make it a complete and circular work, it needs but about eight or ten papers. This I could, and would make over to you at once in full copy-right, and finish it outright, with no other delay than that of finishing a short and temperate Treatise on the Corn Laws, and their national and moral effects; which had I even twenty pounds only to procure myself a week's ease of mind, I could have printed, before the bill had passed the Lords. At all events let me hear by return of post. I am confident that whether you take the property of my Poems, or of my Prose Essays, in pledge, you cannot eventually lose the money.

As soon as I can, I shall leave Calne for Bristol, and if I can procure any day pupils, shall immediately take cheap lodgings near you. My plan is to have twenty pupils, ten youths or adults, and ten boys. To give the latter three hours daily, from eleven o'clock to two, with exception of the usual school vacations, in the Elements of English, Greek, and Latin, presenting them exercises for their employment during the rest of the day, and two hours every evening to the adults (that is from sixteen and older) on a systematic plan of general knowledge; and I should hope that £15 a year, would not be

too much to ask from each, which excluding Sundays and two vacations, would be little more than a shilling a day, or six shillings a week, for forty-two weeks.

To this I am certain I could attend with strictest regularity, or indeed to any thing mechanical.

But composition is no voluntary business. The very necessity of doing it robs me of the power of doing it. Had I been possessed of a tolerable competency, I should have been a voluminous writer. But I cannot, as is feigned of the Nightingale, sing with my breast against a thorn. God bless you,

Saturday, Midnight.”

S. T. Coleridge.

The receipt of this letter filled me with the most poignant grief; much for the difficulties to which Mr. C. was reduced, but still more for the cause. In one letter, indignantly spurning the contributions of his "club of subscribers to his poverty;" and in his next, (three days afterwards) earnestly soliciting this assistance! The victorious bearer away of University prizes, now bent down to the humiliating desire of keeping a

The man,

day school, for a morsel of bread! whose genius has scarcely been surpassed, proposing to "attend" scholars, "children or adults," and to bolster up his head, at night, in "cheap lodgings!" Oppressed with debt, contracted by expending that money on opium, which should have been paid to his impoverished friend; and this, at a moment, when, for the preceding dozen years, if he had called his mighty intellect into exercise, the "world" would have been "all before him, where to choose his place of rest." But at this time he preferred, to all things else, the Circean chalice!

These remarks have been reluctantly forced from me; and never would they have passed the sanctuary of my own breast, but to call on every consumer of the narcotic poison, (who fancies, perchance, that in the taking of opium, there is pleasure only, and no pain) to behold, in this memorable example, the inevitable consequences, which follow that "accursed practice!" Property consumed! health destroyed! independence bartered; respectability undermined; family concord subverted! that peace sacrificed, which forms so primary an ingredient in man's cup of happiness!-a —a deadly war with conscience !- an exam

VOL. II.

R

ple to others, which extends its baneful influences, illimitably! and the very mind of the unhappy votary, (whilst the ethereal spirit of natural affection generally escapes!) despoiled of its best energies; dwelling in the vale, it must be said, of degradation, rather than on the summit of usefulness and applause!

I venture the more readily on these reflections, from the hope of impressing some young delinquents, who are beginning to sip the "deadly poison;" little aware that no habit is so progressive, and that he who begins with the little, will rapidly pass on to the much! I am also additionally urged to these mournful disclosures, from their forming one portion only, of Mr. Coleridge's life. It has been my unenviable lot, to exhibit my friend in his lowest points of depression; conflicting with unhallowed practices, and, as the certain consequence, with an accusing conscience; but this was his resting, not his abiding place. The fear of God, with faith in his Saviour, lingered long in his heart, yet it was not extinguished. It ultimately burst forth, and "the bruised reed was not broken!"

Most rejoiced should I have been, had my opportunities and acquaintance with Mr. Coleridge

continued, to have traced the gradual development into action, of those better principles which were inherent in his mind. This privilege is reserved for a more favoured biographer; and it now remains only for me, in a closing remark, to state, that, had I been satisfied that the money Mr. C. required, (Vol. 2. p. 175) would have been expended in lawful purposes, I would have supplied him, (without being an affluent man) to the utmost of his requirements, and that not by dividing the honour with others, or receiving his writings in pledge! But, knowing that whatever monies he received would, assuredly, be expended in opium, COMPASSION STAYED MY HAND.

In my reply to his second letter, by "return of post," I enclosed Mr. C. another five pounds: urged him in a kind letter, to come immediately to Bristol, where myself and others, would do all that could be done, to advise and assist him. I told him at the same time, that, when I declined the business of a bookseller, I for ever quitted publishing, so that I could not receive his MSS. valuable as they doubtless were; but I reminded him, that as his merits were now appreciated by the public, the London booksellers would readily enter into a treaty, and remunerate him liberally.