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respect to those authors whom he liked, and where he gave his judgment fair play; capricious, perverse, and prejudiced in his antipathies and distastes. We loitered on the “ribbed sea-sands," in such talk as this, a whole morning, and I recollect met with a curious sea-weed, of which John Chester told us the country name! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy that had been drowned the day before, and that they had tried to save him at the risk of their own lives. He said "he did not know how it was that they ventured, but, Sir, we have a nature towards one another." This expression, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of that theory of disinterestedness which I (in common with Butler) had adopted. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove that likeness was not mere association of ideas. I said that the mark in the sand put one in mind of a man's foot, not because it was part of a former impression of a man's foot (for it was quite new) but because it was like the shape of a man's foot. He assented to the justness of this distinction (which I have explained at length elsewhere, for the benefit of the curious) and John Chester listened; not from any interest in the subject, but because he was astonished that I should be able to suggest any thing to Coleridge that he did not already know. We returned on the third morning, and Coleridge remarked the silent cottage-smoke eurling up the valleys where, a few evenings before, we had seen the lights gleaming through the dark...

In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on my return home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morning, and he was to preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had prepared any thing for the

shudder at his approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would of course understand so broad and fine a moral as this at any time.

occasion? He said he had not even thought of the text, but should as soon as we parted. I did not go to hear him,—this was a fault, but we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The next day we had a long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by a well-side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines from his tragedy of Remorse; which I must say became his mouth and that occasion better than they, some years after, did Mr. Elliston's and the Drury-lane boards,—

"Oh memory! shield me from the world's poor strife,

And give those scenes thine everlasting life."

I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest in Germany; and his return was cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out. It was not till some time after that I knew his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always appears to me (as I first saw him) with a common-place book under his arm, and the first with a bon-mot in his mouth. It was at Godwin's that I met him with Holeroft and Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely which was the best-Man as he was, or man as he is to be. "Give me," says Lamb, man as he is not to be." This saying was the beginning of a friendship between us, which I believe still continues.Enough of this for the present.

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"But there is matter for another rhyme,

And I to this may add a second tale.”

W. H.

LETTERS FROM ABROAD.

LETTER III.-ITALY.

MY DEAR N.

.

I WRITE you, as you request, a very long letter, "on the largest sized paper, and in the smallest hand-writing." You call the request a modest one, and I cannot but allow it has some pretensions to bashfulness, not only inasmuch as it comes in the corner of another, but because it is-let me see-just twenty lines long. However, you see what I think your twenty lines worth: and you are so accustomed, in matters of intercourse, to have the part of obliger to yourself, that it would be indecent to haggle with you about the tare and tret of an epistle. If you send me forty lines, I suppose I must write you a quarto.

You ask me to tell you a world of things about Italian composers, singers, &c. Alas! my dear N., I may truly say to you, that for music you must "look at home;" at least as far as my own experience goes. Even the biographies which you speak of, are, I fear, not to be found in any great quantity; but I will do my best to get them together. Both Pisa and Genoa have little pretensions either to music or books. We ought to be at Rome for one, and Milan for the other. Florence perhaps has a reasonable quantity of both, besides being rich in its Gallery: but I will tell you

one thing, which, albeit you are of Italian origin, will mortify you to hear; viz. that Mozart is nothing in Italy, and Rossini every thing. Nobody even says any thing of Mozart, since Figaro (tell it not in Gothland!) was hissed at Florence. His name appears to be suppressed by agreement; while Rossini is talked of, written of, copied, sung, hummed, whistled, and demi-semi-quavered from morning to night. If there is a portrait in a shop-window, it is Rossini's. If you hear a song in the street, it is Rossini's. If you go to a musicshop to have something copied,-" An air of Rossini's?" Mayer, I believe, is the only German who takes the turn with him at the Opera here; but Mozart, be assured, never. I believe they would shut their ears at a burst of his har mony, as your friends the Chinese did at Lord Macartney's band.

I suspect, however, that there are more reasons than one for this extraordinary piece of intolerance, and not altogether so unhandsome as they appear at first sight. As to theatres, I need not tell you the dislike which singers have to compositions that afford them no excuse for running riot in their own quavers and cadences. They hate to be

"Married to immortal verse."

They prefer a good, flimsy, dying sort of a "do-me-no-harm, good-man," whom they can twist about and desert as they please. This is common to theatres every where. But in Italy, besides a natural prejudice in favour of their own composers, there has always been another, you know, against that richness of accompaniment, with which the Germans follow up their vocal music, turning every air, as it were, into a triumphal procession. They think that if a melody is full of nature and passion, it should be oftener suffered to

make out its own merit, and triumph by its own sufficing beauty: like Adam in the poem, when he walked forth to meet the angel,

Without more train

Accompanied than with his own complete
Perfections:

or Eve afterwards, when she received him,

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(What poetry is there! what sentiment! what delicacy! what words full of meaning!) You know what I think on this subject, when the composer is a truly great one like Paesiello: and I know what you think too, when the air is one of his divinest, like Il Mio Ben in the opera of Nina. But Rossini is not Paesiello? True. He gives us a delightful air now and then; but in the hurry of his industry and his animal spirits, pours forth a torrent of common-places. His is not a flow of music,

"Whose stream is amber, and whose gravel gold."

It is, for the most part, common water, brisk in its course, and bringing down only grains of gold, however worth sifting. Nevertheless, he has animal spirits, he runs merrily; his stream is for the most part native; and the Italians are as willing to be made merry with "thin potations" as with old hock. I meant to shew you how it was that they were prepared to undervalue Mozart; and I think I can now explain to you, in one word, how it is that they contrive to render themselves deaf to the rest of his merits, and to the VOL. II.

E

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