e Mary, tell her that we have received
our trunk. Hartley is quite well, and my talkativeness is his, without
diminution on my side. 'Tis strange but certainly many things go in the
blood, beside gout and scrophula. Yesterday I dined at Longman's and met
Pratt, and that honest piece of prolix dullity and nullity, young
Towers, who desired to be remembered to you. To-morrow Sara and I dine
at Mister Gobwin's, as Hartley calls him, who gave the philosopher such
a rap on the shins with a ninepin that Gobwin in huge pain _lectured_
Sara on his boisterousness. I was not at home. _Est modus in rebus._
Moshes is somewhat too rough and noisy, but the cadaverous silence of
Gobwin's children is to me quite catacombish, and, thinking of Mary
Wollstonecraft, I was oppressed by it the day Davy and I dined there.

God love you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

FOOTNOTES:

[115] I cannot remember whether anybody has ever made a list of the
books that Coleridge did not write. It would be the catalogue of a most
interesting library in Utopia.

ROBERT SOUTHEY (1774-1843)

One of the strangest things met by the present writer in the
course of preparing this book was a remark of the late Mr.
Scoones--an old acquaintance and a man who has deserved most
excellently on the subject--in reference to Southey's
letters, that they show the author as "dry and
unsympathetic." "They contain too much information to be
good as letters." Well: there certainly is information in
the specimen that follows: whether it is "dry" or not
readers must decide. The fact is that Southey, despite
occasional touches of self-righteousness and of
over-bookishness, was full of humour, extraordinarily
affectionate, and extremely natural. There is moreover a
great deal of interest in this skit on poor Mrs. Coleridge:
for "lingos" of the kind, though in her case they may have
helped to disgust her husband with his "pensive Sara," were
in her time and afterwards by no means uncommon,
especially--physiologists must say why--with the female sex.
The present writer, near the middle of the nineteenth
century, knew a lady of family, position and property who
was fond of the phrase, "hail-fellow-well-met," but always
turned it into "Fellowship Wilmot"--a pretty close parallel
to "horsemangander" for "horse-godmother". Extension--with
levelling--of education, a