ment as it would be for a man to write with his right hand who should have been condemned as a penance to write with his left. Yet what we might do against our will, becomes our will at last, and perhaps I feel some awkwardness when I leave the dry, uninteresting and mechanical works of the office to discourse with you on Coleridge's lectures; I find I am a bad reporter, and that I have not the art of condensing the spirit of an hour's declamation into a page of post paper. However, you will kindly accept all I can give you.

I have only two lectures to speak about, and shall not pretend to speak of them in the order in which Coleridge spoke, since there was no order in his speaking. I came in late one day and found him in the midst of a deduction of the origin of the fine arts from the necessities of our being, which a friend who accompanied me could make neither head nor tail of, because he had not studied German metaphysics.

The first "free art" of man (Architecture) arose from the impulse to make his habitation beautiful. The second arose from the instinct to provide himself food. The third was the love of dress. Here C. atoned for his metaphysics by his gallantry; he declared that the passion for dress in females has been the great cause of the civilization of mankind. "When I behold the ornaments which adorn a beautiful woman, I see the mirror of that instinct which leads man not to be content with what is necessary or useful, but impels him to the beautiful." 4. From the necessity of self-defence springs the military art, and this has produced the keenest sense of honor, the finest sensibility, the character of a gentleman. 5. The ornaments of speech are cloquence and poetry. Here C. distinguished these arts by the characteristic, that poetry is a general impulse:-he might have said, it gives the character of what is universal to what still remains particular. Eloquence impels to particular acts. “Let us rise against Philip," said the Athenians when Demosthenes sat down, for Demosthenes had been eloquent. Apropos, Kant observes that the oration treats an affair of business, as if it were a thing of imagination, while the poet handles a work of fancy, as if it were a matter of business. Kant speaks (and Schiller expatiates on this) of the method of the two artists. C. refers to the principle of the arts, but both assertions amount to the same thing. In this same lecture Coleridge contrived to work into his speech

Kant's admirably profound definition of the naïf, that it is nature putting art to shame; and he also digressed into a vehement but well-merited declamation against those soi-disant philosophers, who deny the nobler powers of man, his idealizing poetic faculty, and degrade him to the beast and declared he could not think of Buffon without horror;-an assertion with which I sympathize, and which is far less exceptionable than his abuse of Voltaire.

Here are metaphysics enough for the present. Now for a critical remark or two.-Of Shakspeare C. observed, that he alone preserved the individuality of his characters without losing his own. High moral feeling is to be deduced from, though it is not in, Shakspeare, for the sentiment of his age was less pure than that of the preceding. Not a vicious passage in all Shakspeare, though there are many which are gross (for grossness depends on the age). Shakspeare surpasses all poets, 1st, in the purity of his female characters. (N.B. He declared his conviction that no part of Richard III. except the character of Richard, was written by Shakspeare, doubtless with a silent reference to the disgusting character of Lady Anne.) They have no Platonic refinement, but are perfect wives, mothers, &c. Secondly, he is admirable for the close union of morality and passion. Shakspeare conceived that these should never be separated; in this differing from the Greek who reserved the chorus for the morality. The truth he teaches he told in character and with passion. They are the "sparks from heated iron." They have all a higher worth than their insulated sententious import bespeaks. A third characteristic is this, that Shakspeare's observation was preceded by contemplation. "He first conceived what the forms of things must be, and then went humbly to the oracle of nature to ask whether he was right. He inquired of her as a sovereign: he did not gossip with her. Shakspeare describes feelings which not observation could teach. Shakspeare made himself all characters-he left out parts of himself and supplied what might have been in himself-nothing was given him but the canvass. ("This fact does honor to human nature, for it shows that the seeds of all that is noble and good are in man: they require only to be developed.") This canvass which Shakspeare used, formed his stories. The absurdity of his tales has often been a reproach to Shakspeare from those who did not comprehend him, as John

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son, Pope, &c. But Shakspeare had nothing to do with the probability of the histories. It was enough for him that they had found their way among the people. Every body admitted them to be true, though childish in the extreme. There was once upon a time a king who had three daughters, and he said to them, " tell me how you love me, and I will give my kingdom to her that loves me best." And so one daughter said, &c. &c. From such stuff as this Shakspeare has produced the most wonderful work of human genius, as in Othello he produced the most perfect work. "In the three first acts he carried human feelings to the utmost height, therefore in the two following they seem to sink and become feeble: as, after the bursting of the storm, we behold the scattered clouds dispersed over the heavens."

Coleridge's digressions are not the worst parts of his lectures, or rather, he is always digressing. He quoted Mrs. Barbauld under the appellation of "an amiable lady," who had asked how Richardson was inferior to Shakspeare? Richardson, he allowed, evinces an exquisite perception of minute feeling, but there is a want of harmony, a vulgarity in his sentiment; he is only interesting. Shakspeare on the contrary elevates and instructs. Instead of referring to our ordinary situations and common feelings he emancipates us from them, and when most remote from ordinary life is most interesting. I should observe, this depreciation of the interesting in poetry is one of the most characteristic features of the new German criticism. It is always opposed by Schiller to the beautiful, and is considered as a very subordinate merit indeed. Hence the severity of the attacks on Kotzebue, who certainly is more interesting to nineteen out of twenty than Shakspeare. C. took occasion, on mentioning Richardson to express his opinions of the immorality of his novels. The lower passions of our nature are kept through seven or eight volumes, in a hot-bed of interest. Fielding's is far less pernicious; "for the gusts of laughter drive away sensuality."

P.S. Coleridge called Voltaire “ a petty scribbler." I oppose to this common-place, in which aversion is compounded with contempt, Goethe's profound and cutting remark: It has been found that certain monarchs unite all the talents and powers of their race. It was thus with Louis XIV. and it is so with auIn this sense it may be said that Voltaire is the greatest

thors.

of all conceivable Frenchmen." I abhor Bonaparte as the gates of hell, yet I smile at the drivellers who cry out c'est un bon caporal. Damn 'em both if you will, but don't despise them.

PROSPECTUS OF LECTURES IN 1811.

LONDON PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, SCOTS CORPORATION HALL, CRANE COURT, FLEET STREET.

MR. COLERIDGE will commence on Monday, Nov. 18th, a Course of Lectures on Shakspeare and Milton, in Illustration of the principles of Poetry, and their Application as grounds of criticism to the most popular works of later English Poets, those of the Living included.

After an introductory Lecture on false criticism (especially in Poetry), and on its causes two thirds of the remaining course will be assigned, 1st, to a philosophical analysis and explanation of all the principal characters of our great Dramatist, as Othello, Falstaff, Richard III., Iago, Hamlet, &c. and 2d, to a critical comparison of Shakspeare, in respect of Diction, Imagery, Management of the Passions, Judgment in the construction of his Dramas, in short of all that belongs to him as a Poet, and as a dramatic Poet, with his contemporaries, or immediate successors, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, &c., in the endeavor to determine what of Shakspeare's merits and defects are common to him with other writers of the same age, and what remain peculiar to his own Genius.

The course will extend to fifteen Lectures, which will be given on Monday and Thursday evenings successively. The Lectures to commence at half-past seven o'clock.