But when she sal within the touch of thee. O too industrious folly, O vain and causeless melancholy, Nature will either end thee quite Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast thou to do with sorrow, Or the injuries of to-morrow ? Thou art a Dew-drop, which the morn brings forth.- Ill fitted to sustain unkindly shocks. Or to be trailed along the sailing earth; A gem that glitters while it lives, And' no forewarning gives ; But, at the touch of wrong, without a strife Slips in a moment out of life." The bright and beautiful Baby, whose deep thoughts and eager questionings evoked so much anxiety for the future and tender care for the present, fulfilled in after life the picture thus drawn of him by the kind poet's hand so nearly that the prophecy might almost seem inspired. But there are other fairy voyagers whose fragile boats seem rather to brood on air than on an earthly stream ; other Dew- drops as ill fitted as poor Hartley Coleridge proved to bear unkindly shocks. His character through a solitary life blighted by morbid sensitiveness and an irresolute will, was that of " multitudes, multi- tudes, in the Valley of Decision." Whence was this strange combi- nation of noble impulses, sublime aspirations, profoundly philo- sophic musings and metaphysical insight, combined with a pitiable weakness, a despondent temper, a wish without the power to be true to his better self, derived ? Surely, in some degree, from the father who idolized hirn, who had for seventeen years been the slave of the opium habit, which had enfeebled the will and the reason and clouded the memory and the imagination of one of the greatest minds the world has ever known. Had the laudanum-drinking of 68 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the father, nothing to do with the dram- drinking of Hartley Coleridge, the son ? No one can doubt that it had, who knows anything about the hereditary transmission of appe- tites as well as talents. There is not a selfish or luxurious habit, whether it be a deadly one like opium-eating or not, which a parent can indulge which is not liable to reappear in another form and taint the character, even if it does not poison the life and blight the career of his offspring. There is no sadder sight than this generous, tender- hearted and highly gifted youth presented when — within a year after gladdening his own, his father's and his brothers' hearts by winning a position in England's oldest university, which would have given him a distinction and a competence for life, by his own talents and learn- ing in fair competitive examination with others — he was expelled from it for drunkenness. The agonized father — consciousness of his own infirmity adding to his grief — went down and pleaded with an old man's tears for his poor son ; but the character of the college and that of the students was involved, and the authorities could not, if they wished, overlook a habit which was notorious and had stretched its victim helpless in the gutter. And this was the " fairy voyager " whose raft of life was to sail always in clear water, or seemed to do so in his infancy. Pain and grief were now and henceforth indeed his guests. The Dew-drop was indeed earth-soiled, and the gem was stript of its setting.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

But when she sal within the touch of thee. O too industrious folly, O vain and causeless melancholy, Nature will either end thee quite Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. What hast thou to do with sorrow, Or the injuries of to-morrow ? Thou art a Dew-drop, which the morn brings forth.- Ill fitted to sustain unkindly shocks. Or to be trailed along the sailing earth; A gem that glitters while it lives, And no forewarning gives ; But, at the touch of wrong, without a strife Slips in a moment out of life." The bright and beautiful Baby, whose deep thoughts and eager questionings evoked so much anxiety for the future and tender care for the present, fulfilled in after life the picture thus drawn of him by the kind poet's hand so nearly that the prophecy might almost seem inspired. But there are other fairy voyagers whose fragile boats seem rather to brood on air than on an earthly stream ; other Dewdrops as ill fitted as poor Hartley Coleridge proved to bear unkindly shocks. His character through a solitary life blighted by morbid sensitiveness and an irresolute will, was that of " multitudes, multitudes, in the Valley of Decision." Whence was this strange combination of noble impulses, sublime aspirations, profoundly philosophic musings and metaphysical insight, combined with a pitiable weakness, a despondent temper, a wish without the power to be true to his better self, derived ? Surely, in some degree, from the father who idolized hirn, who had for seventeen years been the slave of the opium habit, which had enfeebled the will and the reason and clouded the memory and the imagination of one of the greatest minds the world has ever known. Had the laudanum-drinking of 68 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the father, nothing to do with the dramdrinking of Hartley Coleridge, the son ? No one can doubt that it had, who knows anything about the hereditary transmission of appetites as well as talents. There is not a selfish or luxurious habit, whether it be a deadly one like opium-eating or not, which a parent can indulge which is not liable to reappear in another form and taint the character, even if it does not poison the life and blight the career of his offspring. There is no sadder sight than this generous, tenderhearted and highly gifted youth presented when — within a year after gladdening his own, his father's and his brothers' hearts by winning a position in England's oldest university, which would have given him a distinction and a competence for life, by his own talents and learning in fair competitive examination with others — he was expelled from it for drunkenness. The agonized father — consciousness of his own infirmity adding to his grief — went down and pleaded with an old man's tears for his poor son ; but the character of the college and that of the students was involved, and the authorities could not, if they wished, overlook a habit which was notorious and had stretched its victim helpless in the gutter. And this was the " fairy voyager " whose raft of life was to sail always in clear water, or seemed to do so in his infancy. Pain and grief were now and henceforth indeed his guests. The Dew-drop was indeed earth-soiled, and the gem was stript of its setting.

The hearthstone; or, Life at home