saturated, with opium) had written
with distempered vigour upon any
question, there occurred soon after a
recoil of intense disgust, not from his
own paper only, but even from the
subject. All opium-eaters are tainted
with the infirmity of leaving works
unfinished, and suffering reactions of
disgust. But Coleridge taxed himself
with that infirmity in verse before he
could at all have commenced opium-
eating. Besides, it is too much as-
sumed by Coleridge and by his bio-
grapher, that to leave off opium was
of course to regain juvenile health.
But all opium-eaters make the mis-
take of supposing every pain or irri-
tation which they suffer to be the
product of opium. Whereas a wise
man will say, suppose you do leave off
opium, that will not deliver you from
the load of years (say sixty-three)
which you carry on your back. Charles
Lamb, another man of true genius, and
another head belonging to the Black-
wood Gallery, made that mistake in
his Confessions of a Drunkard. "I
looked back," says he, "to the time
when always, on waking in the morn-
ing, I had a song rising to my lips."
At present, it seems, being a drunk-
ark, he has no such song. Ay, dear
Lamb, but note this, that the drunk-
ard was fifty-six years old, the song-
ster was twenty-three. Take twenty-
three from fifty-six, and we have
some reason to believe that thirty-
three will remain; which period of
thirty-three years is a pretty good
reason for not singing in the morning,
even if brandy has been out of the
question.

It is singular, as respects Coleridge,
that Mr Gillman never says one word
upon the event of the great Highgate
experiment for leaving off laudanum,
though Coleridge came to Mr Gillman's
for no other purpose; and in a week,
this vast creation of new earth, sea, and
all that in them is, was to have been
accomplished. We rayther think, as
Bayley junior observes, that the explo-
sion must have hung fire. But that is a
trifle. We have another pleasing hy-
pothesis on the subject. Mr Words-
worth, in his exquisite lines written
on a fly-leaf of his own Castle of In-
dolence, having described Coleridge

as

a noticeable man with large grey
eyes," goes on to say, "He" (viz.
Coleridge) "did that other man en-
tice"
to view his imagery. Now we

are sadly afraid that "the noticeable
man with large grey eyes" did entice
"that other man," viz. Gillman, to
commence opium-eating. This is
droll; and it makes us laugh horribly.
Gillman should have reformed him;
and lo! he corrupts Gillman. S. T.
Coleridge visited Highgate by way of
being converted from the heresy of
opium; and the issue is-that, in two
months' time, various grave men,
amongst whom our friend Gillman
marches first in great pomp, are found.
to have faces shining and glorious as
that of Esculapius; a fact of which
we have already explained the secret
meaning. And scandal says (but
then what will not scandal say?) that
a hogshead of opium goes up daily
through Highgate tunnel. Surely one
corroboration of our hypothesis may
be found in the fact, that Vol. I. of
Gillman's Coleridge is forever to stand
unpropped by Vol. II. For we have
already observed-that opium-eaters,
though good fellows upon the whole,
never finish any thing.

What then? A man has a right
never to finish any thing. Certainly
he has; and by Magna Charta. But
he has no right, by Magna Charta or
by Parva Charta, to slander decent
men, like ourselves and our friend the
author of the Opium Confessions. Here
it is that our complaint arises against
Mr Gillman. If he has taken to opi-
um-eating, can we help that? If his
face shines, must our faces be black-
ened? He has very improperly pub-
lished some intemperate passages from
Coleridge's letters, which ought to
have been considered confidential, un-
less Coleridge had left them for pub-
lication, charging upon the author of
the Opium Confessions a reckless dis-
regard of the temptations which, in
that work, he was scattering abroad
amongst men. Now this author is
connected with ourselves, and we
cannot neglect his defence, unless in
the case that he undertakes it himself.

We complain, also, that Coleridge
raises (and is backed by Mr Gillman
in raising) a distinction perfectly per-
plexing to us, between himself and
the author of the Opium Confessions
upon the question-Why they seve-
rally began the practice of opium-
eating? In himself, it seems, this mo-
tive was to relieve pain, whereas the
Confessor was surreptitiously seeking
for pleasure. Ay, indeed-where did

he learn that? We have no copy of the Confessions here, so we cannot quote chapter and verse; but we distinctly remember, that toothach is recorded in that book as the particular occasion which first introduced the author to the knowledge of opium. Whether afterwards, having been thus initiated by the demon of pain, the opium confessor did not apply powers thus discovered to purposes of mere pleasure, is a question for himself; and the same question applies with the same cogency to Coleridge. Coleridge began in rheumatic pains. What then? That is no proof that he did not end in voluptuousness. For our parts, we are slow to believe that ever any man did, or could, learn the somewhat awful truth, that in a certain ruby-coloured elixir, there lurked a divine power to chase away the genius of ennui, without subsequently abusing this power. To taste but once from the tree of knowledge, is fatal to the subsequent power of abstinence. True it is, that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne, (for instance, hospital patients,) who have not afterwards courted its powers as a voluptuous stimulant; but that, be sure, has arisen from no abstinence in them. There are, in fact, two classes of temperaments as to this terrific drug -those which are, and those which are not, preconformed to its power;

those which genially expand to its temptations, and those which frostily exclude them. Not in the energies of the will, but in the qualities of the nervous organization, lies the dread arbitration of-Fall or stand: doomed thou art to yield; or, strengthened constitutionally, to resist. Most of those who have but a low sense of the spells lying couchant in opium, have practically none at all. For the initial fascination is for them effectually defeated by the sickness which nature has associated with the first stages of opium-eating. But to that other class, whose nervous sensibilities vibrate to their profoundest depths under the first touch of the angelic poison, even as a lover's ear thrills on hearing unexpectedly the voice of her whom he loves, opium is the Amreeta cup of beatitude. You know the Paradise Lost? and you remember, from the eleventh book, in its earlier part, that laudanum already existed in Eden-nay, that it was used medicinally by an archangel; for, after Michael had "purged with euphrasy and rue" the eyes of Adam, lest he should be unequal to the mere sight of the great visions about to unfold their draperies before him, next he fortifies his fleshly spirits against the affliction of these visions, of which visions the first was death. And how?

What was their operation ?

And

ridge and his biographer have overlooked.

On all this, however, we need say no more; for we have just received a note from the writer of the Opium Confessions, more learned than ourselves in such mysteries, which promises us a sequel or finale to those Confessions. And this, which we have reason to think a record of profound experiences, we shall probably publish next month.

No. CCCLII.

POETRY, according to Lord Bacon a Third Part of Learning, must be a social interest of momentous power. That Wisest of Men-so our dear friends may have heard-extols it above history and above philosophy, as the more divine in its origin, the more immediately and intimately salutary and sanative in its use. Are not Shakspeare and Milton two of our greatest moral teachers? CRITICISM opens to us the poetry we possess ; and, like a magnanimous kingly protector, shelters and fosters all its springing growths. What is criticism as a science? Essentially thisFEELING KNOWN-that is, affections of the heart and imagination become understood subject-matter to the selfconscious intelligence. Must feeling perish because intelligence sounds its depths? Quite the reverse. Greatest minds are those in which, in and out of poetry, the understanding contemplates the will. Then first the soul has its proper strength. Disorderly passions are then tamed, and become the massy pillars of highbuilt virtue. Criticism? It is a shape of self-intuition. Confession and penitence, in the church, are a moral and a religious criticism. The imagination is less august and solemn, but of the same character. The first age of the world lived by divine instincts; the later must by reason. How, then, shall we possess the poetry of our being, unless we guard and

VOL. LVII. NO. CCCLII.

VOL. LVII.

arm it? If it be a benign, holy, potent faculty, nevertheless it cannot, the most delicate of all our faculties, sustain itself in the strife of opinions raging and thundering around. Then, if it should rightly hold dominion over us, let legislative opinion acknowledge, establish, and fortify that impaled territory. The temper of the times is in sundry respects favourable, notwithstanding its too frequent possession by an incensed political spirit. Has there not been for half a century a spontaneous, an ardent, a loving return in literature, of our own and all countries, to the old and great in the productions of the human mind-to nature, with all her fountains? Does not the spirit of man, in the great civilized nations at this day, travail with desire of knowing itself, its laws, its conditions, its means, its powers, its hopes? studies with irregular, often blind and perverted, efforts; but still it studies-itself. And is not criticism, when it speaks, much bolder, more glowing and generous, ampler-spirited, more inspiring, and withal more enquiring and philosophical? During the whole period we speak of, poetry and criticism-in nature near akinwith occasional complaints and quarrels, have flourished amicably together, side by side. Both have been strong, healthy, and good. Prigs of both kinds-the pert and the pompous

It

will keep prating about the shallow

K