tion and charm, and deserve a wider recognition than has yet been accorded to them.1 C. L. 1 In this edition, the text is given as it originally appeared in the Prospective Review or the National Review; or, in some instances, as revised and reprinted in Estimates of some Englishmen and Scotchmen, a volume of selected essays which Bagehot published in 1858. Even in the case of the revised articles, and more so in that of the others, the text has been found to be very inaccurate, and to require considerable emendation. Most of Bagehot's quotations from authors cited were far from scrupulous in their verbal accuracy, and in a number of instances it has proved impossible to trace the passage. It has been considered expedient to adhere to the original text more strictly than other editors have done, and to indicate editorial interference where that has been deemed necessary. In the text, omitted words supplied and necessary verbal emendations have been placed within square brackets, and the punctuation and paragraphing have been brought into conformity with accepted practice. Corrective readings of quotations from poetry are supplied by way of footnote: amendments in prose quotations are placed within square brackets. The annotation of the text has been carried out with the utmost possible care, and the references have, in the majority of instances been traced or collated by the present editor; but it is only fair to acknowledge much help derived from the pioneer work and superhuman industry of the editor of the posthumous American edition of Bagehot's complete works. In every instance in which Mr. Forrest Morgan's reference has been adopted without confirmation, his initials have been appended within square brackets. For the sake of convenience of reference, the contents have been fully indexed. ESTIMATIONS IN CRITICISM า HARTLEY COLERIDGE.1 HARTLEY COLERIDGE was not like the Duke of Wellington.2 Children are urged by the example of the great statesman and warrior just departed-not indeed to neglect their book' as he did-but to be industrious and thrifty; to 'always perform business,' to 'beware of procrastination,' to 'NEVER fail to do their best :' good ideas, as may be ascertained by referring to the masterly despatches on the Mahratta transactions 'great events,' as the preacher continues, 'which exemplify the efficacy of diligence even in regions where the very advent of our religion is as yet but partially made known.' But '[Oh] what a wilderness were this sad world, And it were almost a worse wilderness if there were not some, to relieve the dull monotony of activity, 1 Hartley Coleridge's Lives of the Northern Worthies. A new edition. 3 vols. Moxon. [Poems by Hartley Coleridge. With a Memoir of his Life: by his Brother. 2 vols. Moxon, 1851.] 2 This essay was first published in the Prospective Review for October 1852, immediately after the death of the Duke of Wellington. Hartley Coleridge: Childhood' (sonnet). VOL. I.-I who are children through life; who act on wayward impulse, and whose will has never come; who toil not and who spin not; who always have fair Eden's simpleness and of such was Hartley Coleridge. Don't you remember,' writes Gray to Horace Walpole, when Lord B. and Sir H. C. and Viscount D., who are now great statesmen, were little dirty boys playing at cricket? For my part I do not feel one bit older or wiser now than I did then.' For, as some apply their minds to what is next them, and labour ever, and attain to governing the Tower, and entering the Trinity House,-to commanding armies, and applauding pilots, so there are also some who are ever anxious to-day about what ought only to be considered to-morrow; who never get on; whom the earth neglects, and whom tradesmen little esteem; who are where they were; who cause grief, and are loved; that are at once a byword and a blessing; who do not live in life, and it seems will not die in death: and of such was Hartley Coleridge. A curious instance of poetic anticipation was in this instance vouchsafed to Wordsworth. When Hartley was six years old, he addressed to him these verses, perhaps the best ever written on a real and visible child : 'O thou whose fancies from afar are brought; The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol; In such clear water, that thy boat May rather seem To brood on air than on an earthly stream; O blessed vision! happy child! Thou art so exquisitely wild, 1 Letter to West, 27th May 1742. I think of thee with many fears O too industrious folly! O vain and causeless melancholy ! Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks.' And so it was. As often happens, being very little of a boy in actual childhood, Hartley preserved into manhood and age all of boyhood which he had ever possessed-its beaming imagination and its wayward will. He had none of the natural roughness of that age. He never played-partly from weakness, for he was very small, but more from awkwardness. His uncle Southey used to say he had two left hands, and might have added that they were both useless. He could no more have achieved football, or mastered cricket, or kept in with the hounds, than he could have followed Charles's Wain or played pitch and toss with Jupiter's satellites. Nor was he very excellent at schoolwork. showed, indeed, no deficiency. The Coleridge family have inherited from the old scholar of Ottery St. Mary a certain classical facility which could not desert the son of Samuel Taylor. But his real strength was in his own mind. He All children have a world of their own, as distinct from that of the grown people who gravitate around them as the dreams of girlhood from our prosaic life; as the ideas of the kitten that plays with the falling leaves, from those of her carnivorous mother that catches mice and is sedulous in her domestic duties. But generally about this interior existence children are dumb. You have warlike ideas, but you cannot say to a sinewy relative, 'My |