An excellent provision, which would not, however, by the English law, have disabled the ‘said Hartley’ from depriving himself of ‘the continued means of a home’ by alienating the principal of the bequest; since the jurisprudence of this country has no legal definition of ‘prodigality,’ and does not consider any person incompetent to manage his pecuniary affairs unless he be quite and certainly insane. Yet there undoubtedly are persons, and poor Hartley was one of them, who though in general perfectly sane, and even with superior powers of thought or fancy, are as completely unable as the most helpless lunatic to manage any pecuniary transactions, and to whom it would be a great gain to have perpetual guardians and compulsory trustees. But such people are rare, and few principles are so English as the maxim _de minimis non curat lex_. He lived in this way for thirty years or nearly so, but there is nothing to tell of all that time. He died January 6, 1849, and was buried in Grasmere churchyard—the quietest place in England, ‘by the yews,’ as Arnold says, ‘that Wordsworth planted, the Rotha with its big silent pools passing by.’ It was a shining January day when Hartley was borne to the grave. ‘Keep the ground for us,’ said Mr. Wordsworth to the sexton; ‘we are old, and it cannot be long.’ We have described Hartley’s life at length for a peculiar reason. It is necessary to comprehend his character, to appreciate his works; and there is no way of delineating character but by a selection of characteristic sayings and actions. All poets, as is commonly observed, are delineated in their poems, but in very different modes. Each minute event in the melancholy life of Shelley is frequently alluded to in his writings. The tender and reverential character of Virgil is everywhere conspicuous in his pages. It is clear that Chaucer was shrewd. We seem to have talked with Shakespeare, though we have forgotten the facts of his life; but it is not by minute allusion, or a tacit influence, or a genial and delightful sympathy, that a writer like Hartley Coleridge leaves the impress of himself, but in a more direct manner, which it will take a few words to describe.