Of the four of few friends, both lost in the past year I an fy meak to you; more full and suficien recora ɗ tue it I earnestly hope to see frm to be c'que every way fitted, both by love mite na of Character, to the task.

The Deere each brief Notices mi & ermet Tasty to enable you f extraordinary mind, for at lower, in the highest

manent truths for all time. You will find, and this it is which I wish to impress upon your minds, that a spirit of pure and intense humanity, a spirit of love and kindness, to which nothing is too large, for which nothing is too small, will be to you, as it has ever been to me, its own "exceeding great

reward."

This, my dear Children, and I do not now address you only, nor your younger brothers and sisters, but I would fain speak to, and, on this point at least, could wish to be heard by, all young and confiding minds,-has been to me a solace in sorrow, an unspeakable reliance and support when all outward has been lowering and overcast. This indeed it is, in the language of an early letter, "Which, like an ample Palace, contains many mansions for every other kind of Knowledge (or renders it unnecessary); which deepens and extends the interest of every other (knowledge or faculty), gives it new charms and additional purpose: the study of which, rightly pursued, is beyond any other entertaining, beyond all others tends at once to tranquillise and enliven, to keep the mind elevated and stedfast, the Heart humble and tender." In this is the purest source of mental self-reliance, of self-dependence, and thence INDEPENDENCE, under all circumstances.

LETTERS, CONVERSATIONS,

AND

RECOLLECTIONS.

LETTER I.

DEAR SIR,

Jan. 28th, 1818. Your friendly letter was first delivered to me at the lecture-room door on yesterday evening, ten minutes before the lecture, and my spirits were so sadly depressed by the circumstance of my hoarseness, that I was literally incapable of reading it. I now express my acknowledgments, and with them the regret that I had not received the letter in time to have availed myself of it.

When I was young I used to laugh at flattery, as, on account of its absurdity, I now abhor it, from my repeated observations of its mischievous effects. Amongst these, not the least is, that it renders honourable natures more slow and reluctant in expressing their real feelings in praise of the deserving, than, for the interests of truth and virtue, might be desired. For the weakness of our moral and intellectual being, of which the comparatively strongest are often the most, and the most painfully conscious, needs the confirmation derived from the coincidence and sympathy of the friend, as much as the voice of honour within us denounces the pretences of the flatterer. Be assured, then, that I write as I think, when I tell you that, from the style and thoughts of your letter, I should have drawn

a very different conclusion from that which you appear to have done, concerning both your talents and the cultivation which they have received. Both the matter and manner are manly, simple, and correct.

Had I the time in my power, compatibly with the performance of duties of immediate urgency, I would endeavour to give you, by letter, the most satisfactory answer to your questions that my reflections and the experience of my own fortunes could supply. But, at all events, I will not omit to avail myself of your judicious suggestion in my last lecture, in which it will form a consistent part of the subject and purpose of the disMeantime, believe me, with great respect,

course.

Your obliged fellow-student

of the true and the beseeming,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

The suggestion here alluded to was, if I remember rightly, as to the best mode of re-exciting that interest in and for mental cultivation and refinement, which, from lapse of time, had in most men actively employed, become dormant. This was fully treated in the last lecture.

LETTER II.

DEAR SIR,

Sept. 20th, 1818.

Those who have hitherto chosen to take notice of me, as known to them only by my public character, have for the greater part taken out, not, indeed, a poetical, but a critical, license, to make game or me, instead of sending game ro me. Thank heaven! I am in this respect more tough than tender. But, to be serious, I heartily thank you for your polite remembrance; and, though my feeble health and valetudinarian stomach force me to attach no little value to the present itself, I feel still more obliged by the kindness that prompted it.

I trust that you will not come within the purlieus of Highgate

without giving me the opportunity of assuring you personally that I am, with sincere respect,

T. Allsop, Esq.

Your obliged,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

LETTER III.

MY DEAR SIR,

Dec. 2nd, 1818. I cannot express how kind I felt your letter. Would to Heaven I had had many with feelings like yours, "accustomed to express themselves warmly and (as far as the word is applicable to you, even) enthusiastically." But, alas! during the prime manhood of my intellect I had nothing but cold water thrown on my efforts. I speak not now of my systematic and most unprovoked maligners. On them I have retorted only by pity and by prayer. These may have, and doubtless have, joined with the frivolity of "the reading public" in checking and almost in preventing the sale of my works; and so far have done injury to my purse. Me they have not injured. But I have loved with enthusiastic self-oblivion those who have been so well pleased that I should, year after year, flow with a hundred nameless rills into their main stream, that they could find nothing but cold praise and effective discouragement of every attempt of mine to roll onward in a distinct current of my own; who admitted that the Ancient Mariner, the Christabel, the Remorse, and some pages of the Friend were not without merit, but were abundantly anxious to acquit their judgments of any blindness to the very numerous defects. Yet they knew that to praise, as mere praise, I was characteristically, almost constitutionally, indifferent. In sympathy alone I found at once nourishment and stimulus; and for sympathy alone did my heart crave. They knew, too, how long and faithfully I had acted on the maxim, never to admit the faults of a work of genius to those who denied or