After contemplating it for some time, he remarked, 'It is not a bad
Wordsworth, but it is not the real Wordsworth; it is not Wordsworth the
poet, it is the sort of Wordsworth who might be Chancellor of the
Exchequer.' Mr. Caine's Coleridge is certainly not the sort of Coleridge
who might have been Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the author of
Christabel was not by any means remarkable as a financier; but, for all
that, it is not the real Coleridge, it is not Coleridge the poet. The
incidents of the life are duly recounted; the gunpowder plot at
Cambridge, the egg-hot and oronokoo at the little tavern in Newgate
Street, the blue coat and white waistcoat that so amazed the worthy
Unitarians, and the terrible smoking experiment at Birmingham are all
carefully chronicled, as no doubt they should be in every popular
biography; but of the spiritual progress of the man's soul we hear
absolutely nothing. Never for one single instant are we brought near to
Coleridge; the magic of that wonderful personality is hidden from us by a
cloud of mean details, an unholy jungle of facts, and the 'critical
history' promised to us by Mr. Walter Scott in his unfortunate preface is
conspicuous only by its absence.

Carlyle once proposed in jest to write a life of Michael Angelo without
making any reference to his art, and Mr. Caine has shown that such a
project is perfectly feasible. He has written the life of a great
peripatetic philosopher and chronicled only the peripatetics. He has
tried to tell us about a poet, and his book might be the biography of the
famous tallow-chandler who would not appreciate the Watchman. The real
events of Coleridge's life are not his gig excursions and his walking
tours; they are his thoughts, dreams and passions, his moments of
creative impulse, their source and secret, his moods of imaginative joy,
their marvel and their meaning, and not his moods merely but the music
and the melancholy that they brought him; the lyric loveliness of his
voice when he sang, the sterile sorrow of the years when he was silent.
It is said that every man's life is a Soul's Tragedy. Coleridge's
certainly was so, and though we may not be able to pluck out the heart of
his mystery, still let us recognise that mystery is there; and that the
goings-out and comings-in of a man, his places of sojourn and his roads
of travel are but idle things to chronicle, if that which is the man be
left unrecorded. So mediocre is Mr. Caine's book that even accuracy
could not make it better.

On the whole, then, Mr. Walter Scott cannot be congratulated on the
success of his venture so far, The one really admirable feature of the
series is the bibliography that is appended to each volume. These
bibliographies are compiled by Mr. Anderson, of the British Museum, and
are so valuable to the student, as well as interesting in themselves,
that it is much to be regretted that they should be accompanied by such
tedious letterpress.

(1) Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. By Eric S. Robertson.

(2) Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. By Hall Caine. 'Great Writers'
Series. (Walter Scott.)

A NEW BOOK ON DICKENS

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 31, 1887.)

Mr. Marzials' Dickens is a great improvement on the Longfellow and
Coleridge of his predecessors.