and stately presence, base, false, degraded; he feels as if the brother was to prove the same, spite of his noble looks.'

"Now I will outbrave all, make all my servants (drunk) And my brave deed shall be writ in wine for virtuous." The Fulse One, Act ii. sc. 3.

Mr. Dyce thinks that Septimius, to whom these words belong, would hardly go so far as to talk of making all men his servants, and therefore adds " drunk," which gives the line a totally different sense. But the assassin has been setting forth in lofty style the force of gold:

"This God creates new tongues and new affections, And, though I had killed my father, give me gold, I'll make men swear I have done a pious sacrifice."

After this flight to say he would make all (men) his servants was but one waft higher than he had flown before. On the other hand, not to mention the metrical awkwardness, would it not be too sudden a descent to declare, that he would make all his servants drunk in order that in their tipsiness they might exalt his brave deed—a fellow too like Septimius with few servants if any? Mr. Dyce is of opinion that the second line, on the common reading of the first, is nonsense. Why should his brave deed be writ in wine for virtuous?" "Writ in wine" is obviously opposed to "writ in water," which occurs in Henry VIII.* and in Philaster. + May we not suppose that the villain winds up his vain speech by anticipating that in every jovial banquet in the land his act shall be extolled amid flowing cups and become the theme of vinous eloquence?

(ii) p. 323. The two letters by Mr. Robinson from which these extracts are taken, were preserved by Mrs. Clarkson

Act iv. sc. 2.

+ Act v. sc. 9. See the original in Catull. Carm. lxx.

ments.

to whom they were addressed and restored by her to the writer, who, at my entreaty, placed them in my hands. I must apologize to him for preferring my judgment to his in thinking that they will interest the affectionate readers of my father's writings, who are thankful for any portion of light, that is cast upon his views and intellectual moveIn the same note in which my friend, Mr. Robinson, expresses the opinion to which I have just adverted, he relates of my father:-"I can testify to his saying on one occasion, but which I do not know, "If all the comments that have been written on Shakspeare by his editors could have been collected into a pile and set on fire, that by the blaze Schlegel might have written his lectures, the world would have been equally a gainer by the books destroyed and the book written." A better proof could not be afforded that he did not mean to gain credit by pilfering thoughts out of a magazine, which he invited his hearers to explore." I regret that Mr. Robinson did not attend and report of all the discourses delivered by Mr. Coleridge in the Spring of 1303; but he first became acquainted with my father, and obtained admission to his lectures in May of that year.

'I am very anxious to see Schlegel's book (the Drum. Vorlesungen) before the lectures commence," says my father in a letter to Mr. Robinson written at the back of a copy of the prospectus of his lectures in 1811, now printed in this volume. This shews that he first became acquainted with his fellow lecturer's general views of Shakspeare three years after he had put forth his own in 1808; and after the time when he had prepared himself again to speak of his "judgment in the construction of his dramas, in short of all that belongs to him as a Poet, and as a dramatic Poet, &c." See the Prospectus.

(kk) p. 328. If Dr. Bell was over-praised, over-preferred in his life-time, he has surely been too much disparaged and undervalued since his departure. The plan of mutual tuition, which he brought into use, was no refined instru

ment for the production of moral or intellectual effects, but it was a machinery for the saving of adult labour, by means of which some portion of useful knowledge was imparted to numbers, who would otherwise have had none at all. He alone at one period represented the cause of national education in connection with the church: his system kept the place, and in some degree prepared the way, for all the better educational schemes which are at this time in actual operation or contemplated. No man, could have done the work which Dr. Bell performed without some remarkable endowments; and I must ever think that, though not of fine intellect or enlarged capacity, he yet possessed, on his one great theme, the nature of the human mind in childhood and the best way of bringing it happily into action, some tincture of sound philosophy. He constantly enforced and drew attention to the principle, (not then so generally admitted as now,) that Education is to be speeded forward by Encouragement, beckoning on from before, rather than by Fear urging from behind; because he saw that the former gives power, while it inspires desire, to advance; the latter, with its envenomed goad, stupifies in attempting to stimulate. He was always insisting on the maxim that dulness, inattention and obstinacy in the taught, generally arises from want of sense, temper and honest diligence on the part of teachers.

Dr. Bell was an enthusiast of philanthropy as truly, I believe, if not as nobly as Clarkson, Howard, or John Wesley, and had within him at least a certain quantity of precious fire to burn up somewhat of the ignorance, and consequent misery, of this world. It is often observed that

"Brother Ringletub, the Missionary, inquired of RamDass, a Hindoo man-god, who had set up for godhead lately, what he meant to do, then, with the sins of mankind? To which Ræm-Dass at once answered, he had fire enough in him to burn up all the sins in the world.-Surely it is the test of every divine man, that he have fire in him to

such enthusiasm may be neither the result nor the accompaniment of true Christian charity; that a man may bestow strength, time, and money on the public, whilst, in his private sphere, he is selfish and exacting, or sensual and corrupt; that he may be raising a temple to the honour of his own inventions while he thinks himself a model of self-devotedness. So far as these remarks are true, (and perhaps it is not the truth, that any man, who makes it the business of his life to promote the general good and habitually spends and is spent in that cause, has been from the first wholly uninspired with a pure and genuine zeal,) they apply to all the public agents of philanthropy. No faults or failings that can be imputed to Dr. Bell disprove his title to be enrolled in that band; nor ought he to be denied the credit due to those whose aims in life are of the higher sort. Mr. Carlyle insists, that "the professional self-conscious friends of humanity are the fatalest kind of persons to be met with in our day;" but this can be affirmed of those alone whose schemes are conceived unwisely or without any real regard to the good of the classes to be affected by them; surely it is not "benevolence prepense' or the conscious deliberate endeavour to be fellow-workers with God, that causes such failures. Of Dr. Bell it should be remembered that at Swanage he shewed the same activity in promoting the welfare of others in obscure and unobserved ways, which he afterwards displayed in more noticeable enterprizes;--that he established the straw-plait manufactory and the practice of vaccination in a corner of the land before he undertook to re-model all the schools of the kingdom on the Madras system.* As Master of Sherborne Hospital, he continued the old system in the mode of dealing

burn up somewhat of the sins of the world, of the miseries and errors of the world: why else is he there?" Carlyle's Miscellanies, vol. iv. p. 290-91.

See the Life of Dr. Bell, vol. ii. chap. xix.

with ecclesiastical revenues a little after the time when it began to strike against the consciences of many; his conscience was not sensitive on the side of church interests, and his public spirit was all flowing away in another channel. If his marriage was not happy, here too, among men of mark, he has had too many partners in misconduct or misfortune; persons who devote themselves to the public are apt to bestow too little thought or pains on their own private affairs; what wonder if the fruit prove blighted or bitter, when there has been such carelessness in choosing the seed and in attending to its germination? That in youth Dr. Bell must have possessed considerable personal attractions, and shewn marks of worth, is evident from the warm and worthy friends he acquired by personal qualities alone. His conduct during the earlier part of his career was distinguished by industry and earnestness; nor was it wanting in private liberality and family affection. During his employment at Madras he gathered golden opinions, and, had he died at the end of it, would have been reinembered, while memory of him remained, as a zealous and disinterested, as well as an able and ingenious man. Throughout the latter half of a long life his character seems to have deteriorated; so it will ever be with men who, by a successful course of exertion, acquire power and importance, their intellectual not being on a par with their other personal endowments,men in whom a vigorous body supports a resolute will, and gives effect to the suggestions of a quick and lively though not enlarged mind, while clearness and depth of insight, freedom and force of thought are not among the gifts assigned them at their birth. Such a piece of mental mechanism, wherein the practical faculty so predominates over the reflective-energy and perseverance in action so exceed the power of duly determining action-is sure to get wrong in the working, and lose its internal balance more and more. Success, long continued, corrupts the heart; opposition, which often comes in full tide at last when little experienced at first, exacerbates the temper; and meantime