ALTHOUGH the reputation of Hartley Coleridge as a writer of prose has been overshadowed by the greater reputation of his father, no one who compares a page of his essay on “Black Cats” with any page of prose ever written by his father will hesitate between them. The undercurrent of metaphysics which makes “The Ancient Mariner,” “Christabel,” and “Kubla Khan” the most remarkable poems of their kind in existence, is no longer an undercurrent in the prose of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He has a tendency to abstract statement to which in his prose he gives the freer rein because poetry does not permit its indulgence at all. Hartley Coleridge, on the other hand, writes prose which is as full of interesting incident as that of Charles Lamb. He may not be great even at his best, but he is an excellent companion even at his worst.

  Born at Bristol in 1796, he was bred in the society of Wordsworth, De Quincey, Wilson, and Southey, and it is said with probability that listening to their conversation with his father did more to educate him than his incomplete course at Oxford. He had his father’s sensitive nerves and lack of self-control. As a result of his weaknesses, his whole life seemed a continuous series of misfortunes and failures, but at its close he left prose and verse which assure him a permanent place in English literature.