POET, PHILOSOPHER, CRITIC, AND THEOLOGIAN.

JOLERIDGE was one of the strangest men who have made their mark in literature. Carlyle has described him in these words: "Brow and head were round and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute; his deep eyes of light hazel were as full of sorrow as inspiration; the whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute, heavy laden, highly aspired, and full of much suffering and meaning." Coleridge could read the Bible at three years; at six he delighted in "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Arabian Nights." He was entered as a charity pupil at Christ's Hospital, London, and his later education was obtained at Cambridge. Finding himself slightly in debt, he left the University and enlisted in the dragoons under an assumed name; but after a few months' service his friends obtained his discharge. With Southey he planned an ideal republic, to be located on the Susquehanna, and to be called "The Pantisocracy"; but as not one of the directors had money sufficient to transport him to America, they abandoned their Utopian project.

He married a Miss Fricker, a sister to Mrs. Southey, and for a time lived in the neighborhood of Wordsworth, near Grasmere. Here he wrote most of his best poetry, including "The Ode to the Departing Year," "The Ancient Mariner," and "Christabel." Coleridge was at this time a Unitarian in religion, and used to preach without compensation for the congregations of that faith.. Receiving an annuity of one hundred and fifty pounds from wealthy admirers, he was enabled to travel in Germany. On his return he issued a periodical called The Friend, which, however, endured for less than a year. the use of opium to allay his sufferings from completely under the dominion of the drug, so Bristol he was unable to keep his engagement.

Some years before he had begun neuralgia, and he had now come that when he tried to lecture in So complete was his failure that

He had

he at last placed himself under the care of a physician in a suburb of London, where he passed in retirement the remaining nineteen years of his life. some years before abandoned his wife and three children to the care of Southey. The opium habit appears to have been overcome, and in his later years he wrote much prose, including the "Lay Sermons," " Biographia Literaria,” and 'Aids to Reflection." The house of Dr. Gillman became a great resort of cultivated people, who delighted in the brilliant talk of Coleridge. He was always so delightful a talker that in his youthful days, Lamb tells us, his landlord was ready to give him free entertainment because his conversation attracted so many customers. His manner was always animated and sometimes violent; as Wordsworth says:

"His limbs would toss about him with delight

Like branches when strong winds the trees annoy."

The literary character of Coleridge has been said to resemble some vast unfinished palace. His mind was dreamy. No man probably ever thought more or more intensely; but few of his works are really worthy of his genius.

THE ADIEU OF THE ANCIENT MARINER.

JORTHWITH this frame of mine was