The following letters from Coleridge-the first to Richard Sharp, the rest to the Wordsworths-which were written before he left England for Sicily, cast much light on the character and the acts of both households, and are an interesting sequel to the Grasmere Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. Richard Sharp-Conversation Sharp, as he used to be called-was a London banker, a friend both of Wordsworth and Coleridge and most of the literary men of the period. To him Coleridge wrote from the King's Arms Hotel, Kendal, January 15th [the year must be 1804].

"MY DEAR SIR,-I had gone to Grasmere to take farewell of William Wordsworth, his wife, and his sister, and thither your letter followed me.

I was at Grasmere a whole month, so ill that till the last week I was unable to read your letters. Not that my inner being was disturbed; on the contrary, it seemed more than usually serene and selfsufficing; but the exceeding pain which I suffered every now and then, by the fearful distresses of my sleep, had taken away from me the connecting link of voluntary power, which consciously combines that part of us by which we know ourselves to be, with that outward picture or hieroglyphic, by which we hold communion with our likebetween the vital and the organic, or what Berkeley, I suppose, would call mind and its sensuous language. I had only just strength enough to smile gratefully on my kind nurses, who tended me with a sister's and a mother's love, and often I well know wept for me in their sleep, and watched for me even in their dreams. O dear sir, it does a man's heart good, I will not say to know such a family, but even to know that there is such a family. In spite of Wordsworth's occasional fits of hypochondriacal uncomfortableness, -from which, more or less, and at longer or shorter intervals, he has never been wholly free from his very childhood—in spite of this hypochondriacal graft, as dear Wedgewood

calls it, his is the happiest family I ever saw; and, were it not for too great sympathy with my ill-health—were I in good health, and their neighbour-I verily believe that the cottage in Grasmere Vale would be a proud sight for Philosophy. It is with no idle feeling of vanity that I speak of my importance to them; that it is I, rather than another, is almost an accident; but being so very happy within themselves they are too good, not the more from that very reason, to want a friend and common object of love out of their household. I am half angry with Davy for prostituting and profaning the name of Philosopher, great Philosopher, eminent Philosopher, &c., to every fellow who has made a lucky experiment, though the man be Frenchified to the heart, and though the whole Seine, with all its filth and poison, flows in his veins and actions.

Of our common friends, my dear sir, I flatter myself that you and I would agree in fixing on J. Wedgewood and on Wordsworth as genuine Philosophers-for I have often said (and no wonder, since not a day passes but the conviction of the truth of it is renewed in me, and, with the conviction, the accompanying esteem and love), often have I said that J. Wedgewood's faults impress me with veneration for his moral and intellectual character more than almost any other man's virtues; for, under circumstances like his, to have a fault only in that degree is I doubt not in the eye of God to possess a high virtue. Who does not prize the retreat of Moreau more than all the straw-blaze of Bonaparte's victories?

W. Wordsworth does not excite that almost painfully profound moral admiration, which the sense of the exceeding difficulty of a given virtue can alone call forth, and which therefore I feel exclusively towards J. Wedgewood; but, on the other hand, he is an object to be contemplated with greater complacency, because he both deserves to be and is

a happy man; and a happy man not from natural temperament, for therein lies his main obstacle, not by enjoyment of the good things of this world-for even to this day, from the first dawn of his manhood, he has purchased independence, and leisure for greatly good pursuits, by austere frugality and daily self-denials-nor yet by an accidental confluence of amiable and happy-making friends and relatives, for every one near to his heart has been placed there by choice, and after knowledge and deliberation; but he is a happy man, because he is a Philosopher, because he knows the intrinsic value of the different objects of human pursuit, and regulates his wishes in strict subordination to that knowledge; because he feels, and with a practical faith, the truth of that which you more than any, my dear sir, have with great good sense and kindness pressed upon me, that we can do but one thing well, and that therefore we must make a choice. He has made that choice from his early youth, has pursued, and is pursuing it; and certainly no small part of his happiness is owing to this unity of interest, and that homogeneity of character which is the natural consequence of it, and which that excellent man, the poet Sotheby, noticed to me as the characteristic of Wordsworth.

Wordsworth is a poet, a most original poet. He no more resembles Milton, than Milton resembles Shakespeare. He no more resembles Shakespeare, than Shakespeare resembles Milton. He is himself; and I dare affirm that he will hereafter be admitted as the first and greatest philosophical poet, the only man who has effected a complete and constant synthesis of thought and feeling, and combined them in poetic form, with the music of pleasurable passion, and with Imagination, or the modifying power, in the highest sense of the word, in which I venture to oppose it to Fancy, or the aggregating power, in that sense in which it is a dim

analogue of creation-not all that we can believe, but all that we can conceive of creation. Wordsworth is a poet, and I feel myself a better poet in knowing how to honour him, than in all my own poetic compositions, all I have done or hope to do; and I prophesy immortality to his Recluse as the first and finest philosophical poem, if only it be, as it undoubtedly will be, a faithful transcript of his own most august and innocent life, of his own habitual feelings, and modes of seeing and hearing."

[He then describes his walk from Grasmere to Kendal on the previous day,-January 14,-a distance of nineteen miles, in four hours thirty-five minutes; and speaks of his hope of spending a winter in Malta.]

The other letters were written from Dunmow-Sir George Beaumont's residence in Essex-and from Portsmouth, to the Wordsworth family jointly.

an admirable, because most minute Journal of his Sights, Doings, and Done-untos in Sicily.

As to money, I shall avail myself of an £105 to be repayed by you on the 1st of January 1805, and another £100, to be employed in paying the Life Assurance, the bills at Keswick, Mrs Fricker, next half year; and, if any remain, to buy me comforts for my voyage, &c., Dante and a dictionary. I shall borrow part from my brothers, and part from Stuart. I can live a year at Catania (for I have no plan or desire of travelling except up and down Ætna) for £100, and the getting back I shall trust to chance.

O my dear, dear friends! if Sicily should become a British Island-as all the inhabitants intensely desire it to be, and if the climate agree with you as well as I doubt

not it will with me, and if it be as much cheaper than even Westmoreland, as Greenough reports, and if I could get a Vice-Consulship-of which I have little doubtwhat a dream of happiness could we not realize? But mortal life seems destined for no continuous happiness, save that which results from the exact performance of duty; and blessed are you, dear William! whose path of duty lies through vine-trellised elm-groves, through love and joy and grandeur. O for one hour of Dundee !' How often shall I sigh, 'Oh! for one hour of The Recluse !'

I arrived at Dunmow on Tuesday, and shall stay till Tuesday morning; you will direct No. 116 Abingdon Street, Westminster. I was not received here with mere kindness; I was welcomed almost as you welcomed me when first I visited you at Racedown. And their solicitude and attention is enough to effeminate one. Indeed, indeed, they are kind and good people; and old Lady Beaumont, now eighty-six, is a sort of miracle for beauty, and clear understanding and cheerfulness. The house is an old house by a tan-yard, with nothing remarkable but its awkward passages. We talked by the long hours about you and Hartley, Derwent, Sara, and Johnnie; and few things, I am persuaded, would delight them more than to live near you. I wish you would write out a sheet of verses for them, and I almost promised for you that you should send that delicious. poem on the Highland Girl at Inversnade.

...

S. T. COLERIDGE."

"DUNMOW, ESSEX, Wednesday, Feb. 16, 1804.

. O! I conjure you, my

MY DEAREST FRIENDS,-.. dearest Dorothy and Mary! as you love me, as you value my utilities when absent from you, to set about making a copy of all William's MS. poems. I solemnly promise that