fuse into a common opposition, into an opposition on Common Grounds, such heterogeneous and conflicting materials, would deserve, ought, to be destroyed. I almost wish that Southey had been one of the audience, fit though few, who attended my Lectures on Philosophy; though I fear that in his present state of mind, he would have perverted, rather than have profited, by them."

The prospectus of these Lectures is so full of Interest, and so well worthy of attention, that I subjoin it; trusting that the Lectures themselves will soon be furnished by or under the auspices of Mr. Green, the most constant, and the most assiduous of his Disciples.

That gentleman will, I earnestly hope-and doubt not— see, feel, the necessity of giving the whole of his Great Master's views, opinions, and anticipations; not those alone in which he more entirely sympathises, or those which may have more ready acceptance in the present time. He will not shrink from the Great, the Sacred duty he has voluntarily undertaken, from any regards of prudence, still less, from that most hopeless form of fastidiousness, the wish to conciliate those who are never to be conciliated, inferior minds smarting under a sense of inferiority, and the imputation which they are conscious is just, that but for Him they never could have been; that distorted, dwarfed, changed, as are all his views and opinions, by passing athwart minds with which they could not assimilate, they are yet almost the only things which give such minds a status in Literature.

LETTER XLIV.

DEAR SIR,

Nov. 26th, 1818. I take the liberty of addressing a Prospectus to you. Should it be in your power to recommend either Course among your friends, you will (I need not add) oblige your sincere, &c. S. T. COLERIDGE.

"Prospectus of a Course of Lectures, Historical and Biographical, on the Rise and Progress, the Changes and Fortunes of Philosophy, from Thales and Pythagoras to the Present Times; the Lives and Succession of the distinguished Teachers in each Sect; the connexion of Philosophy with General Civilisation; and, more especially, its relations to the History of Christianity, and to the Opinions, Language, and Manners of Christendom, at different Eras, and in different Nations. "BY S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

"Logical subtleties and metaphysical trains of argument form neither part nor object of the present Plan, which supposes no other qualification in the auditors of either sex than a due interest in questions of deepest concern to all, and which every rational creature, who has arrived at the age of reflection, must be presumed, at some period or other, to have put to his own thoughts :-What, and for what am I made? What can I, and what ought I to, make of myself? and in what relations do I stand to the world and to my fellow men? Flattering myself with a continuance of the kind and respectful attention, with which my former courses have been honoured, I have so little apprehension of not being intelligible throughout, that were it in my power to select my auditors, the majority would, perhaps, consist of persons whose acquaintance with the History of Philosophy would commence with their attendance on the Course of Lectures here announced. When, indeed, I contemplate the many and close connexions of the subject with the most interesting periods of History; the instances and

illustrations which it demands and will receive from Biography, from individuals of the most elevated genius, or of the most singular character: I cannot hesitate to apply to it as a whole what has been already said of an important part (I allude to Ecclesiastical History)—that for every reflecting mind it has a livelier as well as deeper interest, than that of fable or

romance.

"Nor can these Lectures be justly deemed superfluous even as a literary work. We have, indeed, a History of Philosophy, or rather a folio volume so called, by STANLEY, and ENFIELD's Abridgment of the massive and voluminous BRUCKER. But what are they? Little more, in fact, than collections of sentences and extracts, formed into separate groups under the several names, and taken (at first or second hand) from the several writings of individual philosophers, with no Principle of arrangement, with no method, and therefore without unity and without progress or completion. Hard to be understood as detached passages, and impossible to be remembered as a whole, they leave at last on the mind of the most sedulous student but a dizzy recollection of jarring opinions and wild fancies. Whatever value these works may have as books of reference, so far from superseding, they might seem rather to require, a work like the present, in which the accidental influences of particular periods and individual genius are by no means overlooked, but which yet does in the main consider Philosophy historically, as an essential part of the history of man, and as if it were the striving of a single mind, under very different circumstances indeed, and at different periods of its own growth and development; but so that each change and every new direction should have its cause and its explanation in the errors, insufficiency or prematurity of the preceding, while all by reference to a common object is reduced to harmony of impression and total result. Now this object, which is one and the same in all the forms of Philosophy, and which alone constitutes a work Philosophic, is-the origin and primary laws (or efficient causes) either of the WORLD, man included (which is Natural Philosophy)—or of Human Nature exclusively, and as far only as it is human (which is Moral Philosophy). If to these we subjoin, as a third problem, the question concerning the sufficiency of the human reason to the solution of both or either of the two former, we shall have a full conception of the sense in which the term, Philosophy, is used in this Prospectus and the Lectures corresponding to it.

"The main Divisions will be-1. From Thales and Pythagoras to the appearance of the Sophists. 2. And of Socrates. The character and effect of Socrates' life and doctrines, illustrated in the instances of Xenophon, as his most faithful representative, and of Antisthenes, or the Cynic sect, as the one partial view of his philosophy, and of Aristippus, or the Cyrenaic sect, as the other and opposite extreme. 3. Plato and Platonism. 4. Aristotle and the Peripatetic school. 5. Zeno and Stoicism, Epicurus and Epicureans, with the effects of these in the Roman republic and empire. 6. The rise of the Eclectic or Alexandrine Philosophy, the attempt to set up a pseudoPlatonic Polytheism against Christianity, the degradation of Philosophy itself into mysticism and magic, and its final disappearance, as Philosophy, under Justinian. 7. The resumption of the Aristotelian philosophy in the thirteenth century, and the successive re-appearance of the different sects from the restoration of literature to our own times."

MY DEAREST FRIEND,

...

LETTER XLV.

The person to whom I alluded in my last is a Mr. T who, within the last two or three years, has held a situation in the Colonial Office, but what, I do not know. From his age and comparatively recent initiation into the office, it is probably not a very influensive one; and, on the other hand, from the rank and character of his friends, he has occasionally brought up with him to our Thursday evening conver-, or, to mint a more appropriate term, one-versazione, it must be a respectable one. Mr. T... is Southey's friend, and more than a literary acquaintance to me, only in consequence of my having had some friendly intercourse with his uncle during my abode in the north. Of him personally I know little more than that he is a remarkably handsome fashionable-looking young man, a little too deep or hollow mouthed and important in his enunciation, but clever and well read; and I have no reason to doubt that he would receive any one whom I had introduced to him as a friend of mine in whose welfare I felt

anxious interest, with kindness and a disposition to forward his object should it be in his power.

But again, my dearest Friend, you must allow me to express my regret that I am acting in the dark, without any conviction on my mind that your present proceeding is not the result of wearied and still agitated spirits, an impetus of despondency, that fever which accompanies exhaustion. I can too well sympathise with you; and bitterly do I feel the unluckiness of my being in such a deplorable state of health just at the time when for your sake I should be most desirous to have the use of all my faculties. May God bless you, and your little-able but most sincere friend,

T. Allsop, Esq.

S. T. COLERIDGE,

This was written just after the utter, and as then it seemed, the hopeless ruin of my prospects. Need I say in that hour of great perplexity what unspeakable solace and support I found in the sympathy and untireable kindness of my revered friend, and in his frank, honest, and every way most excellent house-mate, Mr. Gillman. Charles Lamb, Charles and Mary Lamb, "union in partition," were never wanting in the hour of need: and I have a clear recollection of Miss Lamb's addressing me in a tone acting at once as a solace and support, and after as a stimulus, to which I owe more perhaps, than to the more extended arguments of all others. Believe me, my dear son, that in the hour of extreme affliction, of extreme misfortune, there is no solace like the sympathy of an affectionate and gentle woman. Then, their sympathy becomes to us strength, it blends with our own sense of sorrow, and we feel, rather than are convinced by any process of reason, that it is good. These reminiscences become painful when I think that you cannot now, as I had fondly hoped, pay back in kind attention and ministrations part of the vast debt I owe.

"Hatred of superiority is not, alas! confined to the ignorant.