cled only the peripatetics. He has
tried to tell us about a poet, and his book might be the biography of the
famous tallow-chandler who would not appreciate the Watchman. The real
events of Coleridge's life are not his gig excursions and his walking
tours; they are his thoughts, dreams and passions, his moments of
creative impulse, their source and secret, his moods of imaginative joy,
their marvel and their meaning, and not his moods merely but the music
and the melancholy that they brought him; the lyric loveliness of his
voice when he sang, the sterile sorrow of the years when he was silent.
It is said that every man's life is a Soul's Tragedy. Coleridge's
certainly was so, and though we may not be able to pluck out the heart of
his mystery, still let us recognise that mystery is there; and that the
goings-out and comings-in of a man, his places of sojourn and his roads
of travel are but idle things to chronicle, if that which is the man be
left unrecorded. So mediocre is Mr. Caine's book that even accuracy
could not make it better.

On the whole, then, Mr. Walter Scott cannot be congratulated on the
success of his venture so far, The one really admirable feature of the
series is the bibliography that is appended to each volume. These
bibliographies are compiled by Mr. Anderson, of the British Museum, and
are so valuable to the student, as well as interesting in themselves,
that it is much to be regretted that they should be accompanied by such
tedious letterpress.

(1) Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. By Eric S. Robertson.

(2) Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. By Hall Caine. 'Great Writers'
Series. (Walter Scott.)

A NEW BOOK ON DICKENS

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 31, 1887.)

Mr. Marzials' Dickens is a great improvement on the Longfellow and
Coleridge of his predecessors. It is certainly a little sad to find our
old friend the manager of the Theatre Royal, Portsmouth, appearing as
'Mr. Vincent Crumules' (sic), but such misprints are not by any means
uncommon in Mr. Walter Scott's publications, and, on the whole, this is a
very pleasant book indeed. It is brightly and cleverly written,
admirably constructed, and gives a most vivid and graphic picture of that
strange modern drama, the drama of Dickens's life. The earlier chapters
are quite excellent, and, though the story of the famous novelist's
boyhood has been often told before, Mr. Marzials shows that it can be
told again without losin