[LORD BROOKE]

INCONSISTENCY

Ir is a most unseemly and unpleasant

thing to see a man's life full of ups and downs, one step like a Christian, and another like a worldling; it cannot choose but pain himself, and mar the edification of others.[LEIGHTON.]

The same sentiment, only with a special application to the maxims and measures of our Cabinet and Statesmen, had been finely expressed by a sage Poet of the preceding Generation, in lines which no Generation will find inapplicable or superannuated.

God and the World we worship both together,

Draw not our Laws to Him, but His to ours;

Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither, The imperfect Will brings forth but barren Flowers !

Unwise as all distracted Interests be, Strangers to God, Fools in Humanity : Too good for great things, and too great

for good,

While still I dare not' waits upon 'I

wou'd.'

(Aids to Reflection, Moral and Religious Aphorisms,' No. XVII. 1825, p. 93.)

[The lines (with one variant, still' for 'both' in the first line) had been printed by Coleridge, as Motto to the Lay Sermon, addressed to the Higher and

Middle Classes, in 1817; and have often been quoted as of his own composition. I thought them Daniel's, but failing to find them in his works, I put a query in Notes and Queries. A correspondent (8th Ser. ii. p. 18) gave the reference to Lord Brooke's Works, in Grosart's Fuller's Worthies Series, ii. 127. [A Treatise of Warres, St. lxvi.]

'God and the world they worship still together;

Draw not their lawes to Him, but His to theirs ;

Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither; Amid their own desires still raising

Truth lies entrapp'd where Cunning finds no bar :

Since no proportion can there be betwixt Our actions which in endless motions are, And ordinances which are always fixt. Ten thousand Laws more cannot reach so far,

But Malice goes beyond, or lives commixt

So close with Goodness, that it ever will Corrupt, disguise, or counterfeit it still.

And therefore would our glorious Alfred, who

Join'd with the King's, the good man's Majesty,

Not leave Law's labyrinth without a clue

Gave to deep Skill its just authority,

*

II

BLIND is that soul which from this truth can swerve,

No state stands sure, but on the grounds of right,

Of virtue, knowledge; judgment to preserve,

And all the powers of learning requisite ? Though other shifts a present turn may

serve,

Yet in the trial they will weigh too light. DANIEL.

Motto to Chapter XVI. as above, 1818, i. 190.

III

O BLESSED Letters! that combine in one All ages past, and make one live with all: By you do we confer with who are gone, And the dead-living unto council call! By you the unborn shall have communion Of what we feel and what doth us befall.

Since writings are the veins, the arteries, And undecaying life strings of those hearts,

That still shall pant and still shall exercise

Their mightiest powers when nature none imparts,

The strong constitution of their praise Wear out the infection of distemper'd days. DANIEL'S Musophilus.

Motto to Chapter I. of 'The Landing Place' in The Friend, 1818, i. 215.

[The first passage is from Daniel's Epistle to Sir Thomas Egerton; the second and third from his Musophilus; but Coleridge has so altered, transposed, and rewritten all three that they are more

[This passage is from the first of the Conciones ad Populum, lectures delivered at Bristol, February 1795, and published there in the same year. Coleridge reprinted the lecture in The Friend (1818, ii. 248; 1850, ii. 179). The first quotation is really from Paradise Regained, iii. 50; but the second contains only a few words of Milton, which will be found in two disconnected passages in Samson Agonistes-[Woman is to man]

A cleaving mischief, in his way to virtue Adverse and turbulent (ll. 1039-40): and

Yet so it may fall out, because their end Is hate, not help to me.

[?] NAPOLEON

ED.]

Then we may thank ourselves Who spell-bound by the magic name of

Peace

Dream golden dreams. Go, warlike Briton, go,

For the grey olive branch change thy green laurels :

Hang up thy rusty helmet, that the bee May have a hive, or spider find a loom ! Instead of doubling drum and thrilling fife

Be lull'd in lady's lap with amorous flutes. But for Napoleon, know, he'll scorn this calm :

The ruddy planet at his birth bore sway, Sanguine adust his humour, and wild fire His ruling element. Rage, revenge, and cunning

Make up the temper of this captain's valor.

The Friend, 1818, ii. 115.

1802.

[Although it was by inadvertence that these lines were printed in the Remains as Coleridge's, they have been so often included in his works that I am fain to retain them here as his by adoption. The title is his. The verses form part of a

in the Chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge.' The first six lines are taken from W. L. Bowles's Monody on Henry Headley, and although the remaining stanza does not appear in any of the many editions of Bowles's poems I have been able to consult, it probably originally belonged to the same poem.-ED.]

?

RID of a vexing and a heavy load, Eternal Lord! and from the world set free,

Like a frail Bark, weary I turn to Thee From frightful storms into a quiet roadOn much repentance Grace will be bestow'd.

The nails, the thorn, and thy two hands, thy face

Benign, meek, [word illegible] offers grace To sinners whom their sins oppress and goad.

Let not thy justice view, O Light divine! My faults, and keep it from thy sacred ear [A line almost entirely illegible.]

Cleanse with thy blood my sins, to this

incline

More readily, the more my years require Prompt aid, forgiveness speedy and entire.

MS.