uilty; and
one of the boldest experiments that has yet been made on the patience or
understanding of the public. It is impossible, however, to dismiss it,
without a remark or two. The other productions of the Lake School have
generally exhibited talents thrown away upon subjects so mean, that no
power of genius could ennoble them; or perverted and rendered useless by
a false theory of poetical composition. But even in the worst of them,
if we except the White Doe of Mr Wordsworth and some of the laureate
odes, there were always some gleams of feeling or of fancy. But the
thing now before us is utterly destitute of value. It exhibits from
beginning to end not a ray of genius; and we defy any man to point out a
passage of poetical merit in any of the three pieces which it contains,
except, perhaps, the following lines in p. 32, and even these are not
very brilliant; nor is the leading thought original--

'Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.'

With this one exception, there is literally not one couplet in the
publication before us which would be reckoned poetry, or even sense,
were it found in the corner of a newspaper or upon the window of an inn.
Must we then be doomed to hear such a mixture of raving and driv'ling,
extolled as the work of a '_wild and original_' genius, simply because
Mr Coleridge has now and then written fine verses, and a brother poet
chooses, in his milder mood, to laud him from courtesy or from interest?
And are such panegyrics to be echoed by the mean tools of a political
faction, because they relate to one whose daily prose is understood to
be dedicated to the support of all that courtiers think should be
supported? If it be true that the author has thus earned the patronage
of those liberal dispensers of bounty, we can have no objection that
they should give him proper proofs of their gratitude; but we cannot
help wishing, for his sake, as well as our own, that they would pay in
solid pudding instead of empty praise; and adhere, at least in this
instance, to the good old system of rewarding their champions with
places and pensions, instead of puffing their bad poetry, and
endeavouring to cram their nonsense down the throats of all the loyal
and well affected.--_The Edinburgh Review_.