on our sight a passing visitant!

[A long pause.

Once

Once more to hear thy voice, once more to see thee,
O 'twere a joy to me!

ALV. A joy to thee!

What if thou heard'st him now?—What if his spirit
Re-enter'd its cold corse, and came upon thee

With many a stab from many a murderer's poniard ?—
What if his steadfast eye still beaming pity
And brother's love-he turn'd his head aside,
Lest he should look at thee, and with one look
Hurl thee beyond all power of penitence?—
VALD. These are unholy fancies.

ORD.

He is in heaven.

Yes, my father,

ALV. (to Ord.) But what if he had a brother,
Who had lived even so, that at his dying hour

The name of Heaven would have convulsed his face,
More than the death-pang?--

VALD. Idly prating man!

Thou hast guess'd ill. Don Alvar's only brother
Stands here before thee-a father's blessing on him!
He is most virtuous.

ALV. (still to Ord.) What if his very virtues
Had pamper'd his swoln heart and made him proud?
And what if pride had duped him into guilt?
Yet still he stalk'd a self-created god,
Not very bold, but exquisitely cunning,
And one that at his mother's looking-glass
Would force his features to a frowning sternness.
Young lord! I tell thee that there are such beings-
Yea, and it gives fierce merriment to the damn'd,
To see these most proud men, that lothe mankind,
At every stir and buz of coward conscience
Trick, cant, and lie,-most whining hypocrites!
Away! away! Now let me hear more music.

-vol. ii. p. 193.

'Zapolya' is professedly an imitation of 'The Winter's Tale,' and was not composed with any view to scenic representation. Yet it has some situations of dramatic interest in no respect inferior to the most striking in the Remorse;' the incidents are new and surprising, and the dialogue is throughout distinguished by liveliness and force. The predominant character of the whole is, like that of the Remorse,' a mixture of the pastoral and the romantic, but much more apparent and exclusive than in the latter; and it has always seemed to us that the poem breathed more of the spirit of the best pieces of Beaumont and Fletcher, such as the 'Beggars' Bush' for example, than of anything of Shakspeare's. Zapolya has never been appreciated as it deserves. It is, in our opinion,

the

the most elegant of Mr. Coleridge's poetical works; there is a softness of tone, and a delicacy of colouring about it, which have a peculiar charm of their own, and amply make amends for some deficiency of strength in the drawing. Although this Christmas tale is, perhaps, as a whole, less known than any other part of Mr. Coleridge's poetry, there is, oddly enough, one passage in it which has been quoted as often as any, and seems to have been honoured by the elaborate imitation of Sir Walter Scott in 'Peveril of the Peak,' vol. iii. p. 6— The innocent Alice,' &c.* The traitor Laska!

And yet Sarolta, simple, inexperienced,

Could see him as he was, and often warn'd me.
Whence learn'd she this?-Oh! she was innocent ;-
And to be innocent is nature's wisdom!

The fledge-dove knows the prowlers of the air,
Fear'd soon as seen, and flutters back to shelter;
And the young steed recoils upon his haunches,
The never-yet-seen adder's hiss first heard.
O surer than suspicion's hundred eyes

Is that fine sense, which to the pure in heart,
By mere oppugnancy of their own goodness,
Reveals the approach of evil.'

How fine is Bethlen's image!—

Those piled thoughts, built up in solitude,

Year following year, that press'd upon my heart

As on the altar of some unknown God;

Then, as if touch'd by fire from heaven descending,

Blazed up within me at a father's name

Do they desert me now--at my last trial!'

And Glycine's song might, we think, attract the attention of some

of our composers.

How like some of Goethe's jewels it is!

A sunny shaft did I behold,

From sky to earth it slanted,

And poised therein a bird so bold—
Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted!

He sank, he rose, he twinkled, he troll'd
Within that shaft of sunny mist;—
His eyes of fire, his beak of gold,
All else of amethyst!

And thus he sang "Adieu! adieu !
Love's dreams prove seldom true.
The blossoms they make no delay;

The sparkling dew-drops will not stay.
Sweet month of May,

We must away,

Far, far away,

To-day! to-day!

*See Hayward's Transl. Preface.

Upon