reader, Coleridge ranges with a free and sure footstep. It is no
disparagement to his _Religious Musings_ to say that it is to this
class of literature that it belongs. Having said this, however, it must
be added that poetry of the second order has seldom risen to higher
heights of power. The faults already admitted disfigure it here and
there. We have "moon blasted Madness when he yells at midnight;" we
read of "eye-starting wretches and rapture-trembling seraphim," and the
really striking image of Ruin, the "old hag, unconquerable, huge,
Creation's eyeless drudge," is marred by making her "nurse" an
"impatient earthquake." But there is that in Coleridge's aspirations
and apostrophes to the Deity which impresses one even more profoundly
than the mere magnificence, remarkable as it is, of their rhetorical
clothing. They are touched with so penetrating a sincerity; they are so
obviously the outpourings of an awe-struck heart. Indeed, there is
nothing more remarkable at this stage of Coleridge's poetic development
than the instant elevation which his verse assumes whenever he passes
to Divine things. At once it seems to take on a Miltonic majesty of
diction and a Miltonic stateliness of rhythm. The tender but low-lying
domestic sentiment of the _Aeolian Harp_ is in a moment informed by
it with the dignity which marks that poem's close. Apart too from its
literary merits, the biographical interest of _Religious Musings_
is very considerable. "Written," as its title declares, but in reality,
as its length would suggest and as Mr. Cottle in fact tells us, only
_completed_, "on the Christmas eve of 1794," it gives expression
to the tumultuous emotions by which Coleridge's mind was agitated at
this its period of highest political excitement. His revolutionary
enthusiasm was now at its hottest, his belief in the infant French
Republic at its fullest, his wrath against the "coalesced kings" at its
fiercest, his contempt for their religious pretence at its bitterest.
"Thee to defend," he cries,