"Charles, my slow heart was only sad," &c. Nor did the future history of the child belie the augury of this poetic sigh of a fond, yet fearing parent, over the extracted, embodied frailty and fineness of his own being. Indeed, a circle of evil auguries surrounded the childhood of little Hartley. The calm, quiet eye of Wordsworth surveyed the sports of the child, and finding them those of no common infant, he wrote the poem to "H. C., six years old," where he says-- "Thou art a dew-drop which the morn brings forth, Ill-fitted to sustain unkindly shocks, Or to be trailed along the soiling earth." His power of youthful fancy and language was wonderful. Not even Scott's story-telling faculty was equal to his. He delighted in recounting to his brother and companions, not a series of tales, but "one continuous tale, regularly evolved, and possessing a real unity, enchaining the attention of his auditors for a space of years." "This enormous romance, far exceeding in length the compositions of Calprenede, Scudery, or Richardson, though delivered without premeditation, had a progressive story with many turns and complications, with salient points recurring at intervals, with a suspended interest varying in intensity, and occasionally wrought up to a very high pitch, and at length a final catastrophe and conclusion." While constructing this he was little more than twelve years of age. A _curiosity_, Hartley Coleridge commenced life by being--and a curiosity, somewhat battered and soiled, he continued to the end. His peculiarity lay in such a combination of wonderful powers and wonderful weaknesses, of the mind of a man, the heart of a child, and the body of a dwarf, of purposes proud and high, and habits mean and low--as has seldom been witnessed. The wild disorganization produced by such a medley of contradictory qualities, no discipline, no fortunate conjuncture of circumstances, nothing, perhaps, but death or miracle could have reconciled. He was not _deranged_--but he was _disarranged_ in the most extraordinary degree. And such dark disarrangements are sometimes more hopeless than madness itself. There is nothing for them but that they be taken down, and cast into the new mould of the grave.