"The wind from Skiddaw and Borrowdale was often as loud as wind need be," this was his highly characteristic preparation," and many a walk in the clouds and mountains did I take; but all would not do." He had found the natale solum of Christabel among these clouds and mountains, the poem conceived, and partly written, before he had seen with bodily eyes this dreamland of natural beauty! Here stood the castle of Sir Leoline; and somewhere,

"From Bratha Head to Wyndermere," Christabel, in the dim forest, met the stately demon-lady, Geraldine, "most beautiful to see. Where else but among the Langdale Pikes, in

"Dungeon-ghyll so foully rent,"

and in the shadowy depths of Borrow dale, could have been the scene of the weird story? And,

66 With ropes were not the echoes still sounding over the mystic vales?

of rock and bells of air,"

Within a few weeks Coleridge managed to shake off his lethargy, and he composed the second part of the poem. An alien spirit at his side reached over and wrote, in invisible ink, at the foot of the manuscript, "Finis."

Coleridge, in after life, was wont to detail his complete conception of the poem; but a spell was always upon him, and the golden day never dawned when he could again take up the task. It became famous in manuscript form; and fortunate were those who were privileged to listen to the wondrously interpretative recitation of the poem from the lips of the author. It was not published until 1816. Even then-strangely enough, after its wide appreciation in literary circles—it met with little but contempt and depreciation ("a notable piece of impertinence" was Hazlitt's verdict in the Edinburgh Review), and its author with abuse.

The removal of Coleridge to the Lake District marked a climax; with everything apparently propitious in the change, it led directly to the supreme tragedy of his life. This turned upon the loss of his health. It is possible that the climate did not agree with him; but early in his residence he seems to have brought upon himself, by careless exposure in inclement weather, he would even take long rambles in the mountains in the midst of wild storms, a condition of acute rheumatism and gout which was marked by excruciating inflammation of the eyes, swelling of joints and muscles, with all duly attendant neuralgic tortures. The antidote which he was duped into using became, alas, his tyrant; and for a term of years he was under its mastery. At last, however, the inherent nobleness of his character asserted itself.

We all know the beautiful picture of Coleridge in the last eighteen years of his life, surrounded by the best men of his time, including particularly the aspiring spirits of the younger generation, who drank in those inspired monologues the account of which has always piqued the interest of those who have only the reverberations of their fame. The Coleridge of those days a man of the same ardent affections, still the same genial companion, and with all those intellectual qualities which affected with a sense of wonder, almost of the miraculous, every one who saw him was separated by a great gulf from the Coleridge who came to the Lake District in 1800. His poetical production ceased abruptly after the breaking down of his health. The magnificent ode Dejection, written in 1802, marks a sad boundary. The grand organ strains of this pathetic poem are weighted with a depth of tragic import. It was a momentous personal experience which found expression at the very beginning of a period extending through years of great depression and general disaster in his life. The poem emphasizes, too, the turning-point of his liter

ary career. Thenceforth he was absorbed in the evolution of his profound philosophical ideas. He had, even in his boyhood, as he says, bewildered himself in metaphysics. "Still, there was a long and blessed interval," he reflects, "during which my natural faculties were allowed to expand, and my original tendencies to develop themselves; my fancy, and the love of nature, and the sense of beauty in forms and sounds." Something of this happy interregnum lingered for the first year or two of the Keswick life.

Within a few weeks after Coleridge's family were settled in Greta Hall, his third son, Derwent, was born, and named, patriarchal fashion (Genesis xxx. 11), from the beautiful lake spreading before his opening eyes. He was to become a clergyman, learned, wonderful in linguis tic acquirements, and the revered head of St. Mark's College, a straiter Churchman by far than his father ever was. He died in 1883. Sara, two years younger, was the only daughter; she was the editor of her father's works, and displayed remarkable talents, an estimable, hardheaded lady, with no heritage of genius. Southey came with his family in 1803 to occupy the large house in partnership with his brother-in-law; and thenceforward, through his long, industrious life as a literary worker, the place was identified with his name. But no distinction pertains to Greta Hall equaling the circumstance that under its roof Christabel and Dejection were written. The next year Coleridge went to Malta, in a vain pursuit of health. After his return, three years later, his stay in the Lake District was irregular, and about 1810 came to an end.

Coleridge left little impress of his personality in a legendary way. But his residence in Keswick and Grasmere was long enough to include him in the so-called Lake School of poets, a popular delusion generated by the rancorous stupidity of the writers of the Edinburgh Re

view. That there was no such "school" was sufficiently apparent, alone, from Southey's being named with Wordsworth as one of its leaders, Southey, whose poetry, such as it is, would seem far enough remote from the other's to preclude that classification by the dullest critic. But there was a very real and practical effect of the abuse which had periodical vent under this nickname. Even now, no generous spirit can avoid a twinge of indignation in recurring to the detraction which seriously injured for many years the prosperity of the lives of such men as Wordsworth and Coleridge. In lesser ways, even, the influence of the great literary magnate was potent; it penetrated the bucolic shades of those mountain valleys where the poets had made their home, and actually served to diminish the respect held for them by their neighbors, whether gentry or yeomen! The situation was certainly not without its humorous aspect.

Hartley - "the strange, strange boy, exquisitely wild," as his father writes of him, "who moves in a circle of light of his own making" was the Coleridge who was to become identified with the Lake District. He was four years old when brought there; and for the half-century, nearly, of life which remained to him it was his home. He inherited too large a dower of his father's weaknesses; but along with that came no meagre portion of his genius, as his desultory literary remains, especially the wonderful beauty of his sonnets, testify. For those who are curious in matters of heredity there is a singular story of a coincidence in the lives of this father and son. I have referred to the experience of the former at the Salutation and Cat, where his eloquence was found so valuable a help to the landlord's till. When Hartley came to manhood, far in the north of England, an innkeeper in the Lake District made to him precisely the same offer which had been made to his father, free entertainment, if only he would

66

MONTAIGNE and Howell's Letters," says Thackeray," are my bedside books. If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They talk about themselves forever, and don't weary me. I like to hear them tell their old stories over and over again. I read them in the dozy hours, and only half remember them."

In the frank veracity of this last confession there lies a pleasant truth which it is wholesome to hear from such excellent and undisputed authority. Many people have told us about the advantage of remembering what we read, and have imparted severe counsels as to ways and means. Thackeray and Charles Lamb alone have ventured to hint at the equal delight of forgetting, and of returning to some well-loved volume with recollections softened into an agreeable haze. Lamb, indeed, with characteristic impatience, sighed for the waters of Lethe that he might have more than his due; that he might grasp a double portion of those serene pleasures of which his was no niggardly share. "I feel as if I had read all the books I want to read," he wrote disconsolately to Bernard Barton. "Oh! to forget Fielding, Steele, etc., and read 'em new!'

This is a wistful fancy in which many of us have had our share. There come moments of doubt and discontent when even a fresh novel fills us with shivery apprehensions. We pick it up reluctantly, and look at it askance, as though it were a dose of wholesome medicine. We linger sadly for a moment on the brink; and then, warm in our hearts, comes the memory of happier hours when we first read Guy Mannering, or The Scarlet Letter, or Persuasion; when we first forgot the world in David Copperfield, or raced at headlong speed, with tingling veins and bated breath, through the mar

velous Woman in White. Alas! why were we so ravenous in our youth? Like the Prodigal Son, we consumed all our fortune in a few short years, and now the husks, though very excellent husks indeed, and highly recommended for their nourishing and stimulating qualities by the critic doctors of the day, seem to our jaded tastes a trifle dry and savorless. If only we could forget the old, beloved books, and "read 'em new"! With many this is not possible, for the impression which they make is too vivid to be obliterated, or even softened, by time. We may re-read them, if we choose. We do re-read them often, for the sake of lingering repeatedly over each familiar page, but we can never" read 'em new.” The thrill of anticipation, the joyous pursuit, the sustained interest, the final satisfaction, faction, all these sensations of delight belong to our earliest acquaintance with literature. They are part of the sunshine which gilds the halcyon days of youth.

But other books there be, and it is well for us that this is so, - whose tranquil mission is to soothe our grayer years. These faithful comrades are the "bedside" friends whom Thackeray loved, to whom he returned night after night in the dozy hours, and in whose generous companionship he found respite from the fretful cares of day. These are the volumes which should stand on a sacred shelf apart, and over them a bust of Hermes, god of good dreams and quiet slumbers, whom the wise ancients honored soberly, as having the best of all guerdons in his keeping. As for the company on that shelf, there is room and to spare for poets, and novelists, and letter-writers; room for those "large, still books" so dear to Tennyson's soul, and for essays, and gossipy memoirs, and gentle, old-time manuals of devotion, and ghost lore, untainted by

modern research, and for the "lying, readable histories," which grow every year rarer and more beloved. There is no room for self-conscious realism picking its little steps along; nor for socialistic dramas, hot with sin; nor ethical problems, disguised as stories; nor "heroes of complex, psychological interest," whatever they may mean; nor inarticulate verse; nor angry, anarchical reformers; nor dismal records of vice and disease parading in the covers of a novel. These things are all admirable in their way, but they are not the books which the calm Hermes takes under his benign protection. Dull, even, they may be, and provocative of slumber; but the road to fair dreams lies now, as in the days of the heroes, through the shining portals of ivory.

Montaigne and James Howell, then, were Thackeray's bedside favorites, "the Perigourdin gentleman, and the priggish little clerk of King Charles's Council;" and with these two "dear old friends" he whiled away many a midnight hour. The charm of both lay, perhaps, not merely in their diverting gossip, nor in their wide acquaintance with men and life, but in their serene and enviable uncontentiousness. Both knew how to follow the sagacious counsel of Marcus Aurelius, and save themselves a world of trouble by having no opinions on a great variety of subjects. "I seldom consult others," writes Montaigne placidly, "and am seldom attended to; and I know no concern, either public or private, which has been mended or bettered by my advice." Ah! what a man was there! What a friend to have and to hold! What a courtier, and what a country gentleman! It is pleasant to think that this embodiment of genial tolerance was a contemporary of John Calvin's; that this fine scholar, to whom a few books were as good as many, lived unfretted by the angry turbulence of men all bent on pulling the world in their own narrow paths. What wonder

that Thackeray forgave him many sins for the sake of his leisurely charm and wise philosophy! In fact, James Howell, the "priggish little clerk," was not withheld by his priggishness from relating a host of things which are hardly fit to hear. Those were not reticent days, and men wrote freely about matters which it is perhaps as healthy and as agreeable to let alone. But Howell was nevertheless a sincere Churchman as well as a sincere Royalist. He was sound throughout; and if he lacked the genius and the philosophy of Montaigne, he was his equal in worldly knowledge and in tolerant good temper. He heard, enjoyed, and repeated all the gossip of foreign courts, all the "severe jests" which passed from lip to lip. He loved the beauty of Italy, the wit of France, the spirit of the Netherlands, and the valor of Spain. The first handsome woman that earth ever saw, he tells us, was made of Venice glass, as beautiful and as brittle as are her descendants to-day. Moreover, "Eve spake Italian, when Adam was seduced;" for in that beguiling tongue, in those soft, persuasive accents, she felt herself to be most irresistible.

There is really, as Thackeray well knew, a great deal of pleasing information to be gathered from the Familiar Letters, and no pedagogic pride, no spirit of carping criticism, mars their delightful flavor. The more wonderful the tale, the more serene the composure with which it is narrated. Howell sees in Holland a church monument "where an earl and a lady are engraven, with three hundred and sixty-five children about them, which were all delivered at one birth." Nay, more, he sees two basins in which they were christened, and the bishop's name who did it, not yet two hundred years ago; "so what reasonable room is left for doubt? He tells us the well-authenticated story of the bird with a white breast which visited every member of the Oxenham fam

"the