Borderers." Coleridge writes to Cottle, the faithful publisher of whom we have before spoken, "I am sojourning for a few days at Racedown, Dorset, the mansion of our friend Wordsworth. He admires my tragedy, which gives me great hopes. He has written a tragedy himself. I speak with heartfelt sincerity, and I think unblinded judgment, when I tell you I feel a little man by his side."
"Osorio," Coleridge's play, was refused, though some time after played under the title of "Remorse;" and "The Borderers," also then rejected, was never played, and did not see the light at all until nearly fifty years after its composition. Notwithstanding their failures, it is not extraordinary to find these men admiring and encouraging each other. Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge have all recorded their full appreciation of each other's abilities. They were a great Triumvirate, and Coleridge pre-eminently the greatest of the three. Lacking Southey's unwearying industry, and Wordsworth's unity of purpose, he yet excelled them both. He possessed most of the mental endowments which made them famous, and many others which were denied to them. The poetry of Southey is much of it without inspiration. "Christabel," "The Ancient Mariner," "The Ode on Mont Blanc," and that "On the Departed Year," are among the finest pieces in our language. Wordsworth wanted wit, humour, sarcasm, and dramatic power. Coleridge had all. As conversationalist, poet, critic, and metaphysician, he is almost equally great. The simple poet of nature, and the industrious student and historian, have both done much to teach and to amuse their contemporaries; but neither the one nor the other has so stamped the impress of his genius on the age which he adorned, as did the mighty monologist of Highgate.
