and in after years, when he was not so much afraid of “the scarlet woman,” did, in a full suit of sables, lecture on Poesy, to “crowded, and, need I add, highly respectable audiences,” at the Royal Institution.  After this slight and imperfect outline of his poetical, oratorical, metaphysical, political, and theological exploits, our readers will judge, when they hear him talking of “his retirement and distance from the literary and political world,” what are his talents for autobiography, and how far he has penetrated into the mysterious non-entities of his own character.

Mr. Coleridge has written conspicuously on the Association of Ideas, but his own do not seem to be connected either by time, place, cause and effect, resemblance, or contrast, and accordingly it is no easy matter to follow him through all the vagaries of his Literary Life.  We are told,

At school I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time a very severe master.—­I learnt from him that Poetry, even that of the loftiest and wildest odes, had a logic of its own as severe as that of science.—­Lute, harp, and lyre; muse, muses, and inspirations; Pegasus, Parnassus, and Hippocrene; were all an abomination to him.  In fancy I can almost hear him now exclaiming, "Harp?  Harp?  Lyre?  Pen and Ink!  Boy you mean!  Muse! boy!  Muse! your Nurse’s daughter you mean!  Pierian Spring!  O Aye! the cloister Pump!"—­Our classical knowledge was the least of the good gifts which we derived from his zealous and conscientious tutorage.

With the then head-master of the grammar-school, Christ Hospital, we were not personally acquainted; but we cannot help thinking that he has been singularly unfortunate in his Eulogist.  He seems to have gone out of his province, and far out of his depth, when he attempted to teach boys the profoundest principles of Poetry.  But we must also add, that we cannot credit this account of him; for this doctrine of poetry being at all times logical, is that of which Wordsworth and Coleridge take so much credit to themselves for the discovery; and verily it is one too wilfully absurd and extravagant to have entered into the head of an honest man, whose time must have been wholly occupied with the instruction of children.  Indeed Mr. Coleridge’s own poetical practices render this story incredible; for, during many years of his authorship, his diction was wholly at variance with such a rule, and the strain of his poetry as illogical as can be well imagined.  When Mr. Bowyer prohibited his pupils from using, in their themes, the above-mentioned names, he did, we humbly submit, prohibit them from using the best means of purifying their taste and exalting their imagination.  Nothing could be so graceful, nothing so natural, as classical allusions, in the exercises of young minds, when first admitted to the fountains of Greek and Latin Poetry; and the Teacher who could seek to dissuade their ingenious souls from such delightful