long ago, a great landed
proprietor took the latter mode of disposing of some ground near a
thriving town in the west country. The number of years in the lease was
settled at nine hundred and ninety-nine. All was agreed to, and the
deeds were ordered to be drawn. But the tenant, as he walked down the
avenue, began to reflect that the lease, though so very long as to be
almost perpetual, nevertheless had a termination; and that after the
lapse of a thousand years, lacking one, the connexion of his family and
representatives with the estate would cease. He took a qualm at the
thought of the loss to be sustained by his posterity a thousand years
hence; and going back to the house of the gentleman who feued the
ground, he demanded, and readily obtained, the additional term of fifty
years to be added to the lease.

Note II., p. 90.--DARK LADYE.

The Dark Ladye is one of those tantalizing fragments, in which Mr.
Coleridge has shown us what exquisite powers of poetry he has suffered
to remain uncultivated. Let us be thankful for what we have received,
however. The unfashioned ore, drawn from so rich a mine, is worth all to
which art can add its highest decorations, when drawn from less abundant
sources. The verses beginning the poem which are published separately,
are said to have soothed the last hours of Mr. Fox. They are the stanzas
entitled LOVE.

Note III., p. 252.--MAGO-PICO.

This satire, very popular even in Scotland, at least with one party, was
composed at the expense of a reverend presbyterian divine, of whom many
stories are preserved, being Mr. Pyet, the Mago-Pico of the Tale,
minister of Dunbar. The work is now little known in Scotland, and not at
all in England, though written with much strong and coarse humour,
resembling the style of Arbuthnot. It was composed by Mr. Haliburton, a
military chaplain. The distresses attending Mago-Pico's bachelor life,
are thus stated:--

"At the same time I desire you will only figure out to yourself his
situation during his celibacy in the ministerial charge--a house
lying all heaps upon heaps; his bed ill-made, swarming with fleas,
and very cold on the winter nights; his sheep's-head not to be eaten
for wool and hair, his broth singed, his bread mouldy, his lamb and
pig all scouthered, his house neither washed nor plastered; his
black stockings darned with white worsted above the shoes; his
butter made into cat's harns; his cheese one