as we read, his brief sojourn,—­that he died “in the sweet hour of prime,”—­and we are astonished at the eloquent wisdom displayed by a lad of twenty summers.  “I cannot help considering,” he says, “the sonnets of Shakspeare as a sort of homage to the Genius of Christian Europe, necessarily exacted, although voluntarily paid, before he was allowed to take in hand the sceptre of his endless dominion.”  And he ends his charming disquisition in these words;—­“An English mind that has drunk deep at the sources of Southern inspiration, and especially that is imbued with the spirit of the mighty Florentine, will be conscious of a perpetual freshness and quiet beauty resting on his imagination and spreading gently over his affections, until, by the blessing of Heaven, it may be absorbed without loss in the pure inner light of which that voice has spoken, as no other can,—­

     “’Light intellectual, yet full of love,
     Love of true beauty, therefore full of joy,
     Joy, every other sweetness far above.’”

It was young Hallam’s privilege to be among Coleridge’s favorites, and in one of his poems Arthur alludes to him as a man in whose face “every line wore the pale cast of thought.”  His conversations with “the old man eloquent” gave him intense delight, and he often alluded to the wonderful talks he had enjoyed with the great dreamer, whose magical richness of illustration took him captive for the time being.

At Abbotsford he became known to Sir Walter Scott, and Lockhart thus chronicles his visit:—­

“Among a few other friends from a distance, Sir Walter received this summer [1829] a short visit from Mr. Hallam, and made in his company several of the little excursions which had in former days been of constant recurrence.  Mr. Hallam had with him his son, Arthur, a young gentleman of extraordinary abilities, and as modest as able, who not long afterwards was cut off in the very bloom of opening life and genius.  His beautiful verses, ‘On Melrose seen in Company with Scott,’ have since been often printed.”

     “I lived an hour in fair Melrose: 
       It was not when ‘the pale moonlight’
     Its magnifying charm bestows;
       Yet deem I that I ‘viewed it right.’ 
     The wind-swept shadows fast careered,
     Like living things that joyed or feared,
     Adown the sunny Eildon Hill,
     And the sweet winding Tweed the distance crowned well.

     “I inly laughed to see that scene
       Wear such a countenance of youth,
     Though many an age those hills were green,
       And yonder river glided smooth,
     Ere in these now disjointed walls
     The Mother Church held festivals,
     And full-voiced anthemings the while
     Swelled from the choir, and lingered down the echoing aisle.