The statement contained the most indubitable internal evidence of truth. The facts are nearly those anticipated in W.'s denial on Friday; and the paper, though not elaborately drawn up or artfully written, produced the due effect on W.'s mind, to whom I carried it immediately, and with whom I spent the remainder of the morning. W.'s conversation was very interesting; much was confidential . . . Monday, 11th May 1812.-At half-past ten with W. The morning was spent in answering C.'s statement, which he had great difficulty to do, because he had to reconcile most exact truth and sincerity with giving his friend the least possible pain. The purport of the letter was a denial most direct and comprehensive, that he had given to M. any commission whatever to say anything to C. ... An expression of his belief in C.; sincerity in making the statement, and at the same time of his wish not to enquire whether he misunderstood M., or M. misunderstood him, W., or how the misapprehension originated. W. declares that the love and affection he bears to C., and that C. he trusts bears to him, do not need a solution of these difficulties. But should C. still entertain doubts, then he, W., would require to have his declaration confirmed by M., though this might lead to an opening of the difficulties between C. and M. This was the effect of the letter. The conversation that accompanied the writing of it was highly interesting, and exhibited W. in a most honourable light. His integrity, his purity, his delicacy are alike eminent. How preferable is the coolness of such a man to the heat of C. For C. he expressed an admiration quite enthusiastic, and whose goodness of heart too he praised. He made observations, it is true, which would have pained C. to hear, but these were dictated by necessity, and were never made in any other than an affectionate spirit. Monday Afternoon, 3 o'clock, 11th May 1812. 71 BERNERS STREET. declare before God MY DEAR WORDSWORTH, —I Almighty that at no time even in my sorest affliction did even the possibility occur to me of ever doubting your word. I never ceased for a moment to have faith in you, to love and revere you though I was unable to explain an unkindness, which seemed anomalous in your character. Doubtless it would have been better, wiser, and more worthy of my relation to you, had I immediately written to you a full account of what had happened—especially as the person's language, concerning your family, was such as nothing but the wild general counter-panegyric of the same person (almost in the same breath) of yourself-as a converser, &c., could have justified me, in not resenting to the uttermost. [He gives a lengthened list of circumstances which seemed to justify his misunderstanding, and adds,] All those, added to what I mentioned in my letter to you, may not justify, but yet must palliate, the only offence I ever committed against you in deed, or word, or thought—that is, the not writing to you and trusting instead to our common friends. Since I left you, my pocket-books have been my only full confidants; and though instructed by prudence to write so as to be intelligible to no being on earth but yourself and your family, they for eighteen months together would furnish proof that in anguish or in duration I yet never ceased both to honour and love you. S. T. COLERIDGE. I need not say, of course, that your presence at the Lectures, or anywhere else, would be gratifying to me." The death of Wordsworth's son Thomas has been already referred to. Shortly after it occurred, Coleridge wrote to the father thus: "71 BERNERS STREET, Monday, Noon, 7th December [1812]. Write? My dearest Friend! O that it were in my power to be with you myself instead of my letter. The Lectures I could give up; but the rehearsal of my Play commences this week, and upon this depends my best hopes of leaving town after Christmas, and living among you as long as I live. Strange, strange are the coincidences of things! Yesterday Martha Fricker dined here, and after tea I had asked question after question respecting your children, first one, then the other, but more than all, concerning Thomas, till at length Mrs Morgan said, 'What ails you, Coleridge? Why don't you talk about Hartley, Derwent, and Sara?' And not two hours ago (for the whole family were late from bed) I was asked what was the matter with my eyes? I told the fact that I had awoke three times during the night and morning, and at each time found my face and part of the pillow wet with tears. Were you dreaming of the Wordsworths?' she asked-' Of the children?' I said, 'No! not so much of them, but of Mrs W. and Miss Hutchinson, and yourself and sister. . . . O dearest Friend! what comfort can I afford you? What comfort ought I not to afford, who have given you so much pain? Sympathy deep, of my whole being. In grief and in joy, in the anguish of perplexity, and in the fulness and overflow of confidence, it has been ever what it is! There is a sense of the word, Love, in which I never felt it but to you, and one of your household! I am distant from you some hundred miles, but glad I am, that I am no longer distant in spirit, and have faith, that as it has happened but once, so it never can happen again. An awful truth it seems to me, and prophetic of our future, as -I am, affec- It is a psychological riddle that the writer of the last letter could ever again misjudge his friend. But Coleridge's conduct to the Wordsworth household during 1813 was strange. Perhaps he expected a more gushing reply from Wordsworth to this letter of the 7th December than he actually did receive. I fancy there were phrases and statements in it, which the Wordsworth household did not like, and that no immediate reply was sent to Coleridge. Several letters from Mrs Clarkson, Eusmere, to Henry Crabb Robinson, show that she took the same view of the misunderstanding as Robinson did. She was intimately acquainted with the details of the affair on all its sides: and in March 1813, she wrote thus to her friend. The letter is undated, but its postmark is London, March 10. "MY DEAR FRIEND,-I wished much when you were here to have told you what I thought of Coleridge, but you seem to me to be afraid of being drawn into any unpleasant embassy. You need not, however, fear me. I should certainly not employ you on any message merely personal to C. and myself. But I have received a letter from Grasmere, which has disturbed me more than I can express. C., as I told you, wrote to them several times after the death of little Tom, and said that he would go down to them, were it not that he thought he ought to wait for the fate of his Tragedy, but he would certainly go were it successful. William and Dorothy have both written to him to say that nothing would do W. so much good, as his company and 7 ป conversation. He has taken no notice whatever of these letters--he sent a copy of the Play to Southey,-none to them; and they have heard by a letter from Mr Morgan to Southey or Mrs C., that C. is going out of town to the seaside! Imagine them in the depths of sorrow, receiving this cutting intelligence. I sent him a note yesterday, telling him that I was going out of town on Saturday, that I wished particularly to see him, and begging him either to come here to-day, or to fix a time, or that I would go to Berners Street. I sent the note by the footman, but he was out, and would not be in till five o'clock. It is now past three o'clock, and I have heard nothing from him. . . . I am earnestly exhorted from Grasmere to go and see him. Now, could you, without much inconvenience, spare time to go with me to Berners Street, if I were to call on you in Hatton Gardens?... I feel an invincible dislike to introduce myself to the Morgans. Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth-and C., if he love anybody but himself, he shows it by tormenting them. For my part I grow callous, yet in the innermost depths of my heart, I pity him. I have had two or three notes from him, which I will show you. I have not the least disposition to reproach him, and if he would but lay his complaints before me, I think I could remove the cloud from his judgment, if indeed it be not a cloud which he has wilfully placed here to excuse his neglect of every duty. The account of the state of the family at Grasmere would make your heart ache-supposing myself to have been deeply injured-would one wish for a more noble triumph than to fly to the succour of the friend who had inflicted the wound at a time when that friend was softened by affliction, even supposing the being to be a common character ? What then when such an one as our friend Mr W. asks aid. And after all, what has C. suffered compared with the |