of his nose. His head was very small, the ear delicately formed, and the forehead, which receded slightly, very wide and expansive. His hands and feet were also small and delicate. His countenance, when in repose, or rather in stillness, was stern and thoughtful in the extreme, indicating deep and passionate meditation, so much so as to be at times almost startling. His low bow on entering a room, in which there were ladies or strangers, gave a formality to his address, which wore at first the appearance of constraint; but when he began to talk, these impressions were presently changed, he threw off the seeming weight of years, his countenance became genial, and his manner free and gracious.-COLERIDGE, DERWENT, 1851, Memoir of Hartley Coleridge by his Brother, Poems, vol. 1, pp. cxxxiv, cxxxvi.

The gentle, humble-hearted, highly gifted man, "Dear Hartley," as my father called him, dreamed through a life of error, loving the good and hating the evil, yet unable to resist it. His companionship was always delightful to the Professor, and many hours of converse they held; his best and happiest moments were those spent at Elleray. My father had a great power over him, and exerted it with kind but firm determination. On one occasion he was kept imprisoned for some weeks under his surveillance, in order that he might finish some literary work he had promised to have ready by a certain time. He completed his task, and when the day of release came, it was not intended that he should leave Elleray. But Hartley's evil demon was at hand; without one word of adieu to the friends in whose presence he stood, off he ran at full speed down the avenue, lost to sight amid the trees, seen again in the open highway still running, until the sound of his far-off footsteps gradually died away in the distance, and he himself was hidden, not in the groves of the valley but in some obscure den, where, drinking among low companions, his mind was soon brought to a level with theirs. Then these clouds would after a time pass away, and he again returned to the society of those who could appreciate him, and who never ceased to love him. Every one loved Hartley Coleridge; there was something in his appearance that evoked kindliness. Extremely boyish in aspect, his juvenile air was aided not a little

by his general mode of dress, a dark blue cloth round jacket, white trousers, black silk handkerchief tied loosely round his throat; sometimes a straw hat covered his head, but more frequently it was bare, showing his black, thick, short, curling hair. His eyes were large, dark, and expressive, and a countenance almost sad in expression, was relieved by the beautiful smile which lighted it up from time to time. The tone of his voice was musically soft. He excelled in reading, and very often read aloud to my mother.-GORDON, MRS., 1862, "Christopher North," A Memoir of John Wilson, ed. Mackenzie, p. 311.

But for the evil habit that preyed upon him he had been a great man. One of his friends has spoken of him as sometimes like the lofty column which the simoon raises in its mighty breath; the inspiration of great passion ceasing, there remained. only the desert sand over which the serpent crawls. Poor Hartley waged unceasing war with his serpent, but never quite conquered it.-CONWAY, MONCURE D., 1880, The English Lakes and Their Genii, Harper's Magazine, vol. 62, p. 177.

Who is not subdued into thoughtful pity by the legend, "By Thy Cross and Passion," that tells us of the struggle that poor Hartley Coleridge made, as he went from darkness into light? Yes, long as men with poetic susceptibilities to all evil, as well as all good, press on their way of tears to Him who wore the crown of thorns, that tombstone with its double garland of oakleaf and of thorn, and its touching inscription, may do for their souls as much as all the verse he wrote, whose sonnet "On Prayer" is one of the sweetest in our language,-Hartley, the laureate for innocent childhood hereabout, who found "pain was his guest" long before he entered the painlessness of Grasmere churchyard mould.-RAWNSLEY, H. D., 1894, Literary Associations of the English Lakes, vol. II, p. 171.

While my father was in the Lake Country he fell in with Hartley Coleridge, who discussed Pindar with him, calling Pindar "The Newmarket Poet." "Hartley was wonderfully eloquent," my father said, "and I suspect resembled his father in that respect. I liked Hartley, Massa' Hartley. I remember that on one occasion Hartley was asked to dine with the family of a stiff Presbyterian clergyman, residing in

the Lake district. The party sat a long time in the drawing-room waiting for dinner. Nobody talked. At last Hartley could stand it no longer, he jumped up from the sofa, kissed the clergyman's daughter, and bolted out of the house. He was very eccentric, a sun-faced little man. He once went on a walking tour with some friends. They suddenly missed him, and could not find him anywhere, and did not see him again for six weeks, when he emerged from some inn. He was a loveable little fellow."-TENNYSON, HALLAM, 1897, Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir, vol. I, p. 153.

It was a strange thing to see Hartley Coleridge fluctuating about the room, now with one hand on his head, now with both hands expanded like a swimmer's. There was some element wanting in his being. He could do everything but keep his footing, and doubtless in his inner world of thought, it was easier for him to fly than to walk, and to walk than to stand. There seemed to be no gravitating principle in him. One might have thought he needed stones in his pockets to prevent his being blown away.-DEVERE, AUBREY, 1897, Recollections, p. 134.

SONNETS

The whole series of sonnets with which the earliest and best work of Hartley began is (with a casual episode on others) mainly and essentially a series on himself. Perhaps there is something in the structure of the sonnet rather adapted to this species of composition. It is too short for narrative, too artificial for the intense passions, too complex for the simple, too elaborate for the domestic; but in an impatient world where there is not a premium on selfdescribing, who so would speak of himself must be wise and brief, artful and composed and in these respects he will be aided by the concise dignity of the tranquil sonnet.-BAGEHOT, WALTER, 1852, Hartley Coleridge, Works, ed. Morgan, vol. 1, p. 70.

Poor Hartley Coleridge, who promised so much and performed so little, produced many sonnets, and is, as a sonnet-writer, as far in front of his father as he is behind his father's friend. NOBLE, JAMES ASHCROFT, 1880, The Sonnet in England and other Essays, p. 43.

There is a grace, a sweetness, a sense of shy, secluded beauty in his sonnets, which separate him from the poets of his time as surely as the odes of Collins separate him from the versifiers of his time, and which have given him an enduring though not a lofty place among the sonneteers of England. - STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY, 1881, The Sonnet in English Poetry, Scribner's Monthly, vol. 22, p. 921.

Hartley Coleridge now ranks among the foremost sonneteers in our language: as in the case of Charles Tennyson Turner, his reputation rests solely on his sonnetwork. Notwithstanding the reverent admiration he had for his more famous father, Hartley's work betrays much more. the influence of Wordsworth than of S. T. Coleridge. In this a wise instinct indutiably guided him. ably guided him. His father was not a sonneteer. There is a firmness of handling, a quiet autumnal tenderness and loveliness about Hartley's sonnets that endows them with an endless charm for all who care for poetic beauty.-SHARP, WILLIAM, 1886, Sonnets of this Century, p. 282, note.

GENERAL

With strong feeling, a bright fancy, and a facility of versification, there is yet a certain hard resemblance in the poems of the father, which may perhaps be termed an unconscious mechanism of the faculties, acting under the associations of love. His designs want invention, and his rhapsodies abandonment. His wildness does not look quite spontaneous, but as if it blindly followed something erratic. The mirth seems rather forced; but the love and the melancholy are his own. Hartley Coleridge has a sterling vein of thought in him, without a habit and order of thought. It is extremely probable that he keeps his best things to himself. His father talked his best thoughts, so that somebody had the benefit of them; his son for the most part keeps his for his own bosom.HORNE, RICHARD HENGIST, 1844, A New Spirit of the Age, p. 156.

The influence of Wordsworth's peculiar

genius is more discernible in the productions of Hartley Coleridge than that of his father, more especially in the Sonnets, which, I venture to think, may sustain a comparison with those of the elder writer. Their port is indeed less majestic, they have less dignity of purpose, and, particularly in combination, are less weighty in effect; but taken as single compositions, they are not less graceful, or less fraught with meaning; they possess a softer if not a deeper pathos, they have at least as easy a flow and as perfect an arrangement. A tender and imaginative fancy plays about the thought, and as it were lures it forward, raising an expectation which is fully satisfied. Indeed, if I am not wholly mistaken, there will be found among these sonnets, models of composition comparable to those of the greatest masters.-COLERIDGE, DERWENT, 1851, Memoir of Hartley Coleridge by his Brother, Poems, vol. I, p. clxxv.

Beautiful and touching as these poems are, we are by no means sure that the editor is right in supposing that it is as a poet that his brother will be best remembered. He was a clear, earnest, and original thinker; and he delivered his thoughts in a manner so perspicuous and lively, with the peculiar humour of his own character so shining through, that his essays, which would be worth studying for the sense they contain, though the style were dull, are among the pleasantest things to read in the language. When all are gathered together they will fill, we suppose, several moderatesized volumes. If so, and if we are not greatly mistaken as to the quality of the volumes which are to come, we may surely (without raising vain questions as to what he might have done if he had not been what he was) say that the last half of his life, though spent in cloud and shadow, has not been spent in vain. SPEDDING, JAMES, 1851, Hartley Coleridge, Reviews and Discussions Literary, Political and Historical, Not Relating to Bacon, p. 315.

In the execution of minor verses, we think we could show that Hartley should have the praise of surpassing his father; but nevertheless it would be absurd, on a general view, to compare the two men, Samuel Taylor was so much bigger. What there was in his son was equally good, perhaps, but then there was not much of

it; outwardly and inwardly he was essentially little. In poetry, for example, the father has produced two longish poems which have worked themselves right down to the extreme depths of the popular memory, and stay there very firmly; in part from their strangeness, but in part from their power. Of Hartley, nothing of this kind is to be found. He could not write connectedly: he wanted steadiness of purpose or efficiency of will to write so voluntarily; and his genius did not, involuntarily and out of its unseen workings, present him with continuous creations,-on the contrary, his mind teemed with little fancies, and a new one came before the first had attained any enormous magnitude. As his brother observed, he wanted "back thought." BAGEHOT, WALTER, 1852, Hartley Coleridge, Works, ed. Morgan, vol. I, p. 73.

Hartley Coleridge's poetry reminds the reader of Wordsworth in nearly every line, though it is Wordsworth diluted; and at its best, the Lake poetry cannot bear much dilution. Excepting in the sonnets which relate to his own personal unhappiness, the poems sound like the echoes of other poets, rather than welling warm from the writer's own heart. And though, in the personal sonnets referred to, he paints his purposeless life and blighted career in terse and poetic language, it were perhaps better that they had not been written at all. His poems addressed to childhood are perhaps the most charming things in the collection. For poor Hartley loved children, and they returned his love. loved women, too, but at a distance; and his despondency at his own want of personal attractions for them is a frequent theme of his poetry.-SMILES, SAMUEL, 1860, Brief Biographies, p. 149.

He

Hartley Coleridge always classed himself among "the small poets," and it is true he was not born for great and splendid achievements; but there are some writers for whom our affection would be less if they were stronger, more daring, more successful; and Hartley Coleridge is one of these. A great poet is a

toiler, even when his toil is rapturous. Hartley Coleridge did not and perhaps could not toil. Good thoughts came to him as of free grace; gentle pleasures possessed his senses; loving-kindnesses flowed from his heart, and took as they

flowed shadows and colours from his imagination; and all these mingled and grew mellow. And so a poet's moods expressed themselves in his verse; but he built no lofty rhyme. The sonnet, in which a thought and a feeling are wedded helpmates suited his genius; and of his many delightful sonnets some of the best are immediate transcripts of the passing mood of joy or pain. . . . All that Hartley Coleridge has written is genuine, full of nature, sweet, fresh, breathing charity and reconciliation. His poems of self-portrayal are many, and of these not a few are pathetic with sense of change and sorrowing selfcondemnation; yet his penitence had a silver side of hope, and one whose piety was so unaffected, whose faith though "thinner far than vapour" had yet outlived all frowardness, could not desperately upbraid even his weaker self.-DOWDEN, EDWARD, 1880, The English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. IV, pp. 518, 519.

His poems are full of graceful beauty, but almost all fall below the level of high poetry. They are not sufficiently powerful for vivid remembrance, and are much too good for oblivion.

His striking frag

ment of "Prometheus" almost seems an exception; but although his brother attributes it to an earlier period, it is plainly composed under the influence of Shelley. The one species of composition in which he is a master is the sonnet, which precisely suited both his strength and his limitations. His sonnets are among the most perfect in the language.-GARNETT, RICHARD, 1887, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XI, p. 300.

He saw with his own singular vision, felt with his own peculiar feelings, and spoke as if he were the first medium of expression; but true poet as he was he has made us realise also. He saw nature through rainbows, and he has left us the prisms of his poems.

He wrote rapidly, and rarely with a pause, and became such an adept at the sonnet that he could usually complete one subject to revision-within ten minutes. This is quite in keeping with the remarkable lucidity of his sonnets. From the first word to the last they sing themselves into a natural and gratifying silence. No more was intended by the writer; no more is needed by the reader. Bowles has the sonorous simplicity of Handel; but Hartley Coleridge has the sweet probing

subtlety of Mozart.-TIREBUCK, WILLIAM, 1887, ed., The Poetical Works of Bowles, Lamb and Hartley Coleridge, Introduction, p. xxx.

The son of a poet, and the son, by adoption, of two other poets, Hartley Coleridge might have proved his relationship to the Triumvirate of the Lakes more surely than he did if his career had not prematurely been blasted. His verse is not much read now, I fancy, but it ought to be, for it is better than the strong lines which are the fashion in this critical age.-STODDARD, RICHARD HENRY, 1892, Under the Evening Lamp, p. 199.

His "Prometheus," a dramatic fragment, although regarded by S. T. Coleridge as "full of promise," is poor indeed when compared with such poems as Keats's "Hyperion," or Shelley's "Alastor." And as regards the shorter lyrical poems which he composed, it must be admitted that, with one or two exceptions, they are somewhat thin and vapid. They indicate, it is true, considerable facility in writing, and much genial sympathy and kindness of heart, but they also discover, on the other hand, a feeble intellectual grip, and a defective insight into the facts and realities of the world in which we live. Very different, however, must be our criticism respecting his sonnets. The greatest poets-Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, and Wordsworth-have, for the most part, written the finest sonnets; Hartley Coleridge was not a great poet, but, as his brother Derwent justly observed, his sonnets will sustain comparison with those by Wordsworth. WADDINGTON, SAMUEL, 1894, The Poets and the Poetry of the Century, John Keats to Lord Lytton, ed. Miles, p. 136.

Many of the miscellaneous poems contain beautiful things. But on the whole the greatest interest of Hartley Coleridge is that he is the first and one of the best examples of a kind of poet who is sometimes contemned, who has been very frequently in this century, but who is dear to the lover of poetry, and productive of delightful things. This kind of poet is wanting, it may be, in what is briefly, if not brutally, called originality. He might not sing much if others had not sung and were not singing around him; he does not sing very much even as it is, and the notes of his song are not extraordinarily piercing