TO MR. COLERIDGE.

DEAR COLERIDGE,

poor

A letter written in the blood of your friend would indeed be of a nature to startle you; but this is nought but harmless red ink, or, as the witty mercantile phrase hath it, clerk's blood. Hang 'em! my brain, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, time is all theirs. The Royal Exchange, Gresham's Folly, hath more body and spirit. I admire some of -'s lines on you, and I admire your postponing reading them. He is a sad tatler, but this is under the rose. Twenty years ago he estranged one friend from me quite, whom I have been regretting, but never could regain since; he almost alienated you also from me, or me from you, I don't know which. But that breach is closed. The dreary sea is filled up. He has lately been at work "telling again," as they call it-a most gratuitous piece of mischief—and has caused a coolness betwixt me and a (not friend exactly, but) intimate acquaintance. I suspect, also, he saps Manning's faith in me, who am to Manning more than an acquaintance. Still I like his writing

verses about you. Will your kind host and hostess give me a dinner next Sunday, and, better still, not expect us if the weather is very bad. Why you should refuse twenty guineas per sheet for Blackwood's or any other magazine puzzles my poor comprehension. But, as Strap says, "you know best." I have no quarrel with you about præprandial avocations, so don't imagine one. That Manchester sonnet * I think very likely is Capel Lofft's. Another sonnet appeared with the same initials in the same paper, which turned out to be P's. What do the rascals mean? Am I to have the fathering of what idle rhymes every beggarly poetaster pours forth! Who put your merrie sonnet "about Brownie into "Blackwood's?"

I did not. So no more till we meet.

Ever yours,

C. L.

The following letter (of post-mark 1822) is addressed to Trinity College, Cambridge, when Miss Wordsworth was visiting her brother, Dr. Wordsworth.

* A sonnet in "Blackwood," dated Manchester, and signed C. L.

TO MISS WORDSWORTH.

Mary perfectly approves of the appropriation of the feathers, and wishes them peacock's for your fair niece's sake.

DEAR MISS WORDSWORTH,

I had just written the above endearing words when M tapped me on the shoulder with an invitation to cold goose pie, which I was not bird of that sort enough to decline. Mrs. M-, I am most happy to say, is better. Mary has been tormented with a rheumatism, which is leaving her. I am suffering from the festivities of the season. I wonder how my misused carcase holds it out. I have played the experimental philosopher on it, that's certain. Willy* shall be welcome to a mince-pie and a bout at commerce whenever he comes. He was in our eye. I am glad you liked my new year's speculations, everybody liked them, except the author of the "Pleasures of Hope." Disappointment attend him! How I like to be liked, and what I do to be liked !

* Mr. Wordsworth's second son, then at the Charter-house.

They flatter me in magazines, newspapers, and all the minor reviews; the Quarterlies hold aloof. But they must come into it in time, or their leaves be waste paper. Salute Trinity Library in my name. Two special things are worth seeing at Cambridge, a portrait of Cromwell, at Sydney, and a better of Dr. Harvey, (who found out that blood was red) at Dr. Davy's; you should see them. Coleridge is pretty well, I have not seen him, but hear often of him from Allsop, who sends me hares and pheasants twice a week; I can hardly take so fast as he gives. I have almost forgotten butcher's meat, as plebeian. Are you not glad the cold is gone? I find winters not so agreeable as they used to be "when winter bleak had charms for me." I cannot conjure up a kind similitude for these snowy flakes. Let them keep to twelfth cakes!

Mrs. P, our Cambridge friend, has been in town. You do not know the W's in Trumpington Street. They are capital people. Ask anybody you meet who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll hold you a wager they'll say Mrs. .; she broke down two benches in Trinity gardens, one on the confines of St. John's,

which occasioned a litigation between the Societies as to repairing it. In warm weather, she retires into an ice-cellar (literally), and dates the returns of the years from a hot Thursday some twenty years back. She sits in a room with opposite doors and windows, to let in a thorough draught, which gives her slenderer friends tooth-aches. She is to be seen in the market every morning at ten, cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge poulterers are not sufficiently careful to stump.

Having now answered most of the points contained in your letter, let me end with assuring you of our very best kindness, and excuse Mary for not handling the pen on this occasion, especially as it has fallen into so much better hands. Will Dr. W. accept of my respects at the end of a foolish letter?

C. L.

The following is a fragment of a letter addressed in the beginning of 1823 to Miss Hutchinson at Ramsgate, whither she had gone with an invalid relative.