Longman, I will buy it. It is greatly extolled and liked by all who have seen it. Let me hear from some of you, for I am desolate. I shall have to send you, in a week or two, two volumes of Juvenile Poetry, done by Mary and me within the last six months, and that tale in prose which Wordsworth so much liked, which was published at Christmas, with nine others, by us, and has reached a second edition. There's for you! We have almost worked ourselves out of child's work, and I don't know what to do. Sometimes I think of a drama, but I have no head for play-making; I can do the dialogue, and that's all. I am quite aground for a plan; but I must do something for money. Not that I have immediate wants, but I have prospective ones. money, money, how blindly thou hast been worshipped, and how stupidly abused! Thou art health and liberty and strength; and he that has thee may rattle his pockets at the Devil.

Nevertheless, do not understand by this that I have not quite enough for my occasions for a year or two to come. While I think on it, Coleridge, I fetch'd away my books which you had at the Courier Office, and found all but a third volume of the old plays, containing the White Devil, Green's Tu Quoque, and the Honest Whore, perhaps the most valuable volume of them all-that I could not find. Pray, if you can, remember what you did with it, or where you took it out with you a walking perhaps ; send me word, for, to use the old plea, it spoils a set. I found two other volumes (you had three), the Arcadia, and Daniel, enriched with manuscript notes. I wish every book I have were so noted. They have thoroughly converted me to relish Daniel, or to say I relish him, for, after all, I believe I did relish him. You well call him sober-minded. Your notes are excellent. Perhaps you've forgot them. I have read a review in the Quarterly, by Southey, on the

you

Missionaries, which is most masterly. I only grudge its being there. It is quite beautiful. Do remember my Dodsley; and, pray, do write, or let some of you write. Clarkson tells me you are in a smoky house. Have cured it? It is hard to cure any thing of smoking. Our little poems are but humble, but they have no name. You must read them, remembering they were task work; and perhaps you will admire the number of subjects, all of children, picked out by an old Bachelor and an old Maid. Many parents would not have found so many. Have you read Calebs? It has reached eight editions in so many weeks, yet literally it is one of the very poorest sort of common novels, with the draw-back of dull religion in it. Had the religion been high and flavoured, it would have been something. I borrowed this Calebs in Search of a Wife, of a very careful, neat lady, and returned it with this stuff written in the beginning :

"If ever I marry a wife

I'll marry a landlord's daughter,
For then I may sit in the bar,

And drink cold brandy and water."

I don't expect you can find time from your Friend to write to me much; but write something, for there has been a long silence. You know Holcroft is dead. Godwin is well. He has written a very pretty, absurd book about sepulchres. He was affronted because I told him it was better than Hervey, but not so good as Sir T. Browne. This letter is all about books; but my head aches, and I hardly know what I write, but I could not let the Friend pass without a congratulatory epistle. I wont criticise till it comes to a volume. Tell me how I shall send my packet to you?-by what conveyance ?-by Longman, Shortman, or how? Give my kindest remembrances to Wordsworth. Tell him he must give me a book. My kind love to Mrs W. and to Dorothy separately

and conjointly. I wish you could all come and see me in my new rooms.

God bless you

all.

C. L.

CXLIV.

TO THE SAME

Monday, Oct. 30th, 1809.

Dear Coleridge,-I have but this moment received your letter, dated the 9th instant, having just come off a journey from Wiltshire, where I have been with Mary on a visit to Hazlitt. The journey has been of infinite service to her. We have had nothing but sunshiny days, and daily walks from eight to twenty miles a-day; have seen Wilton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, &c. Her illness lasted but six weeks; it left her weak, but the country has made us whole. We came back to our Hogarth Room. I have made several acquisitions since you saw them, and found Nos. 8, 9, 10 of the Friend. The account of Luther in the Warteburg is as fine as any thing I ever read. God forbid that a man who has such things to say should be silenced for want of £100. This Customand-Duty age would have made the Preacher on the Mount take out a licence, and St Paul's Epistles would not have been missible without a stamp. O that you may find means to go on ! But alas! where is Sir G. Beaumont ?-Sotheby? What is become of the rich Auditors in Albemarle Street? Your letter has saddened me.

I am so tired with my journey, being up all night, that I have neither things nor words in my power. I believe I expressed my admiration of the pamphlet. Its power over me was like that which Milton's pamphlets must have had on his contemporaries, who were tuned to them. What a piece of prose Do you hear if it is read at all? I am out of the world of readers. I hate all that do read, for they read nothing but reviews and new books. I gather myself up unto the old things.

!

I have put up shelves. You never saw a bookcase in more true harmony with the contents than what I've nailed up in a room, which, though new, has more aptitudes for growing old than you shall often see as one sometimes gets a friend in the middle of life, who becomes an old friend in a short time. My rooms are luxurious; one is for prints aud one for books; a Summer and a Winter parlour. When shall I ever see you in them? C. L.

BOOK III.-1810-1820

THE PRE-ELIAN DECADE

CHAPTER I

CASUAL ADVENTURES IN HUMOUR AND CRITICISM FROM THE "DEFLECTOR" TO THE

"QUARTERLY"

JANUARY 1810-DECEMBER 1815

CXLV.

TO THOMAS MANNING

Jan. 2nd, 1810.

Dear Manning,-When I last wrote to you I was in lodgings. I am now in chambers, No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where I should be happy to see you any evening. Bring any of your friends, the Mandarins, with you. I have two sitting-rooms: I call them so par excellence, for you may stand, or loll, or lean, or try any posture in them, but they are best for sitting; not squatting down Japanese fashion, but the more decorous use of the-which European usage has consecrated. I have two of these rooms on the third floor, and five sleeping, cooking, &c. rooms, on the fourth floor. In my best room is a choice collection of the works of Hogarth, an English painter of some humour. In my next best are shelves containing a small but well-chosen library. My best room commands a court, in which there are trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent cold, with brandy, and not very insipid