requesting the favour of his
remarks; and this he did about six weeks before it was necessary to
deliver it in. Mr. C. in an immediate letter, expressed his approbation
of the Poem, and cheerfully undertook the task; but with a little of his
procrastination, he returned the MS. with his remarks, just one day
after it was too late to deliver the poem in!--[Note by Cottle.]]
LETTER 58. TO WADE
(May, 1797.)
My dear friend,
I am here after a most tiresome journey; in the course of which, a woman
asked me if I knew one Coleridge, of Bristol. I answered, I had heard of
him. "Do you know, (quoth she) that that vile jacobin villain drew away
a young man of our parish, one Burnett," etc. and in this strain did the
woman continue for near an hour; heaping on me every name of abuse that
the parish of Billingsgate could supply. I listened very particularly;
appeared to approve all she said, exclaiming, "dear me!" two or three
times, and, in fine, so completely won the woman's heart by my
civilities, that I had not courage enough to undeceive her. * * *
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P.S. You are a good prophet. Oh, into what a state have the scoundrels
brought this devoted kingdom. If the House of Commons would but melt
down their faces, it would greatly assist the copper currency--we should
have brass enough.
Coleridge, like all the Return-to-Nature poets of the eighteenth
century, Thomson, Cowper, Burns, and others, was given to that
humanitarian regard for the lower creatures which brought forth such
poems as Burns's "Address to a Mouse" and Coleridge's own lines to a
"Young Ass".
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