ess and
silent clouds. The cold moonlight sheds its faint lustre on his head; the
fox peeps out of the ruined tower; the thistle waves its beard to the
wandering gale; and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age, as
the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the
dry reeds in the winter's wind! The feeling of cheerless desolation, of
the loss of the pith and sap of existence, of the annihilation of the
substance, and the clinging to the shadow of all things as in a mock
embrace, is here perfect. In this way, the lamentation of Selma for the
loss of Salgar is the finest of all. If it were indeed possible to shew
that this writer was nothing, it would only be another instance of
mutability, another blank made, another void left in the heart, another
confirmation of that feeling which makes him so often complain, "Roll on,
ye dark brown years, ye bring no joy on your wing to Ossian!"

XVII

MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS

My father was a Dissenting Minister at W--m in Shropshire; and in the year
1798 (the figures that compose that date are to me like the "dreaded name
of Demogorgon)" Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to succeed Mr. Rowe in
the spiritual charge of a Unitarian Congregation there. He did not come
till late on the Saturday afternoon before he was to preach; and Mr. Rowe,
who himself went down to the coach in a state of anxiety and expectation,
to look for the arrival of his successor, could find no one at all
answering the description but a round-faced man in a short black coat
(like a shooting jacket) which hardly seemed to have been made for him,
but who seemed to be talking at a great rate to his fellow-passengers. Mr.
Rowe had scarce returned to give an account of his disappointment, when
the round-faced man in black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the
subject, by beginning to talk. He did not cease while he staid; nor has he
since, that I know of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful
suspense for three weeks that he remained there, "fluttering the _proud
Salopians_ like an eagle in a dove-cote;" and the Welch mountains that
skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no
such mystic sounds since the days of

"High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay!"

As we passed along between W--m and Shrewsbury, and I eyed their blue tops
seen through the wintry branches, or the red rustling leaves of the
sturdy oak-tre