without knowing alpha from omega. A chapter of Isaiah
from his mouth involves the listener in an act of exalted devotion. We
have mentioned this, to show how the whole man is made up of music; and
yet Mr. Coleridge has no _ear_ for music, as it is technically called.
Master as he is of the intellectual recitative, he could not _sing_ an
air to save his life. But his delight in music is intense and
unweariable, and he can detect good from bad with unerring
discrimination. Poor Naldi, whom most of us remember, and all who
remember must respect, said to our poet once at a concert--"That he did
not seem much interested with a piece of Rossini's which had just been
performed." Coleridge answered, "It sounded to me exactly like _nonsense
verses_. But this thing of Beethoven's that they have begun--stop, let
us listen to this, I beg!" ...

The minute study of the laws and properties of metre is observable in
almost every piece in these volumes. Every kind of lyric measure, rhymed
and unrhymed, is attempted with success; and we doubt whether, upon the
whole, there are many specimens of the heroic couplet or blank verse
superior in construction to what Mr. Coleridge has given us. We mention
this the rather, because it was at one time, although that time is past,
the fashion to say that the Lake school--as two or three poets,
essentially unlike to each other, were foolishly called--had abandoned
the old and established measures of the English poetry for new conceits
of their own. There was no truth in that charge; but we will say this,
that, notwithstanding the prevalent opinion to the contrary, we are not
sure, after perusing _some passages_ in Mr. Southey's "Vision of
Judgment," and the entire "Hymn to the Earth," in hexameters, in the
second of the volumes now before us, that the question of the total
inadmissibility of that measure in English verse can be considered as
finally settled; the true point not being whether such lines are as good
as, or even like, the Homeric or Virgilian models, but whether they are
not in themselves a pleasing variety, and on that account alone, if for
nothing else, not to be rejected as wholly barbarous ...

We should not have dwelt so long upon this point of versification,
unless we had conceived it to be one distinguishing excellence of Mr.
Coleridge's poetry, and very closely connected with another, namely,
fulness and individuality of thought. It seems to be a fact, although we
do not prete