Jane. He is contented with me, and with home.

Ascham. Ah, Jane! Jane! men of high estate grow tired of contentedness.

Jane. He told me he never liked books unless I read them to him: I will read them to him every evening; I will open new worlds to him, richer than those discovered by the Spaniard: I will conduct him to treasures-oh, what treasures!-on which he may sleep in innocence and peace.

Ascham. Rather do thou walk with him, ride with him, play with him, be his faery, his page, his everything that love and poetry have invented; but watch him well; sport with his fancies, turn them about like the ringlets round his cheek; and if he ever meditate on power, go toss up thy baby to his brow, and bring back his thoughts into his heart by the music of thy discourse.

Teach him to live unto God and unto thee; and he will discover that women, like the plants in woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade.

[SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born on the 20th of October 1772, at Saint Mary Ottery, Devonshire, of which parish his father was the vicar. His early education was in that noble institution, Christ's Hospital; and having there attained the scholastic rank of Grecian, he secured an exhibition to Jesus College, Cambridge, 1791. But he quitted the university without taking a degree, having adopted the democratic opinions of the day in all their extreme results. This boyish enthusiasm eventually subsided into calmer feelings. He gave himself up to what is one of the first duties of man-the formation of his own mind. His character was essentially contemplative. He wanted the energy necessary for a popular writer, and thus people came to fancy that he was an idle dreamer. What he has left behind him will live and fructify when the flashy contributions to the literature of the day of four-fifths of his contemporaries shall have utterly perished. There is no man of our own times who has, incidentally as well as directly, contributed more to produce that revolution in opinion, which has led us from the hard and barren paths of a miscalled utility, to expatiate in the boundless luxuriance of those regions of thought which belong to the spiritual part of our nature, and have something in them higher than a money value. Since Mr Coleridge's death in 1834, some of his

"

works have been collected and republished in a neat form and at a moderate price:-"The Poetical Works," 3 vols. ;-"The Friend, a Series of Essays,' 3 vols. ;-" Aids to Reflection," 2 vols. ;—"On the Constitution of Church and State," I vol. ;-" Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit," I vol. ;—" Literary Remains," 4 vols. To these has lately been added his "Biographia Literaria,' in 2 vols. These publications were chiefly superintended by his accomplished nephew, Mr Henry Nelson Coleridge, whose early death was a public loss. The 'Biographia” was edited by the widow of Mr H. N. Coleridge, the daughter of the poet-the inheritress of the genius of her father, and of the virtues of her husband. She died in 1852.]

"Late, late yestreen I saw the new moon,

With the old moon in her arms;

And I fear, I fear, my master dear,

We shall have a deadly storm!"

L

-Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.

Well! If the bard was weatherwise who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draught, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Æolian lute,
Which better far were mute.

For lo! the new moon, winter-bright!
And overspread with phantom light,
(With swimming phantom light o'erspread,
But rimm'd and circled by a silver thread,)
I see the old moon in her lap, foretelling
The coming on of rain and squally blast.
And oh that even now the gust were swelling,

And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!

Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed,

And sent my soul abroad,

Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,

Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!

II.

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
Stifled, drowsy, unimpassion'd grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief
In word, or sigh, or tear-

O lady in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,
And its peculiar tint of yellow green:
And still I gaze-and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars,
Those stars that glide behind them or between;
Now sparkling, now bedimm'd, but always seen,
Yon crescent moon, as fix'd as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;

I see them all so excellently fair,

I see, not feel how beautiful they are!

III.

My genial spirits fail,

And what can these avail

To lift that smothering weight from off my breast?

It were a vain endeavour,

Though I should gaze for ever

On that green light that lingers in the west:

I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

IV.

O lady! we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does nature live:

Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!

And would we aught behold of higher worth

Than that inanimate cold world allow'd
To the poor loneless ever-anxious crowd,

Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the earth--

And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element !

V.

O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be !
What, and wherein it doth exist,

This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power.

Joy, virtuous lady! Joy that ne'er was given,
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour;
Life and life's effluence, cloud at once and shower:
Joy, lady, is the spirit and the power,

Which wedding nature to us gives in dower,
A new earth and new heaven

Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud-
We in ourselves rejoice!

And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,

All colours a suffusion from that light.

VI.

There was a time when, though my path was rough, This joy within me dallied with distress,

And all misfortunes were but as the stuff

Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness: For hope grew round me, like the twining vine, And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seem'd mine.

But now afflictions bow me down to earth;
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth.
But oh! each visitation

Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of imagination-

For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can ;
And haply by abstruse research to steal

From my own nature all the natural man

This was my sole resource, my only plan;
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.

VII,

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality's dark dream!

I turn from you, and listen to the wind,

Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream
Of agony by torture lengthen'd out

That lute sent forth! Thou wind that rav'st without,
Bare crag, or mountain-tarn,* or blasted tree,
Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb,
Or lonely house, long held the witches' home,
Methinks were fitter instruments for thee,
Mad lutanists! who in this month of showers,
Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,
Mak'st devil's yule, with worse than wintry song,
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among.
Thou actor, perfect in all tragic sounds!
Thou mighty poet, e'en to frenzy bold!
What tell'st thou now about?

'Tis of the rushing of a host in rout,

* Tarn is a small lake, generally if not always applied to the lakes up in the mountains, and which are the feeders of those in the valleys. This address to the storm-wind will not appear extravagant to those who have heard it at night, and in a mountainous country.