POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 383 worthy of a more than ordinary welcome. We delight, therefore, we repeat, to meet with a new poet. The name of Hartley Coleridge will probably be new to many of our readers. He is the son-the first-born-of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet and philosopher: we always hesitate which to call him, and regret that the language supplies no word comprehensive of both titles. Mr. Hartley Coleridge has therefore a patrimonial reputation. How far, however, that species of inheritance may be available to a man's own reputation, is, we think, somewhat questionable; for it is quite as apt to induce an invidious comparison as a willingness to trace the ancestral power. It has the effect of interesting public curiosity, but beyond that the heir's own fame must be earned by his own efforts. It is pleasing to find any instance in which the strength and qualities of the mind have descended from father or mother to the offspring. The likeness has much greater interest than those physical similitudes in which there is often so carefully transmitted the shape of a nose or a mouth, or the twist of an eyebrow, or that most imperishable of all traits, which is rarely quenched by the lapse of less than three or four generations,—a head of red hair. A case of intellectual inheritance is an agreeable exception to the general tendency to degeneracy. The necessity of crossing the breed seems to make such brutes of us that it is not a pleasing theory. The instances of hereditary talent in literature are, however, we are obliged to acknowledge, of rare occurrence. After a few minutes labour of recollection, the only examples we are able to call to mind are Kings David and Solomon, and the two Drs. Sherlock. The latter of these cases is not of sufficient note, and the circumstance of inspiration obviously puts the former out of the question; for it might probably be regarded as an exception to a general rule rather than an illustration of it. Poetic genius especially is so delicate a combination, that it is likely to be destroyed by any change in its constitution. Two of Dryden's sons attempted to follow in their father's path; but the spirit of "glorious John" had fled, and what they wrote the world has willingly let die.* Spenser left two sons,-one with a name at least that might well befit a poet, "Sylvanus Spenser," the * Perhaps in the constitution of the sons there was too large a proportion of the mother's character. A letter from Dryden's wife-the Lady Elizabeth, as she was styled, from her noble lineage of the Howards-has been preserved, in which the following passage occurs:-"Your father is much at woon as to his health, and his defnese is not wosce, but much as he was when he was heare. Give me a true account how my deare sonn Charlles is head dus." other with a name that would have suited one whose walks were on the highways of prose, "Peregrine Spenser." What, by the by, had become of the poet's own beautiful name, "Edmund Spenser"? Perhaps the child was so named that perished in the flames when Spenser's dwelling was fired by the Irish rebels and he driven from the country.* Unless that child, over whose untimely and disastrous fate the poet's broken heart beat its last throbs, inherited some of the parent's spirit, his boundless imagination came not down to others of the name. Milton's son-John Milton, junior-died in his infancy; but, we dare say, had he lived longer, he would have been literally "a mute, inglorious Milton." Certainly his early death is not to be deplored, if we may conjecture what his character would have been from that of Milton's daughters, who grew aweary of their intellectual attendance upon the blind old bard, and longed for the humble tasks of needlework. It is an ugly page in female history that records how they turned away from their communion with the spirit of their sire. "The irksomeness of their employment could not always be concealed, but broke out more and more into expressions of uneasiness; so that at length they were all sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts of manufactures that are proper for women to learn, particularly embroideries in gold or silver." The glory of Shakspeare's name began and ended with himself,-his own unheritable self. We hope that the name is not dese. crated by the wear of any modern mortal, for it has passed above the common uses of men's names. How anomalous would a "Mr. or Mrs. Shakspeare" sound, and what perfect contradictions in terms would "the little Shakspeares" be! When the Rev. Mr. Dyce, one of Shakspeare's biographers, visited Stratford-on-Avon, in 1820, for the purpose of gathering traditions, he found a woman upwards of eighty years of age named Mary Hornby, who gained a livelihood by showing the house in which the bard was born. She claimed a descent from Shakspeare, her maiden name being Hart, and had evidently inherited a full share of his love of the drama. Her high ancestral feeling manifested itself by her saying, "I writes plays, sir," and producing a tragedy entitled “The Battle of Waterloo." The old woman, who had better been at her prayers, was, we presume, well read in the three parts of Henry VI.; she had assuredly selected a famous theme for "Alarums-Enter * This calamity is mentioned by Southey, in his notices of the early British poets, in a manner rather peculiar :-" When Tyrone's rebellion broke out, Spenser's house was burnt by the rebels, and in it his papers and one of his children."-Southey's "British Poets." + Life of Milton, by his nephew, Edward Philips. POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 385 English and French, fighting-Exeunt, fighting-Alarums." So far as syntax is concerned, she seems to have been what the French critics in their ignorance are so fond of calling her great progenitor,—“ a wild, irregular genius." Such fallings off may well serve to rebuke man's pride. It was one of the trials of the calamitous life of the sainted Jeremy Taylor to witness the debased career of his own children. Who could have thought that the offspring of one whose spirit dwelt so habitually in the regions of an aspiring devotion would have declined to such degenerate ways? One fell in a duel, staining his dying hand with the blood of his antagonist; the other, with a slower but as deep a perfidy, became a favourite companion of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. One more of these melancholy instances of degeneracy: Izaak Walton, the great piscator, left an only son, bearing too his honoured name. He, an Izaak Walton, turned away from the banks of the sedgy Lea, became a travelled gentleman, studied the Fine Arts in Italy, returned to one of the English universities, and devoted himself to assisting in the compilation of an ecclesiastical history. There is no record of his having ever angled for a single fish. Another of old Izaak's-" honest Mr. Walton's "-descendants, but, fortunately, not bearing the name, which in this instance was spared the degradation, strayed still further from the harmless paths of his forefather, and acquired some notoriety among that craft who after a fashion are fishers of men, by the authorship of the work, doomed to most criminal associations, entitled, "Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown." But we are loath to dwell longer on this sad topic. The frequent occurrences of such instances of degeneracy as we have adverted to would almost justify a congratulation on those cases where the race of an illustrious individual has become extinct with him. There would seem to be a tendency in nature to transmit the weaknesses and infirmities rather than the nobler parts of our being. Of this there is so much hazard, that, whenever great powers are blended with any defects, we are tempted to rejoice in our hearts on finding that the line of succession is broken. It would be difficult, for instance, to fancy any being more superlatively disagreeable than a young Dr. Johnson would in all probability have been; and surely, if nature had furnished such an individual, she would have been bound to supply a young Boswell to match him. It was wisely ordained, no doubt, that the late Miss Hannah More lived and died an “unwedded maiden old." We must pause a moment to make our acknowledgment to Mr. Wordsworth for that phrase; for, having a profound affection for several of the class in question, we have long felt the need of some term as a substitute for that other one which has become somewhat tinctured with reproach. The lovely piety which adorned the life of Hannah More might, in the second generation, have subsided into a residuum of mere starch; or, if the aberration had been to the opposite extreme, and as wide as in the family of the good Jeremy Taylor, her descendant might have been an opera-singer or a figurante. We have been led into these trains of reflection by taking up the volume of Mr. Hartley Coleridge's poems. A literary effort by a son of Coleridge was calculated to attract attention. The influence exerted by the father's writings was deeper than that of most authors; the readers that were moved by him were strongly moved, and we could hardly believe that their influence would be inoperative on his own household. We had anticipations, therefore, of Hartley Coleridge before we knew of his literary pursuits. What he has so far accomplished may be considered chiefly as experiment for him and promise to the world. But enough, we think, has been done to show that the Coleridge name has not yet reaped the whole harvest of its fame. Hartley Coleridge has appeared as the author of the volume of poetry which we purpose examining in this article, and of a volume of biography,—“ The Lives of Distinguished Northerns,”—a work of very considerable attractions, with a vein of pleasant writing on the surface and of fine philosophy beneath. The compliment has also been paid of throwing upon him suspicions of the authorship of that extraordinary and delightful production, "The Doctor ;" and, although the proofs seem to have accumulated more upon Southey than upon any one else, we are very reluctant to give up a belief of ours that Hartley Coleridge has a hand in it, participating, probably, with the laureate, and thus reviving that fine old custom of joint authorship which was of no uncommon occurrence in the early days of English literature. Hartley Coleridge is, by a sort of necessity, a poet, and the lovers of his father's melodious imaginings had a right to indulge great hopes of him. His father's prayers and teachings marked him for the high converse of poesy; and the beautiful allusions to him, when yet an infant, have kept a place in the hearts of the admirers of the sire open for the son. We feel towards Hartley Coleridge as if we could say that we knew him when a child. What happier introduction could he have had than by the little incident narrated with such true parental as well as poetic feeling in Coleridge's exquisite poem, "The Nightingale " ?— "Farewell, O warbler! till to-morrow eve. And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell! POEMS OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE. And now for our dear homes. That strain again! And bid us listen! And I deem it wise To make him nature's playmate. He knows well In most distressful mood (some inward pain Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream), I hurried with him to our orchard-plot, And he beheld the moon, and, hush'd at once, While his fair eyes, that swam with undropp'd tears, Sweet nightingale! Once more, my friends, farewell!" And again, in the lines entitled "Frost at Midnight : And momentary pauses of the thought! My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart With tender gladness thus to look at thee, 387 |
