y-light into the
shop of Mr. Murray, Albemarle Street, London, with two ladies hanging on
each arm, Geraldine and Christabel,--a bold step for a person at all
desirous of a good reputation, and most of the trade have looked shy at
him since that exhibition. Since that time, however, he has contrived
means of giving to the world a collected edition of all his poems, and
advanced to the front of the stage with a thick octavo in each hand, all
about himself and other Incomprehensibilities. We had forgot that he was
likewise a contributor to Mr. Southey's Omniana, where the Editor of the
Edinburgh Review is politely denominated an "ass," and then _became
himself a writer in the said Review_. And to sum up "the strange
eventful history" of this modest, and obscure, and retired person, we
must mention, that in his youth he held forth in a vast number of
Unitarian chapels--preached his way through Bristol, and "Brummagem,"
and Manchester, in a "blue coat and white waistcoat"; and in after
years, when he was not so much afraid of "the scarlet woman," did, in a
full suit of sables, lecture on Poesy, to "crowded, and, need I add,
highly respectable audiences," at the Royal Institution. After this
slight and imperfect outline of his poetical, oratorical, metaphysical,
political, and theological exploits, our readers will judge, when they
hear him talking of "his retirement and distance from the literary and
political world," what are his talents for autobiography, and how far he
has penetrated into the mysterious non-entities of his own character.

Mr. Coleridge has written conspicuously on the Association of Ideas, but
his own do not seem to be connected either by time, place, cause and
effect, resemblance, or contrast, and accordingly it is no easy matter
to follow him through all the vagaries of his Literary Life. We are
told,

At school _I enjoyed the inestimable advantage_ of a very sensible,
though at the same time a very severe master.--I learnt from
him that Poetry, even that of the loftiest and wildest odes, had a
logic of its own as severe as that of science.--Lute, harp, and lyre;
muse, muses, and inspirations; Pegasus, Parnassus, and Hippocrene;
were all an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost hear him now
exclaiming, _"Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and Ink! Boy you mean! Muse! boy!
Muse! your Nurse's daughter you mean! Pierian Spring! O Aye! the
cloister Pump!"_--Our classical knowledge was the least o