me if I stop somewhere-where the fine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher smack than the sensual rarity; there my friends (or any good man) may command me; but pigs are pigs; and I myself am therein nearest to myself; nay, I should think it an affront, an undervaluing done to Nature, who bestowed such a boon upon me, if, in a churlish mood, I parted with the precious gift. One of the bitterest pangs I ever felt of remorse was when a child-my kind old aunt had strained her pocket-strings to bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon me. In my way home through the Borough, I met a venerable old man— not a mendicant-but thereabouts; a look-beggar-not a verbal petitionist-and, in the coxcombry of taught charity, I gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old aunt's kindness crossed me—the sum it was to her—the pleasure that she had a right to expect that I, not the old impostor, should take in eating her cake- the damned ingratitude by which, under the colour of a Christian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to heart so grievously, that I think I never suffered the like. And I was right; it was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to me ever after. The cake has long been masticated, consigned to the dunghill, with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper.

"But when Providence, who is better to us all than our aunts, gives me a Pig, remembering my temptation and my fall, I shall endeavour to act towards it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose. "Yours (short of Pig) to command in everything,

"C. L."

"When I first heard from Stewart of the Courier that Buonaparte had declared that the interests of small states must always succumb to great ones, I said, 'Thank God! he has sealed his fate: from this moment his fall is certain.'"

"Clarkson (the moral steam engine, or Giant with one idea) had recently published his book, and being in a very irritable state of mind, his wife expressed great fears of the effect of any severe review in the then state of his feelings. I wrote to Jeffrey, and expressed to him my opinion of the cruelty of any censure being passed upon the work as a composition. In return I had a very polite letter, expressing a

wish that I should review it. I did so: but when the Review was published, in the place of some just eulogiums due to Mr. Pitt, and which I stated were upon the best authority (in fact, they were from Tom Clarkson himself), was substituted some abuse and detraction.* Yet Clarkson expressed himself gratified and satisfied with the effect of the review, and would not allow me to expose the transaction. Again, Jeffrey had said to me that it was hopeless to persuade men to prefer Hooker and Jeremy Taylor to Johnson and Gibbon. I wrote him two letters, or two sheets, detailing, at great length, my opinions. This he never acknowledged; but in an early number of the Review he inserted the whole of my communication in an article of the Review, and added at the conclusion words to this effect: We have been anxious to be clear on this subject, as much has been said on this matter by men who evidently do not understand it. Such are Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, and Miss Baillie.' ”

"One day, when I had not a shilling which I could spare, I was passing by a cottage not far from Keswick, where a carter was demanding a shilling for a letter, which the woman of the house appeared unwilling to pay, and at last declined to take. I paid the postage; and when the man was out of sight, she told me that the letter was from her son, who took that means of letting her know that he was well: the letter was not to be paid for. It was then opened, and found to be blank !"

"On my return I found a double letter, for which two shillings had been paid. I tore it open, and found it to contain a long communication from Haydon the Artist, which, in allusion to my Poem on Mont Blanc, ended thus: From this moment you are immortal.' I was ungrateful enough to consider Mr. Haydon's immortality dear at two shillings! And though

*Was not this a fraud, a moral forgery? And this man, who attained notoriety and influence by conduct and practices like these, is he not a Judge, whose office it is to punish such acts in another?

I can now smile at the infliction, my judgment remains the same; and to this day my thanks have not been given to Mr. Haydon for his apotheosis."

"Darwin was so egregiously vain, that, after having given to his son a thesis upon Ocular Spectra, in itself an entire plagiarism from a German book published at Leipsig, he became jealous of the praise it received, and caused it to be given out that he was the real author. Nay, he even wrote letters and verses to himself, which he affixed to his own Poems as being addressed to him, by (I think) Billsborough, a young admirer of his. He asked his friends whether they had not frequently heard him express opinions like these twenty years ágo ?"

LETTER XXIX.

MY DEAREST FRIEND,

April 18th 1822.

There was neither self nor unself in the flash or jet of

T P

pleasurable sensation with which I saw the old PALL MALL

3

tea canister top surmounting my own name, but a mere unreflecting gladness, a sally of inward welcoming, on finding you near to me again. I am indebted to it, however, for this, and the dear and affectionate letter that sustained and substantiated it, like a gleam of sunshine ushering in a genial south-west, and setting all the birds a singing; while the joy at the recall of the old, dry, scathy, viceroy of the discouraged spring, the Tartar laird from the north-east, augments yet loses itself in the delight at the arrival of the long wished-for successor to his native realm, gave a sudden spur and kindly sting to my spirits, the restorative effects of which I felt on rising this morning, as soon after, at least, as the pain which always

greets me on awaking, and never fails to be my Valentine for every day in the year, had taken its leave.

Charles and Mary Lamb are to dine with us on Sunday next, and I hope it will be both pleasant and possible for you and Mrs. Allsop to complete the party; and if so, I will take care to be quite free to enjoy your society from the moment of your arrival, and I hope that Mrs. Allsop will not be too much tired for me to show her some of our best views and walks; and perhaps the nightingales may commence their ditties on or by that day, for I have daily expected them. Need I say what thoughts rush into my mind when I read a letter from you, or think of your love towards me. God bless you, my dear, dear friend,

T. Allsop, Esq.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

The following observations preface a chronological and historic assistant to a course of lectures, delivered in 1818.

"The history of philosophy commences with the birth of Thales. Of the three different dates given by three several chronologistsnamely, 640, 629, and 594th, year before Christ-I have chosen the second, not only as a mean, but as best agreeing with his manhood being contemporary with Solon's, and with the recorded fact of his having foretold an eclipse of the sun in the fourth year of the 45th Olympiad, or 597 B.C.: thus making an interval of 322 years between the birth of Thales and the era in which Hesiod and Homer are generally supposed to have flourished; that is, about the year B.C. 907. In the great poems of this era we find a language already formed, beyond all example adapted to social intercourse, to description, narration, and the expression of the passions. It possesses pre-eminently the perfections which our Milton demands of the language of poetry. It is simple, sensuous and impassioned. And, if in the word 'sensuous' we include, as Milton doubtless intended that we should, the gratification of the sense of hearing as well as that of sight, sweetness as well as beauty, these few pregnant words will be found a full and discriminative character of the Greek language, as it appears in the Iliad and Odyssey; and expressing with no less felicity the desideratum or ideal of poetic diction in all languages. But our admiration must not seduce us to extend its perfections beyond the objective into the sub

jective 'ends of language. It is the language of poetry, not of specu lation; an exponent of the senses and sensations, not of reflection, abstraction, generalisation, or the mind's own notice of its own acts. It was, in short, what the state of society was-the best and loveliest of its kind, but of an imperfect kind; an heroic youth, but still a youth, and with the deficiencies and immaturity of youth.

"In all countries, the language of intellect has been posterior to, and the consequence of, settled LAW and an ESTABLISHED RELIGION. But in the Homeric times laws appear to have been extemporaneous, made for the occasion by tumultuary assemblage, with or without the consent of their king, whose sovereignty (or effective power) depended chiefly on his superior wealth,* though the royal title resulted from birth and ancestry, as is always the case in countries the aborigines of which have been conquered by new settlers who regarding themselves, of course, as a superior race, constitute and leave an order of nobility.

"Concerning the state of religion, it would be as difficult, as for the purpose in hand it is unnecessary, to speak otherwise than negatively. It is sufficient to see, that it neither had nor could have any bearing on philosophy; inasmuch as all the problems, which it is the peculiar

* Thus Ulysses (OD. 1. xi.) tells Alcinous that kings must be rich, if they would be respected by their people, and the larger the estate the more the obedience. And of himself we are told (1. xiv.)—

Ulysses his estate and wealth were such,
No prince in Greece, nor Argos, nor Epire,
In Ithica no twenty, had so much :

And, if to have it reckoned you desire,

Upon the continent twelve herds of kine,

Twelve herds of goats, as many flocks of sheep,
As many swine-houses replete with swine;
And here, upon the island's farthest end,
There be eleven herds of goats.

Hobbes' Odyssey;

which, homely as it is throughout and too often vulgar, scarcely falls below the point more than the other translators strain above it. In easy flow of narration Hobbes has few rivals; and his metre in alternate rhyme is so smooth (negatively smooth, I mean), so lithe, without bone or muscle, that you soon forget that it is metre, and read on with the same kind and degree of interest as if it were a volume of the "Arabian Nights."