lief, or institution, such as the throne or the Church,
had served some need, and had a rational idea at the bottom of it, to
which it might be again recalled, and made once more a benefit to
society, instead of a curse and an anachronism.

As a poet, Coleridge has a sure, though slender, hold upon immortal
fame. No English poet has "sung so wildly well" as the singer of
_Christabel_ and the _Ancient Mariner_. The former of these is, in form,
a romance in a variety of meters, and in substance, a tale of
supernatural possession, by which a lovely and innocent maiden is
brought under the control of a witch. Though unfinished and obscure in
intention, it haunts the imagination with a mystic power. Byron had seen
_Christabel_ in manuscript, and urged Coleridge to publish it. He hated
all the "Lakers," but when, on parting from Lady Byron, he wrote his
song,

Fare thee well, and if forever,
Still forever fare thee well,

he prefixed to it the noble lines from Coleridge's poem, beginning

Alas! they had been friends in youth.

In that weird ballad, the _Ancient Mariner_, the supernatural is
handled with even greater subtlety than in _Christabel_. The reader is
led to feel that amid the loneliness of the tropic-sea the line between
the earthly and the unearthly vanishes, and the poet leaves him to
discover for himself whether the spectral shapes that the mariner saw
were merely the visions of the calenture, or a glimpse of the world of
spirits. Coleridge is one of our most perfect metrists. The poet
Swinburne--than whom there can be no higher authority on this point
(though he is rather given to exaggeration)--pronounces _Kubla Khan_,
"for absolute melody and splendor, the first poem in the language."

Robert Southey, the third member of this group, was a diligent worker,
and one of the most voluminous of English writers. As a poet, he was
lacking in inspiration, and his big oriental epics, _Thalaba_, 1801, and
the _Curse of Kehama_, 1810, are little better than wax-work. Of his
numerous works in prose, the _Life of Nelson_ is, perhaps, the best, and
is an excellent biography.

Several other authors were more or less closely associated with the Lake
Poets by residence or social affiliation. John Wilson, the editor of
_Blackwood's_, lived for some time, when a young man, at Elleray, on the
banks of Windermere. He was an athletic man of outdoor habits, an
enthusiastic sportsman, and a lover of natural scenery. His