the tongue; but can they be
considered other than a _cento_? Swarms of English schoolboys, at this
day, would not feel very proud to adopt them. In fact, we remember (at
a period say twelve years later than this) some iambic verses, which
were really composed by a boy, viz. son of Dr Prettyman, (afterwards
Tomline,) bishop of Winchester, and, in earlier times, private tutor
to Mr Pitt; they were published by Middleton, first bishop of
Calcutta, in the preface to his work on the Greek article; and for
racy idiomatic Greek, self-originated, and not a mere mocking-bird's
iteration of alien notes, are so much superior to all the attempts of
these sexagenarian doctors, as distinctly to mark the growth of a new
era and a new generation in this difficult accomplishment, within the
first decennium of this century. It is singular that only one blemish
is suggested by any of the contemporary critics in Dr Cook's verses,
viz. in the word xunon, for which this critic proposes to substitute
ooinon, to prevent, as he observes, the last syllable of ocheto from
being lengthened by the x. Such considerations as these are necessary
to the _trutinae castigatio_, before we can value Coleridge's place on
the scale of his own day; which day, _quoad hoc_, be it remembered,
was 1790.

As to French, Coleridge read it with too little freedom to find
pleasure in French literature. Accordingly, we never recollect his
referring for any purpose, either of argument or illustration, to a
French classic. Latin, from his regular scholastic training, naturally
he read with a scholar's fluency; and indeed, he read constantly in
authors, such as Petrarch, Erasmus, Calvin, &c., whom he could not
then have found in translations. But Coleridge had not cultivated an
acquaintance with the delicacies of classic Latinity. And it is
remarkable that Wordsworth, educated most negligently at Hawkshead
school, subsequently by reading the lyric poetry of Horace, simply for
his own delight as a student of composition, made himself a master of
Latinity in its most difficult form; whilst Coleridge, trained
regularly in a great Southern school, never carried his Latin to any
classical polish.

There is another accomplishment of Coleridge's, less broadly open to
the judgment of this generation, and not at all of the next--viz. his
splendid art of conversation, on which it will be interesting to say a
word. Ten years ago, when the music of this rare performance had not
y