ch had already in Germany accomplished so much in
the hands of Lessing and Goethe. It is enough to refer here to the
fragmentary series of his Shakespearian criticisms, containing evidence
of the truest insight, and a marvellous appreciation of the judicial
"sanity" which raises the greatest name in literature far above even the
highest of the poets who approached him.

As a poet Coleridge's own place is safe. His niche in the great gallery
of English poets is secure. Of no one can it be more emphatically said
that at his highest he was "of imagination all compact." He does not
possess the fiery pulse and humaneness of Burns, but the exquisite
perfection of his metre and the subtle alliance of his thought and
expression must always secure for him the warmest admiration of true
lovers of poetic art. In his early poems may be found traces of the
fierce struggle of his youth. The most remarkable is the _Monody on the
Death of Chatterton_ and the _Religious Musings_. In what may be called
his second period, the ode entitled _France_, considered by Shelley the
finest in the language, is most memorable. The whole soul of the poet is
reflected in the _Ode to Dejection_. The well-known lines--

"O Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live;
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud,"

with the passage which follows, contain more vividly, perhaps, than
anything which Coleridge has written, the expression of the shaping and
colouring function which he assigns, in the _Biographia Literaria_, to
imagination. _Christabel_ and the _Ancient Mariner_ have so completely
taken possession of the highest place, that it is needless to do more
than allude to them. The supernatural has never received such treatment
as in these two wonderful productions of his genius, and though the
first of them remains a torso, it is the loveliest torso in the gallery
of English literature. Although Coleridge had, for many years before his
death, almost entirely forsaken poetry, the few fragments of work which
remain, written in later years, show little trace of weakness, although
they are wanting in the unearthly melody which imparts such a charm to
_Kubla Khan_, _Love_ and _Youth and Age_. (G. D. B.; H. CH.)

In the latter part of his life, and for the generation which followed,
Coleridge was ranked by many young English churchmen of liberal views as
the greatest religious thinker of their time. As Carlyle h