be regarded as one of the great men of all time. His powers as a conversationist, or rather as a talker, for he did not converse, have probably never been equalled; and had there been a Boswell to gather up all these brilliant sayings which fell from his lips, the record would have been of inestimable value. Much of his conversation has been preserved in the Table-Talk, published after his decease. But we have no such minute report as that which Boswell gave of Dr. Johnson.

Works. Coleridge's works are chiefly the following: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Christabel; Genevieve; Remorse, a Tragedy; Aids to Reflection; Lectures on Shakespeare; Constitution of Church and State; The Statesman's Manual; Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit; Theory of Life; Essays on his Own Times; The Friend, several volumes; Lay Sermons; Table-Talk; Biographia Literaria; Literary Remains. "This illustrious man, the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and most comprehensive, in my judgment, that has yet existed among men."-De Quincey. "His mind contains an astonishing map of all sorts of knowledge, while, in his power and manner of putting it to use, he displays more of what we mean by the term genius than any mortal I ever saw, or ever expect to see.”—John Foster. "I shall never forget the effect his first conversation made upon me. It struck me as something not only out of the ordinary course of things, but as an intellectual exhibition altogether matchless. The party was unusually large, but the presence of Coleridge concentrated all attention towards himself. The viands were unusually costly, and the banquet was at once rich and varied; but there seemed to be no dish like Coleridge's conversation to feed upon-and no information so varied as his own. The orator rolled himself up, as it were, in his chair, and gave the most unrestrained indulgence to his speech,—and how fraught with acuteness and originality was that speech, and in what copious periods did it flow! The auditors seemed to be rapt in wonder and delight, as one observation more profound, or clothed in more forcible language than another, fell from his tongue. For nearly two hours he spoke with unhesitating and uninterrupted fluency. . . . I regretted that I could not exercise the powers of a second Boswell, to record the wisdom and the eloquence which had that evening flowed from the orator's lips. It haunted me as I retired to rest. It drove away slumber." -Dibdin.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE, 1796-1849, eldest son of the poet S. T. Coleridge, was himself also a poet of high excellence.

He lived in seclusion at Grasmere, occupying himself with literary pursuits. He was a precocious child, giving utterance in early youth to thoughts and expressions entirely beyond his years. He was physically deformed, and in his mental organization there was something irregular; in disposition also he was wayward. He achieved distinction at Oxford, and was elected to a Fellowship, but forfeited it by habits of intemperance. His conversational powers are said to have been great, and the effect was heightened by the grotesqueness of his personal appearance and the dreamy oddity of his manners. "It is impossible to give you any adequate idea of his oddity; for he is the oddest of all God's creations, and he grows quainter every day.”—Southey.

Works. He wrote a good deal for Blackwood. His separate publications are: Poems; Biographia Borealis, or Lives of Distinguished Northmen; Worthies of Yorkshire and Lancashire; Life of Andrew Marvell; Essays and Marginalia (edited by Derwent C).

"Though we do not rank Hartley Coleridge with the greatest poets, the most profound thinkers, or the most brilliant essayists, yet we know of no single man who has

left, as his legacy to the world, at once poems so graceful, thoughts so just, and essays so delectable."-Fraser's Magazine.

REV. DERWENT COLERIDGE, 1800 -, another son of the poet Samuel Taylor C., was a clergyman of the English Church, and Principal of St. Mark's College, Chelsea. Works: The Scriptural Character of the English Church; Notes on English Divines; Lay Sermons. He edited also S. T. Coleridge's Poems and Dramatic Works.

WILLIAM HART COLERIDGE, 1790-1850, supposed to be a cousin of the poet S. T. Coleridge, was educated at Oxford, and became Bishop of Barbadoes in 1841. He published Address to Candidates for Holy Orders; Charges delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of the Barbadoes; Sermons, etc.

HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, 1800-1843, nephew, and literary executor, of the poet S. T. C., was a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and a lawyer by profession. He accompanied his uncle, William H. C., Bishop of Barbadoes, on his voyage to the W. Indies. He wrote: Six Months in the West Indies; and An Introduction to the Study of the Great Classic Poets. He also contributed to the London Quarterly Review. But his chief literary labor consisted in collecting and editing the various literary remains of his uncle, the great poet. These were: Literary Remains, 4 vols.; Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit; The Friend, 3 vols.; Constitution of Church and State; Biographia Literaria. The editing of the work last named was begun by him and finished by his widow, Sarah, who was his cousin, and a daughter of the poet.

SARAH HENRY COLERIDGE, 1803-1852, daughter of the poet S. T. Coleridge, and wife of his nephew, H. N. Coleridge, wrote Pretty Lessons for Good Children; Phantasmion, a tale; and a translation from the Latin of The Albipones of Paraguay. Her chief merit, however, was in the aid she gave in editing the literary remains of her illustrious father.

SIR JOHN TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 1790 —, also a nephew of the poet S. T. Coleridge, and a man of great distinction in the legal profession, became a Judge of the Court of the Queen's Bench in 1835, and a Member of the Privy Council in 1858. He published an edition of Blackstone, with notes.

Joanna Baillie.

Joanna Baillie, 1764-1851, was a dramatist of great celebrity, contemporary with Sir Walter Scott, Sir James Mackintosh, Jeffrey, Southey, Byron, and Coleridge, and was eminent even among those great names.

She was born near Glasgow, Scotland, but spent most of her life and achieved her principal literary successes in the neighborhood of London.

Her dramas were published under the title of Plays on the Passions, her plan being to make each passion the subject of two plays, a tragedy and a comedy. Besides these she published a volume of Miscellaneous Dramas; The Family Legend, a Tragedy; Poetic Miscellanies; Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters; and A View of the General Tenor of the New Testament regarding the Nature and Dignity of Jesus Christ.

"A noble monu

Her chief works were those first named, Plays on the Passions. ment of the powerful mind and the pure and elevated imagination of its author."— Edinburgh Review,

The Family Legend was acted both in Edinburgh and London with great success. On the occasion of its performance in Edinburgh, Scott wrote: "We wept till our hearts were sore, and applauded till our hands were blistered." Her dramas, however, are rather intended for reading than for representation. She herself did not frequent the theatre, and was not familiar with its arrangements. As reading plays, they are accepted by the highest critical authorities as among the grandest works of the poetical art.

Mrs. Hemans.

Mrs. Felicia Dorothea Hemans, 1794-1835, was, during her life, a leading favorite, her poems being read, admired, and quoted by almost everybody, and on almost all occasions.

Career. Mrs. Hemans was a native of Liverpool, daughter of a Mr. Browne, a merchant of that city. She began writing at a very early age, and a volume of her poems, Early Blossoms, was published before she had reached fifteen. She was at that time singularly beautiful in appearance and attractive in manners.

She was married at eighteen to Captain Hemans, of the British army. The union was not a happy one, and, after living together for six years, they separated. Captain Hemans went to Italy to take care of himself, and remained there; Mrs. Hemans remained at home to rear and educate the five sons who were the fruits of their ill-assorted marriage. It redounds to her honor certainly that these domestic infelicities found no voice in her song. She bore her griefs in dignified silence, and did not, like Byron, coin her heart-pangs into marketable verse.

Mrs. Hemans resided for some years with her sister and mother, and, after the death of the latter, spent the close of life at Dublin, where her brother, Major Browne, resided. She visited at different times Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and other literary celebrities, and was a general favorite with them all.

Works. Mrs. Hemans wrote no long poems, but a large number of occasional pieces, and at the time of her death was an almost universal favorite, both in England and America. Even Sir Archibald Alison speaks of her as a rival to Coleridge! But her reputation has been steadily on the wane for the last thirty or forty years. The truth is, she wrote pleasing things with infinite prettiness, but she had no true creative genius.

"It may not be the best imaginable poetry, and may not indicate the very highest or most commanding genius; but it embraces a great deal of that which gives the very best poetry its chief power of pleasing; and would strike us, perhaps, as more impassioned and exalted, if it were not regulated and harmonized by the most beautiful taste. It is infinitely sweet, elegant, and tender,- touching, perhaps, and contemplative, rather than vehement and overpowering; and not only finished through

out with an exquisite delicacy and even serenity of execution, but informed with a purity and loftiness of feeling, and a certain sober and humble tone of indulgence and piety, which must satisfy those who are most afraid of the passionate exaggerations of poetry. The diction is always beautiful, harmonious, and free; and the themes, though of infinite variety, uniformly treated with a grace, originality, and judgment which marks the master-hand. We do not hesitate to say that she is, beyond all comparison, the most touching and accomplished writer of occasional verses that our literature has yet to boast of."- Lord Jeffrey.

MRS. ANNE GRANT, 1755-1838, generally known as of Laggan," was a writer of some note.

"Mrs. Grant

Mrs. Grant was the daughter of Duncan McVicar, of the British army, and was a native of Glasgow. In 1738, her father having been ordered to America, she followed with her mother, and spent some years in Albany. There, at the age of eight, she made the acquaintance of “Madame Schuyler," whom she has commemorated in one of her works. At the age of thirteen, she returned with her parents to Scotland, and at the age of twenty-four she was married to the Rev. James Grant, of Laggan. From Laggan she removed in 1810 to Edinburgh, at which latter place she remained till her death, at the age of eighty-four.

Mrs. Grant was highly esteemed by Sir Walter Scott, Bishop Porteus, Sir Walter Farquhar, and others, and was for a long time one of the established celebrities of Edinburgh. The following are her principal works: The Highlanders and Other Poems; Eighteen Hundred and Thirteen, a Poem; Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders; Memoirs of an American Lady (Mrs. Schuyler); Letters from the Mountains (being her correspondence with her friends).

"Her writings, deservedly popular in her own country, derive their success from the happy manner in which, addressing themselves to the national pride of the Scottish people, they breathe a spirit at once of patriotism and of that candor which renders patriotism unselfish and liberal."- Sir Walter Scott.

"Her poetry is really not very good: and the most tedious, and certainly the least poetical, volume which she has produced, is that which contains her verses. The longest piece-which she has entitled The Highlanders-is heavy and uninteresting; and there is a want of compression and finish-a sort of loose, rambling, and indigested air-in most of the others. Yet the whole collection is enlivened with the sparklings of a prolific fancy, and displays great command of language and facility of versification." - Jeffrey.

Elizabeth Landon.

LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON, afterwards Mrs. Maclean, and generally known as L. E. L., 1802–1838, was one of the literary celebrities in the early part of this century.

She was a native of London, and daughter of Dr. Landon, Dean of Exeter. She began writing poetry at an early age, and became a stated contributor to the London Literary Gazette. In 1838, she was married to Mr. George Maclean, Governor of Cape Coast Castle, and sailed for her new home. There, in October of the same year, she died from an accidental overdose of prussic acid, · -an article which she had been in the habit of taking for hysteric affections.

Miss Landon had attained a high reputation, especially by her poetry, and was at

the time of her death one of the celebrities of the literary world. She was undoubtedly a woman of genius, and had she lived, she might have achieved substantial and permanent greatness. But her works, when read at the distance of thirty or forty years from the time of their composition, and apart from the romantic circumstances of her life, do not confirm the judgment of her contemporaries.

Works. The following list embraces most of her poems: Adelaide, a small Ro mance; To Be, and other Poems; The Improvisatrice, and other Poems; The Troubadour; a Catalogue of Pictures and Historic Sketches: The Golden Violet, and other Poems; The Venetian Bracelet; The Lost Pleiad; A History of the Lyre, etc. She wrote also several novels, Ethel Churchill, Francisco Carrara, The Vow of the Peacock, Romance and Reality, Traits and Trials of Early Life, Duty and Imagination, etc. Her poetical works have been collected in 4 vols., 8vo. After her death, a considerable number of her works appeared posthumously, besides The Zenana, and other Poems, with a Memoir by Emma Robert, and Life and Literary Remains, 2 vols., 8vo, by Laman Blanchard.

"Her deficiency alike in judgment and taste made her wayward and capricious, and her efforts seemed frequently impulsive. Hence she gave to the public a great deal too much, a large part of her writings being destitute of that elaboration, care, and finish essentially necessary to the fine arts, even when in combination with the highest genius, to secure permanent success; for the finest poetry is that which is sugges tive, the result as much of what has been studiously withheld as of what has been elaborately given. It is quite apparent, however, that L. E. L. had opened her eyes to these her defects, and was rapidly overcoming them; for her very last things— those published in her Remains by Laman Blanchard — are incomparably her best, whether we regard vigorous conception, concentration of ideas, or judicious selection of subject. Her faults originated in an enthusiastic temperament and an efflorescent fancy, and showed themselves, as might have been expected, in an uncurbed prodigality of glittering imagery, her muse, untamed and untutored, ever darting in dalliance from one object to another, like the talismanic bird in the Arabian story." -Moir.

Crabbe.

George Crabbe, 1754-1832, is the poet of the poor and the lowly. Though not so much read as he once was, he still holds his place as a favorite with the public.

Career. Crabbe was born in humble circumstances, and in working his way upward encountered many hardships. He was first apprenticed to a surgeon, but disliking the business, and having an inward yearning for literary life, he left his lowly home in the country, and set out, with five pounds in his pocket, for London. Then he made sundry attempts to gain literary employment, but, like most needy adventurers in such circumstances, he met with a cold reception, and was almost in despair, when, as a last resort, he applied to Edmund Burke. Burke listened to his story, and being satisfied that his abilities were of a high order, gave him prompt and effective support.

By the advice of Burke, Crabbe prepared himself for holy orders and entered the ministry. He also became acquainted with the distin