Where, like a man beloved of God,

Through glooms, which never woodman trod,
How oft, pursuing fancies holy,

My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound,
Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,

By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound!
O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high!
And O ye Clouds that far above me soared!
Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky!
Yea, everything that is and will be free!
Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be,
With what deep worship I have still adored
The spirit of divinest Liberty.

When France in wrath her giant limbs upreared,

And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea, Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free, Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared! With what a joy my lofty gratulation

Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band:

And when to whelm the disenchanted nation,
Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand,
The Monarchs marched in evil day,
And Britain joined the dire array;
Though dear her shores and circling ocean,
Though many friendships, many youthful loves
Had swoln the patriot emotion

And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves;
Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat

To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance,
And shame too long delayed and vain retreat!
For ne'er, O Liberty! with partial aim

I dimmed thy light or damped thy holy flame;
But blessed the peans of delivered France,
And hung my head and wept at Britain's name.

'And what,' I said, 'though Blasphemy's loud scream
With that sweet music of deliverance strove !
Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove
A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream!
Ye storms that round the dawning east assembled,

The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!'

And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled, The dissonance ceased, and all seemed calm and bright; When France her front deep-scarr'd and gory

Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory;
When, insupportably advancing,

Her arm made mockery of the warrior's tramp;
While timid looks of fury glancing,

Domestic treason, crushed beneath her fatal stamp,
Writhed like a wounded dragon in its gore;

Then I reproached my fears that would not flee;
'And soon,' I said, 'shall Wisdom teach her lore
In the low huts of them that toil and groan!
And, conquering by her happiness alone,

Shall France compel the nations to be free,

Till Love and Joy look round, and call the earth their own.'

Forgive me, Freedom! O forgive those dreams!
I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament,
From bleak Helvetia's icy cavern sent-
I hear thy groans upon her blood-stained streams!
Heroes, that for your peaceful country perished,
And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain-snows

With bleeding wounds; forgive me, that I cherished
One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes!
To scatter rage, and traitorous guilt,
Where Peace her jealous home had built;
A patriot-race to disinherit

Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear;

And with inexpiable spirit

To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer—
O France that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind,

And patriot only in pernicious toils,

Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind?
To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway,
Yell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey;
To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils
From freemen torn; to tempt and to betray?

The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain,
Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game
They burst their manacles and wear the name
Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain !
O Liberty! with profitless endeavour
Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour;

But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain, nor ever
Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power.
Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee,

(Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee),

Alike from Priestcraft's happy minions,
And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves,

Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions,

The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves!
And there I felt thee!-on that sea-cliff's verge,

Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above,
Had made one murmur with the distant surge!
Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
And shot my being through earth, sea, and air,
Possessing all things with intensest love,
O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there."

1

It is indeed a noble Ode-and we agree with Shelley. Notice-but you have noticed it-though notice is a puny word but pretty expressive-how it revolves upon itself—and is circular, like music-and like the sky, if earth did not break the radiant round. The last strain is in the same spirit as the first—and did nothing intervene, there would be felt needless repetition of imagery and sentiment. But much intervenes the whole main course and current of the Ode. You float along with the eloquent lyrist, who is at once impassioned and imaginative-full of ire, and full of hope; and you end where you began-on the sea-cliff's edge, with the foam so far below your feet you but see it roar-for to your ear the waves are silent as the clouds far far farther above your head; and all above and below and around, at the close now, as the opening then, earth, sea, and air-mute and motionless, or loud and driving-bespeak or betoken, are or symbolise" the spirit of divinest Liberty!"

Yet, after all, this is not the highest mood of imagination. In the highest she would have scorned the elements. Earth, sea, air, would to her have been nothing, while she saw in all their pomp the free faculties of the soul. Or the elements would have been her slaves-and the slaves of liberty-or, if you will, their servants, their ministers; and the winds and the waves would then have been indeed magnificent—in their glorious bondage working for man, the chartered child of God.

In an ode of the highest kind-of which the subject is external to the Poet-a kingdom or country-say France-the Poet, while he would make himself felt in the power of his pervading and creative spirit, would not choose to be, as

VOL. VII.

X

Coleridge is in this ode-not the most prominent personage merely-but the sole. It is different in such an ode as Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality; for to enable us to comprehend them at all, he must bring them forth from his own soul, and show how they rose there, and how he felt them, and what they are in him, that we may compare the mysteries of our own life's earliest experiences with his—and regard them with clearer knowledge, and profounder awe, from discerning that our spirits are, and ever have been, in sympathy with that of Nature's Priest. But in "France," an Ode, Coleridge should not have spoken so much of himself—both of the present and the past-nor set himself right before the Spirit of Liberty, whom he fears he had offended in his "Ode to the Departing Year," or some other strain, in which he had expressed opinions proved false by events. Collins loved liberty as well as Coleridge; but in his glorious ode, he seldom, and shortly-only once or twice, and momentarily—is heard in his personality, and the voice is oracular as from a shrine.

It may seem to some that we have not done justice to these Odes; and it is not improbable that the fault may in some degree lie with ourselves-that our fancy and imagination are not sufficiently alive to such modes of poetical feeling and thought—too much devoted in their delight to other kinds of composition, to be either willing or able to follow or accompany such flights. But if we have underrated their merits, we make bold to say, that the chief cause of our having done so, is our admiration-in which we yield to none-of the original genius of Coleridge. That genius was too original transcendently to excel in Poetry, of which the model had been set, the mould cast, by the great poets of old-and which had been cultivated with high success by some gifted spirits of our own time. In his odes, his genius is engaged in imitation. It works in a fine spirit, but in trammels; his Pegasus is in training, and he takes his gallop in grand style; but Imagination hears afar off in the dust the hoofs of the desert-born. In short, be his Odes what they may, no one, on reading or hearing them read-nay, not even on hearing them recited by his own sweetest voice of purest silver-ever felt that undefinable delight that steals into the soul, and overflows it like one of its own unquestioned dreams, from "a repeated strain" of the veritable Coleridge.

Nay, we could almost find in our heart to extend the spirit of these remarks even to the "Remorse." So many great tragedies have been composed, and in so many styles of greatness—and such multitudes that are not great, but good—that it may be safely predicted that another great one will never be called into existence on any model now known-however numerous may be the future good. Coleridge wisely shunned Shakespeare; and we defy you to mention two dramas more unlike than "Macbeth" and "Remorse." But that drama is constructed on the model of Rowe and Otway. Neither in it, therefore, any more than in his odes, is Coleridge seen in the power of the originality of his genius-as to conception of design. But he is so seen in the mode of his execution, and in great splendour, though not in all his might. The play is full of poetry, nor is it deficient in action; for though the incidents are not many, they are striking or impressive-and there is a current felt setting in towards the shore of death. The characters of the good and of the guilty brothers are finely conceived and contrasted, and in nature. The catastrophe is brought about well, and is just; and Pity and Terror are relieved by an awful Joy, in the deliverance of the virtuous, and the prospect of their happy life. But the power of the play lies in the metaphysical exhibition of the passion of Remorse-in a character of very peculiar conformation; and though the workings of that mind may sometimes be somewhat too curiously, elaborately, and ostentatiously dealt with by the poet, who is then himself seen engaged in his magic, yet the beauty of the language, and the music of the versification-though neither the one nor the other are so dramatic as they might be-never lose their charm over us; and as we grow familiar with the rich, and ornamented, and even gorgeous style of the work, we forget that our living flesh-andblood brethren speak not so-and are beguiled into the belief that such is their natural speech.

The Remorse, which is to be shown at work, is expressed, at the beginning, in a few words-and to evolve the meanings lying latent in these few words is the grand object of the drama.

"Remorse is as the heart in which it grows;
If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews
Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy,