weigh the planets, and foresee their move"ments centuries and millenniums to come, "trembles in his ignorance of the next five

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minutes, whether it shall be pain and terror, "or relief and respite, and in spirit falls on his "knees and prays. Prayer is the mediation, or "rather the effort to connect the misery of self "with the blessedness of God; and its voice is -Mercy! mercy! for Christ's sake, in whom "thou hast opened out the fountain of mercy to "sinful man. It is a sore evil to be, and not in God; but it is a still more dreadful evil and misery to will to be other than in God; and yet in every act, in which the gratification of "the sensual life is the ultimate end, is the manifestation of such a will. Imagine a , first "in his noblest hours, in the laboratory or the observatory-an unfolder and discoverer-and then on a sick bed, from the consequences of "his own indiscretions. Place both states of "the same man, that of the spirit and that of "the self-seeking self, clearly and in detail before your mind:-if you can do this, you need no "more.-January 7, 1830.

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"There is a passage in the Samson Agonistes, "in which Milton is supposed on sufficient grounds to have referred to himself, that in "which the chorus speaks of strictly temperate man causelessly suffering' the pains and pe

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"nances of inordinate days. O! what would I not give to be able to utter with truth this complaint! O! if he had or rather if he could "have presented to himself truly and vividly

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the aggravation of those pains, which the con"science of their having originated in errors and "weaknesses of his own. I do not say that he "would not have complained of his sufferings, " for who can be in those most trying sufferances "of miserable sensations and not complain of them, but his groans for the pain would have "been blended with thanksgivings to the sanc'tifying Spirit. Even under the direful yoke "of the necessity of daily poisoning by narcotics "it is somewhat less horrible, through the knowledge that it was not from any craving for pleasurable animal excitement, but from pain, delusion, error, of the worst ignorance, medical "sciolism, and when (alas! too late the plea of error was removed from my eyes,) from terror "and utter perplexity and infirmity;-sinful infirmity, indeed, but yet not a wilful sinfulness "that I brought my neck under it. Oh, may "the God to whom I look for mercy through Christ, shew mercy on the author of the 'Con"fessions of an Opium Eater,' if, as I have too

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strong reason to believe, his book has been the "occasion of seducing others into this withering "vice through wantonness. From this aggra"vation I have, I humbly trust, been free, as far

as acts of my free will and intention are con"cerned; even to the author of that work I

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pleaded with flowing tears, and with an agony "of forewarning. He utterly denied it, but I "fear that I had even then to deter perhaps not "to forewarn. My own contrasted feelings soon "after I saw the Maelstrom to which the current "was absorbing me, are written in one of my paper books."*-Jan. 7, 1830.

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Having referred to the accusations of plagiarism brought against Coleridge, it will not, I trust, be deemed inappropriate, to introduce from the British Magazine, No. 37, the concluding part of a critique ably written by the Rev. Julius Hare, who has selected with great discrimination several passages from the " Friend,” which must come home to the heart of every good man, and this I feel the more impelled to do, as it is a moral lesson to biographers-perhaps to us all :

"An inquisitiveness into the minutest circumstances and casual sayings of eminent contemporaries is indeed quite natural: but so are all our follies and the more natural they are the more caution should we exert in guarding against them. To scribble trifles, even on the perishable glass of an inn window, is the mark of an idler :

* This little Paper Book has not yet been found.

but to engrave them on the marble monument sacred to the memory of the departed great, is something worse than idleness. The spirit of genuine biography is in nothing more conspicuous than in the firmness with which it withstands the cravings of worthless curiosity, as distinguished from the thirst after useful knowledge. For in the first place, such anecdotes as derive their whole and sole interest from the great name of the person concerning whom they are related, and neither illustrate his general character nor his particular his particular actions, would scarcely have been noticed or remembered, except by men of weak minds. It is not unlikely, therefore, that they were misapprehended at the time; and it is most probable that they have been related as incorrectly, as they were noticed injudiciously. Nor are the consequences of such garrulous biography merely negative. For as insignificant stories can derive no real respectability from the eminence of the person who happens to be the subject of them, but rather an additional deformity of disproportion, they are apt to have their insipidity seasoned by the same bad passions that accompany the habit of gossiping in general: and the misapprehensions of weak men, meeting with the misinterpretations of malignant men, have not seldom formed the ground work of the most grievous calamities. In the second place, those trifles are subversive

of the great end of biography, which is to fix the attention and to interest the feelings of men on those qualities and actions which have made a particular life worthy of being recorded. It is no doubt the duty of an honest biographer to portray the prominent imperfections as well as excellencies of his hero. But I am at a loss to conceive how this can be deemed an excuse for heaping together a multitude of particulars, which can prove nothing of any man, that might not be safely taken for granted of all men. In the present age-emphatically the age of personality-there are more than ordinary motives for withholding all encouragement from the mania of busying ourselves with the names of others, which is still more alarming as a symptom, than it is troublesome as a disease. The reader must be still less acquainted with contemporary literature than myself, if he needs me to inform him that there are men who, trading in the silliest anecdotes, in unprovoked abuse and senseless eulogy, think themselves nevertheless employed both worthily and honourably if only all this be done in good set terms, and from the press, and of public characters,-a class which has increased so rapidly of late, that it becomes difficult to discover what characters are to be considered as private. Alas! if these wretched misusers of language and the means of giving wings to thought, and of multiplying the pre