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dwelt a good deal on the temptations to which human nature is subject, when passions not in themselves unworthy, become, from circumstances, sins if indulged, and the source of sin and misery; but the effect of this piece is altogether favorable to virtue, and to the parent and nurse of virtue, a pious conviction of the moral government of the world. The play contains an anatomy of passion, not a picture of it in a concrete form, such as the works of Richardson and of Rousseau present, a picture fitted to excite feelings of baneful effect upon the mind, rather than to awaken thought, which counteracts all such mischief. Indeed, I think no man would have sought my Father's daily society who was not predominantly given to reflection. What is very striking in this play is the character of the heroine, whose earnest and scrupulous devotion to her mother occasions the partial estrangement of her lover d'Ormond, and, in its consequences, an overwhelming misery, which overturns her reason and causes her death, and thus, through remorse, works the conversion of those guilty persons of the drama, who have been slaves to passion but are not all" enslaved, nor wholly vile." Strong is the contrast which this play presents in its exhibition of the female character, with that of the celebrated French and German writers who have treated similar subjects. Men write,-I have heard a painter say, men even paint, as they feel and as they are. Goethe's Margaret has been thought equal to Shakspeare's Ophelia and Desdemona: in some respects it is so; but it is like a pot of sweet ointment into which some tainting matter has fallen. I think no Englishman of Goethe's genius and sensibility, would have described a maiden, whom it was his intention to represent, though frail on one point yet lovely and gentle-hearted, as capable of being induced to give her poor old mother a sleeping potion. "It will do her no harm." But the risk!-affection gives the wisdom of the serpent where there would else be but the simplicity of the dove. A true Englishman would have felt that such an act, so bold and undaughterly, blighted at once the lily flower, making it "put on darkness" and "fall into the portion of weeds and out-worn faces." In Mr. Lloyd's youthful drama, even the dissipated Marchioness, who tempts and yields to temptation, is made to play a noble part in the end, won back from sin by generous feeling and strong sense: and the description of Julia Villeneuve's tender care of her mother is so characteristic of the author, that I cannot help quoting a part of it here, though it is not among the powerful parts of the play.

Describing how her aged parent's extreme infirmity rendered her incapable, without a sacrifice, of leaving the small dwelling to which she had been accustomed, and how this had prevented her even from hinting her lover's proposal for their union, Julia says:

"Though blind

She loved this little spot. A happy wife

There lived she with her lord. It was a home

In which an only brother, long since dead,

And I, were educated: 'twas to her

As the whole world. Its scanty garden plot,
The hum of bees hived there, which still she heard
On a warm summer's day, the scent of flowers,
The honey-suckle which trailed round its porch,
Its orchard, field, and trees, her universe!—

I knew she could not long be spared to me.

Her sufferings, when alleviated best,
Were most acute and I could best perform
That sacred task. I wished to lengthen out,—
By consecrating to her every moment,—
Her being to myself!" &c.

"Could I leave her?

I might have seen her,—such was D'Ormond's plea-
Each day. But who her evening hours could cheer?
Her long and solitary evening hours?—

Talk her, or haply sing her, to her sleep?

Read to her? Smooth her pillow? Lastly make
Morning seem morning with a daughter's welcome ?
For morning's light ne'er visited her eyes!—
Well! I refused to quit her! D'Ormond grew
Absent, reserved, nay splenetic and petulant!
He left the Province, nor has he once sent
A kind inquiry so t' alleviate

His heavy absence."

Beritola is Italian in form, as much as Wieland's Oberon, but the spirit is that of the Englishman, Charles Lloyd; it contains the same vivid descriptions of mental suffering, the same reflective display of the lover's passion, the same sentiments of deep domestic tenderness uttered as from the heart and with a special air of reality, as The Duke d'Ormond and the author's productions in general. The versification is rather better than that of his earlier poems, but the want of ease and harmony in the flow of the verse is a prevailing defect in Mr. Lloyd's poetry, and often makes it appear prosaic, even where the thought is not so.

This pathetic sonnet is one of a very interesting set, on the death of Priscilla Farmer, the author's maternal grandmother, included in the joint volume:

"Oh, She was almost speechless! nor could hold
Awakening converse with me! (I shall bless

No more the modulated tenderness

Of that dear voice!) Alas, 'twas shrunk and cold
Her honor'd face! yet, when I sought to speak,
Through her half-open'd eyelids she did send

Faint looks, that said, "I would be yet thy friend!" And (O my chok'd breast!) e'en on that shrunk cheek

I saw one slow tear roll! my hand She took,

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Placing it on her heart-I heard her sigh

"Tis too, too much!' 'Twas Love's last agony !

I tore me from Her! 'Twas her latest look,
Her latest accents-Oh my heart, retain
That look, those accents, till we meet again!"

S. C.

CHAPTER IV.

(From Mr. Wordsworth's Stanzas written in my pocket-copy of Thomson's Castle of Indolence.)

"WITH him there often walked in friendly guise,

Or lay upon the moss by brook or tree,
A noticeable Man with large grey eyes,
And a pale face that seemed undoubtedly
As if a blooming face it ought to be ;
Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear,
Deprest by weight of musing Phantasy;

Profound his forehead was, though not severe :

Yet some did think that he had little business here:

"Sweet heaven forefend! his was a lawful right:
Noisy he was, and gamesome as a boy;

His limbs would toss about him with delight,
Like branches when strong winds the trees annoy.
Nor lacked his calmer hours device or toy
To banish listlessness and irksome care;

He would have taught you how you might employ
Yourself; and many did to him repair,—

And certes not in vain; he had inventions rare."

FOR Josiah Wade, the gentleman to whom the letters, placed at the beginning of the last chapter, were written, the fine portrait of Mr. Coleridge by Allston (nearly full length, in oils), was painted at Rome, in 1806,—I believe in the spring of that year. Mr. Allston himself spoke of it, as in his opinion faithfully representing his friend's features and expression, such as they commonly appeared. His countenance, he added, in his high poetic mood, was quite beyond the painter's art: "it was indeed spirit made visible."

Mr. Coleridge was thirty-three years old when this portrait was painted, but it would be taken for that of a man of forty. The youthful, even boy sh look, which the original retained for some years after boy

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hood, must rather suddenly have given place to a premature appearance, first of middle-agedness, then of old age, at least in his general aspect, though in some points of personal appearance, his fair smooth skin and "large grey eye," "at once the clearest and the deepest so a friend lately described them to me," that I ever saw," he grew not old to the last. Serjeant Talfourd thus speaks of what he was at three or four and forty. "Lamb used to say that he was inferior to what he had been in his youth; but I can scarcely believe it; at least there is nothing in his early writing which gives any idea of the richness of his mind so lavishly poured out at this time in his happiest moods. Although he looked much older than he was, his hair being silvered all over, and his person tending to corpulency, there was about him no trace of bodily sickness or mental decay, but rather an air of voluptuous repose. His benignity of manner placed his auditors entirely at their ease; and inclined them to listen delighted to the sweet low tone in which he began to discourse on some high theme. At first his tones were conversational; he seemed to dally with the shallows of the subject and with fantastic images which bordered it: but gradually the thought grew deeper, and the voice deepened with the thought; the stream gathering strength, seemed to bear along with it all things which opposed its progress, and blended them with its current; and stretching away among regions tinted with ethereal colors, was lost at airy distance in the horizon of fancy. Coleridge was sometimes induced to repeat portions of Christabel, then enshrined in manuscript from eyes profane, and gave a bewitching effect to its wizard lines. But more peculiar in its beauty than this was his recitation of Kubla Khan. As he repeated the passage

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his voice seemed to mount and melt into air, as the images grew more visionary, and the suggested associations more remote."

Mr. Dequincey thus describes him at thirty-four, in the summer season of 1807, about a year and a half after the date of Mr. Allston's portrait.

"I had received directions for finding out the house where Coleridge was visiting; and in riding down a main street of Bridgewater, I noticed a gateway corresponding to the description given me. Under this was standing, and gazing about him, a man whom I shall describe. In

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