leian theory, of Kant's and Fichte's writings, and sundry digressions on the nature of the imagination or plastic power. The book as a whole is, however, a thing of great price, and where it touches the principles of poetic composition it is hardly less than priceless. The chapters of just criticism and noble praise of Wordsworth were written at a time when Wordsworth held no real position as a poet. Such was Coleridge's insight and such his loyalty. An author's friends usually find it very easy to belaud him after the public has pronounced in his favour, but grievously difficult to their courage and loyalty to speak up for him while he is struggling his way to recognition. Coleridge, at least, found matters so. The reception of the "Biographia Literaria" on its publication in 1817 was as unfavourable as the reception of Christabel" had been the year before. Blackwood's Magazine pronounced its opinions to be "wild ravings," and likened the vanity of the author to the deplorable deception of Joanna Southcote, who mistook a complaint in the bowels for the divine afflatus. The "grasp of Hazlitt's powerful hand" in The Edinburgh Review, which had previously "crumpled up the poet's verses like so much waste paper," was now put forth to reveal "the cant of Morality," which, like "the cant of Methodism," came to close the scene of Coleridge's literary life. "Our disappointed demagogue," said Hazlitt, "keeps up that 'pleasurable poetic fervour' which has been the cordial and bane of his existence, by indulging his maudlin egotism and his mawkish spleen in fulsome eulogies of his own virtues and nauseous abuse of his contemporaries, in making excuses for doing

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nothing himself, and assigning bad motives for what others have done." In 1817 Coleridge published his Zapolya" also. This play was written, as we have seen, in 1815, though it seems probable that it was designed a year earlier. Coleridge appears to have hinted to Byron his desire to follow up his success with "Remorse," and Byron, still possessing influence at Drury Lane, gave him cordial encouragement. The play was rejected at the theatres for the reason assigned on an earlier page of this biography, and towards the end of 1817, about two years after its production, it was published as a Christmas tale. In form the dramatic poem was intended to imitate the "Winter's Tale" of Shakespeare, except that the subdivision into two parts, corresponding to the interval between the first and second acts, gave it the appearance of two plays on different periods of the same tale. The effect of the whole work was not, however, much disturbed by this subdivision, which, as Coleridge said, did not render the imagination less disposed to take up the required position. As a drama "Zapolya" was clearly deficient in qualities essential to success on the boards, even in days when "Remorse" and "Bertram" were not too undramatic to hold the stage. As a Christmas tale it proved popular at a time when such Yule-tide literature as the "Christmas Carol" was unknown. 66 Zapolya " sold to the extent of two thousand copies in six weeks, and Coleridge's earnings thereby would have been no less substantial than timely but for an accident that has yet to be recorded. The prolific year of 1817 witnessed yet another publication, a volume entitled "Sibylline Leaves." This was a

collection of all Coleridge's poetical compositions from 1793 to the date of issue, with the addition of about twelve new poems, and with the exception of the dramatic writings, of "Christabel," and of the contents of the volume of 1796, whereof the copyright had been bought by Cottle. The collection had been made in 1815 at Calne, and was probably suggested by the circumstance that in that year Wordsworth had omitted Coleridge's four poems in reprinting his "Lyrical Ballads." In the same year the "Sibylline Leaves" was put into type by Longmans, but publication was delayed owing to vexatious causes, to which the author refers in a preface.

The book embodied the choicest of Coleridge's poetry. In addition to "The Ancient Mariner" and "Love," it contained "The Three Graves," a poem reprinted from The Friend of 1810. This poem, which was assigned by Coleridge to the period of his residence at Stowey, 1796–97, is quite the most interesting psychological study that he has given us. It was suggested by study of the Oba traditions, and by the curious superstitions of the Copper Indians, described by Samuel Hearne, a servant of the Hudson's Bay Company, in his account of a search for the copper rivers of North America. The book was probably read by Coleridge and Wordsworth together, for Wordsworth's poem, "The Forsaken Indian Woman," depicts with great fervour and picturesqueness a scene which Hearne describes in his plain homespun. What Coleridge borrowed from the rude sailor's narrative is even more important than Wordsworth's splendid appropriation. The intention was to show that the overwhelming power of an idea on health

and life is not an effect to be seen in savage peoples only.

"Sibylline Leaves" was no more favourably received than "Christabel" had been. One of its critics, Blackwood's Magazine, said that the public accepted it as they would accept a "lying lottery puff, or a quack advertisement." It is hardly necessary to go farther in order to show that in 1817, after the production of nearly all his poetic work by which the world now sets store-" The Ancient Mariner," "Christabel," "Kubla Khan," "The Three Graves," "France, an Ode," "Fears in Solitude," "The Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni," "Frost at Midnight," and "Remorse "-Coleridge's acceptance at the hands of the professional guides to literature was hardly more than might have been due to a literary impostor and charlatan. We must realize this sure fact in all the fulness of its significance if we would rightly understand the disastrous effect of the world's neglect on Coleridge's later work, on his mind, and perhaps on his character and habits. Coleridge was deeply injured in pride and in purse, and though he did not proclaim his wrongs from the housetops, he made no effort to conceal them. In the torture of pride, of debased and material prospects marred, he probably made some unjust accusations of which he had afterwards to repent and which he had to retract. Scott found it necessary to protest that if he had appropriated from Coleridge a metrical peculiarity, if he had anticipated the author of "Christabel" with stories written in octosyllabics with anapæstic variations, he had penned no single line in his disparagement. Byron, too, was not slow to repeat a cordial eulogy whereof Coleridge

had never had cause to question the sincerity. Still the poet suffered under the open assaults of declared enemies, and the hidden enmity of silent friends. If at this crisis of his hopes the close of 1817-he doubted the friendship of Southey, shall we charge him with disloyalty in view of the fact that The Quarterly Review (by Coleridge's own statement) had not a word to say for Christabel," for the "Biographia Literaria," "Zapolya," 'Sibylline Leaves," and The Friend? Let us not forget that Southey was the "chief support of the review at that period, and, by his own account, a person of great influence with its editor. Then let us remember that this was no ordinary crisis in his brother-in-law's fortunes. The attacks of Coleridge's enemies were now as false and virulent as those of Southey's own enemies had been bitter, merciless, and injurious, four years earlier, when Coleridge spoke up unfalteringly for his friend. Even granting the best defence of Southey's silence, that he did not admire Coleridge and his work, and could not conscientiously champion either the one or other when assailed, there remains the yet more painful fact that malice had made free with Coleridge's personal character in a way that rendered it imperative on his brother-in-law to assure himself that he deserved his unpopularity or was cruelly injured by it.

Not content with denying to Coleridge any honourable place as a poet, the press affixed to what it called his "cant of morality," and "cant of Methodism," a distinct charge of corrupt life. There can be no sort of doubt as to what was meant by many innuendoes of hypocrisy ; it was clearly the common talk of the criticasters of the