incidents less daring and romantic; there is little in it merely to gratify the curiosity of the ardent and inquisitive. Poetry is slow o. movement compared to fiction. It is surrounded with such a stately train of sentiments, images, and reflections-with such graceful descriptions, and such delicate analogies, that the rapidity of its motion is impeded it marches also to the cadence of its own measured harmony. The very rhythm of poetry is as a golden fetter that impedes the full freedom of its step, but does not mar the gentle elegance of its movement. There is, too, a harmonising, modifying power, which softens and subdues the violent contrasts, and dazzling lights and shades, in which the novelist delights to dwell. The Iliad keeps no reader in breathless astonishment at the marvellous grandeur of its incidents, nor hurries and impels him with insatiable curiosity from one surprise to a greater still. The story of the Eneid hardly moves a passion, and scarcely ever commands a tear; yet though the empire of the poem is far weaker at first (for nothing can for the moment equal the impulse of curiosity) than that of the romantic fiction, it is nevertheless one which improves in the same ratio as the other decays, which receives at every perusal fresh accession of strength, and the power of which, when established and acknowledged, never can decay. Who ever thinks of the fable, of the invention of the successive events, when he takes up the Eneid?-Characters more attractive than that of Æneas or Turnus, and incidents more affecting than the death of Dido, can easily be imagined. If that poem delights us from youth to age-if its beauties never pall upon us, it surely does not arise from any superior illusion it creates of the reality of its fictions. In that respect it yields to the most vulgar production of the day, and Macbeth itself is inferior to the Mysteries of Udolpho. Poetry, therefore, it is clear, retains its power over our minds, not so much by creating an illusion, by which its fictions are made real, but by the more sober and chastened delights which it imparts to the cultivated taste, to the imagination, and the finer sensibilities of the mind; by the beautiful associations it awakens, and the pure, select thoughts, images, and feelings to which it gives rise. To these we can assign no date when they shall no longer please; and a fine poem may be read for the thousandth time with the same delight as at the first; nay, as our taste becomes more refined, and our poetical sensibility more delicate, new beauties will waken and start up that we had not before recognised. As we move on through the poetic landscape that blooms around, its verdure and fragrance will be more and more attractive; flowers of a brighter colour will be springing round our feet; gleams of richer and more purpureal lights will invest the scene; and we shall catch at intervals, as it comes swelling on the breeze, from the enchanted horn, tones that we never heard before, of a softer and more surpassing beauty. These observations being we believe true, we shall apply them to the case of Scott in the words of a very ingenious writer which we have just met with, rather than in those we had ourselves prepared: "Personal indulgence is a sufficient motive for the conception of poetry; but with respect to illusion, the case is widely different, from its transitory and perishable nature its force will altogether be lost in the conception; and the very act of invention will dissipate the charms of the invention. Composing a story, is like reading one for the second time: no one can feel much interest in the termination of events over which he himself has an absolute control; and the destiny of a hero will be an object of at least as little interest to him who has ordained it, as to those who already know how it has been ordained by others. Conscious skill and ingenuity in the disposition of the materials, may, indeed, be some slight grati fication to the accomplished story maker; but even this consists rather in anticipating the effects they are likely to produce on others, than in the contemplation of an abstract tendency which he can enjoy by himself-ghosts, murders, haunted passages, and all other ingredients of the horrible, can in themselves be no greater * See Remains of Rev. R. Mr. URBAN, Berwick, Jan. 12. I have just noticed the paragraph of INDIGATOR HERALDICUS respecting the Furber family in the Gent. Mag. for Sept. last. I cannot tell what arms they bore, but I have much pleasure in giving you references to a few authorities in which the surname Occurs. In 5 Ed. II. Johannes Fourbour was a "scutifer ad arma " with Joh'es de la Moille and others in the garrison of Berwick. (Cotton MS. Vesp. c. XVI. f. 4.) A branch of the family was settled in Berwick during the reigns of Brus and David II. and possessed property there. In the reign of Alex. III. Thomas Horsho was seised in fee of a messuage super le Nesse" (a street still so called) in Berwick, which became forfeited to the English Crown when Edw. I. took the town in 1296. That monarch gave the tenement to Henry de Deen, who was amoved by Robert de Brus when he got possession of the town, and he gave it to John de London, who conveyed it to Stephen Fourbour. In 1333, after the battle of Hallidon Hill, Berwick was again captured by the English, and shortly afterwards Edward III. restored the tenement to Adam Horsho, the heir of the said Thomas. (1 Rot. Scot. 270.) Stephen Forbour at the same time lost two "places of land" in Briggate (nunc Bridge-street) in the same town. (Ibid. 400, and 2 Rot. Scacc. Abbrev. 112.) Another messuage at the corner of Briggate and Narougate. (Ibid. 400.) and another tenement in Uddyngate (the site of which street is now unknown.) (Ibid. 492.) In 1327, this Stephen, then a burgess of Berwick, (Steph's dict' Fairbur' B'gens. de B'uico sup' Twedam "confirmed to the monastery of Aberbrothoc certain lands in Dundee in Scotland. (Registrum Monasterii de Aberbrothoc, f. 15. objects of interest to their compounder, than gunpowder and saltpetre to the maker of a skyrocket. And, indeed, the two cases are in many respects similar; except that the latter may, in common with others, witness the explosion he is preparing, while the former, alone of all men, is precluded from enjoying it." H. Froude, vol. i. p. 156. a MS. in the Library of the Advocates in Edinburgh.) He also obtained payment of a debt of 261. 13s. 4d. which David II. owed him. (I have lost the reference to the authority for this, but I am certain it is in "the Chamberlain of Scotland's Accounts ;" an unpublished work by Mr. Thompson of the Register Office in Edinburgb.) William Fourbour, probably the son and heir of Stephen, gave rents issuing from his tenements in St. Marygate (still called by the same name) and Sutorgate (nunc Church-street) in Berwick, for the support of Berwick Bridge; (1 Rot. Scot. 492, bis.) and David II. gave him a sum of money in aid of his marriage. (Chamberlain's Accounts, ut supra.) Stephen Fourbour, temp. Edw. III. had also lands in Nether Lamberton, in Scotland, about four miles north of Berwick. (1 Rot. Scot. 264.) In 1336-7 his son Thomas was an hostage to Edward the Third for the fidelity of the mayor and community of Berwick. (Ibid. 486.) At a prior period a Richard le Furbur was a merchant and burgess of Roxburgh. He obtained letters of safe conduct from Edward I. in 1291. (1 Rot. Scot. 2.) and he occurs in 1296 as "tenens Joh'is de Soule vic' de Rokesburgh." (Ibid. 35.) Robert Furbure, a merchant of Scotland, in 1358, was licensed to trade in England, &c. (Ibid. 830.) This is all the information I possess of the family, save that which your correspondent has supplied. Should he meet with any further information respecting this northern branch of the family, I shall feel much obliged by his communicating it to me. I am engaged in collecting materials for a History of Berwick, and it may consequently be of much use. Yours, &c. Robt, Weddell. THE LATE MR. COLERIDGE, THE POET. I return, with my compliments, the Gentleman's Magazine which you have sent to me, having perused those pages in it to which I presume you intended to call my attention. I have a few words to say upon the subject. In answer to an application made by me to you three or four years ago, to know if you were willing to communicate to Mr. Coleridge's representatives any of his papers in your possession, you wrote to me a letter containing, amongst a great deal of matter in which I was not personally concerned, two complaints against me in particular. One was, that in the Table Talk, I had published as a remark of Mr. Coleridge that you were "a very knowing person." In reply to this (I speak from memory, not having any copy of these letters), I expressed my regret at having caused you any pain by publishing the words in question. I assured you, as was the fact, that Mr. Coleridge meant nothing offensive by them, but was speaking of your quick insight into the ways and characters of political personages; and I promised, if I remember rightly, to remove the expression which had given you offence upon the first opportunity which should occur. Within a few months that opportunity occurred, upon the publication of a new edition of the book. In that edition I altered the passage in such a manner as fully to show Mr. Coleridge's intended application of the phrase. See p. 164, "Table Talk," 1836. The other complaint was, that in the same work I had published a remark by Mr. Coleridge that "he had raised the sale of the Morning Post from some small number to 7000 in one year." In answer to this I said, as well as I can recollect, that I published what at the time I believed to be the fact; that you, however, were of course a conclusive authority upon the matter of the sale; that I certainly had alway understood, not from Mr. Coleridge only, but from others not interested in the question, that his services of one kind or other to the Morning Post and Courier had not been so very trifling and inconsiderable as you represented them to be; but that personally I had at that time little or no means of judging of the point in dispute. Nevertheless, that I might give you every satisfaction upon this subject also, I expunged the whole passage from the 2nd edition in 1836; see p. 90. Further, with reference to your detailed statement of your intercourse and dealings with Mr. Coleridge, I told you in precise terms that I was not writing, nor intended to write, his life; but was simply collecting materials for a publication of his literary remains in one particular class. You were also informed who Mr. Coleridge's executor was, and it appears that you have long since known who intended to be his biographer. Under these circumstances permit me to ask how you justify your now speaking of me in print as having refused to do you justice, with regard to the only points on which you ever had a right, and, after my letters, could in fact have expected, to receive any satisfaction from me? If the satisfaction on these points promised and rendered was in your opinion insufficient, it was your part to have said so. You were silent for two years. you sent your pages to the Gentleman's Magazine without making any inquiry on the subject, where slept at once your feeling of self-respect, and sense of justice to another, a stranger to you, of which you so constantly speak? If you did make the inquiry, in what language do you think an ingenuous person would characterise your silence as to the result? If Having, sir, never introduced your name in public except upon the single occasion before mentioned, having tendered you amends for so introducing it, and being an entire stranger to you, I must in pointed terms request that for the future you will be so good as to abstain from making my name, whether in an ordinary or a flippant tone, the subject of your contributions to the public press. So much for myself-one word for another. To the soundness of your judgment in "not setting much value on Mr. Coleridge's "letter to Fletcher and "on the Spanish war,"-to your gratuitous and mistaken statements respecting his intercourse with Sir James Mackintosh and Messrs. Wedgewood; to these and the like I say, as they require, nothing. But allow me to suggest that at one time in mentioning as if you believed a report of " Mr. Coleridge or his family at least being starving," and at another time in speaking directly of his 'starving in Mr. Gillman's garret," you in both instances forgot your own express aim and intention of " wounding the feelings of no one;" and that in the latter instance at least, if not in the former, you said that which it is most extraordinary you should not have known to be in letter and spirit untrue. surely you are not ignorant that Mr. Coleridge lived with Mr. and Mrs. Gillman as with an affectionate brother and sister; and you might in consequence have known that, with every room in a charming house at his command, he chose for his own convenience what you so kindly and tastefully denominate a garret-such a garret and so regarded by a great man's surviving friends, that the memory of its exact size, shape, and furniture was thought worthy of being perpetuated by the hand of a superior artist. For Sir, there is that in this publication of yours which might provoke and would justify a near relation of Mr. Coleridge's in addressing you in a graver tone. But remembering that you were once kind, and having no interest in heightening the painful contrast which you now voluntarily exhibit in this respect, I close the correspondence for ever, in the charity of a sincere regret that it was ever commenced. I am, Mr. URBAN, obedient servant, H. N. COLeridge. My reply to the above is, that in a letter, 24th Sept. 1835, Mr. Henry Coleridge says, "I can be sure that I at least made no mistake; my uncle certainly always entertaining the belief, however erroneous, that his writ ing, or the reputation of his writing, had actually been a principal mean of the rise of the Morning Post." In answer, under date the 22d October, 1835, I complained at length of Coleridge's misrepresentations, for reasons already described, and acquitted Mr. H. C. of any intentional misstatement: but before he published his "Table Talk," I said Mr. H. C. should have consulted me on the points in which I was personally concerned. This was a long letter, to the effect of what I have already published in your Magazine. With that letter I delivered at Mr. H. C.'s chambers a large parcel of copies of Coleridge's letters to me, that he might be rightly informed; but still in the second edition of the "Table Talk" he says nothing to correct the mistaken opinions he had imbibed from Coleridge. He cuts the matter short. In a letter to me dated 7th November 1835, he writes, "With regard to all the matter which is contained in your letters concerning Mr. Coleridge's services to the papers, I have nothing now to say. As to the money statements, I do not exactly understand the precise character which you may intend to give to them, beyond the making known the simple fact of advances made to Mr. C. by yourself. If any thing more definite be meant, I trust you will not consider it either offensive or indecorous in me, as a near relation of Mr. C., to mention that Mr. Green of Lincoln's Inn Fields is his sole executor." By the above, it appears, Mr. H. Coleridge declined to notice my representations of the exaggerated accounts of Coleridge's services; but when he referred me for a repayment of money, though in such civil terms, I thought he was laughing at me; and there ended my attempts and expectations of having that done by Mr. H. Coleridge, which I have been driven to do for myself in your Magazine. I no longer communicated with Mr. H. Coleridge, whose qualification of the phrase "knowing person," and omission of the passage asserting the rise to 7000 in one year, shew Mr. H. Coleridge well knew what it was I solicited. Whether he was writing a life or not, he was publishing such things as usually compose a life, and it would not have been inconsistent with them, to have placed among them one. the representation I wished. Nay, he was confirming the very misstatements, which in his uncle's Literary Biography gave me uneasiness. "He would have nothing to say respecting Coleridge's services to the papers." But he had had to say in "The Table Talk" respecting them, and had said that which was untrue. He was bound either to apologize or persist in his statement. A silent omission in the second edition was insufficient. It might have been made by the printer or by accident, or for some other reason than the real Mr. H. C. no doubt preferred his uncle's representations to mine. He reproaches me with not consulting him before I sent my pages to the Magazine: I reply, why did he not consult me before he published his "Table Talk," in which I, having been Secretary to "the Friends of the People," was made to appear as if I had betrayed their secrets to Fox? Secrets, as I have already said, they had none. It was not the assurances of Mr. H. C. and of Mr. Gillman that Coleridge always spoke well of me, nor the paragraph to that effect in Mr. Gillman's book; all that was not to the point. Coleridge had printed that he had made my fortune while he had received but a very small recompense. That assertion was in substance repeated by Mr. H. C. and Mr. Gillman in print, and in print I determined to place my reply. For this purpose I chose a Magazine of an Urbane character, as a repository preserved in libraries to which future writers could at all times refer. Mr. H. Coleridge must have read over hastily the article in the Magazine. I did not say his uncle was starving in Mr. Gillman's garret; but that the "Literary Biography," and the publications of Mr. H. Coleridge and of Mr. Gillman, might lead future commentators to say, while I was riding in my carriage, I left Coleridge, who had made my fortune, to starve in Mr. Gillman's garret. I am well aware of the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Gillman to Coleridge, of the comfort he enjoyed in their house, where, I may say, he was master of every thing they possessed; where he could and did receive his friends, as if the whole house, and every thing in it, had been his own. I will add, too, that he believed, and I believe, Mr, Gillman's skill and attention prolonged his life many a day, and that his sense of this and his gratitude were unbounded. When Doctor Currie published the works of Burns, upwards of thirty years ago, some one (probably Mr. Southey) applied to me, to explain a charge or insinuation in the work against me or one of my brothers. I did so; and proved that Doctor Currie had been misinformed. My elder brother Peter, who started the first daily evening newspaper, the Star, now exactly half a century ago, in consequence of the increased facilities of communication by Palmer's mail-coach plan, then just begun, had written to Burns, offering him terms for communications to the paper, a small salary, quite as large as his Excise-office emoluments. I forget particulars; but I remember my brother shewing Burns' letters, and boasting of the correspondence with so great a genius. Burns refused an engagement. And if, as I believe the "Poem written to a Gentleman who had sent him a Newspaper, and offered to continue it free of expense," was written in reply to my brother, it was a sneering unhandsome return, though Doctor Currie says fifty-two guineas per annum for a communication once a week was an offer "which the pride of genius disdained to accept." We hear much of purse-proud insolence; but poets can sometimes be insolent on the conscious power of talent, as well as vulgar upstarts on the conscious power of purse. In 1795, my brother Peter purchased the copyright of the Oracle newspaper, then selling 800 daily, for 8ol. There were no house or materials; and I joined in purchasing the Morning Post, with house and materials, the circulation being only 350 per day, for 600l. What it was that occasioned such a depreciation of newspaper property at that time, I cannot tell. Then it was my brother again offered Burns an engagement, as appears by the account of Burns' Life, which was again declined. Burns began his style of Scottish Poetry on the model of that of Robert Fergusson, the schoolfellow and most intimate companion of my eldest brother Charles, who was also a poet, though of much inferior merit. Now, considering that a slur was cast upon the character of |