To the
best of my recollection I have not altered a word.
Here sleeps at length poor Col. and without screaming
Who died, as he had always lived, a dreaming:
Shot dead, while sleeping, by the gout within,
Alone, and all unknown, at E'nbro' in an Inn.
It was Tuesday night last, at the Black Bull, Edinburgh. Yours, dear
Wedgwood, gratefully, and
Most affectionately,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Thomas Wedgwood, Esq.
The character of Hazlitt in this letter is as good as anything in La
Bruyere. The next letter (without date in Cottle's "Reminiscences", but
which must be 1803) is to Miss Cruikshank, of Nether Stowey. The
Penelope referred to is Penelope Poole, the cousin of Tom Poole.
LETTER 123. To MISS CRUIKSHANK
(No date, supposed to be 1803.[1])
My dear Miss Cruikshank,
With the kindest intentions, I fear you have done me some little
disservice, in borrowing the first edition of my poems from Miss B--. I
never held any principles indeed, of which, considering my age, I have
reason to be ashamed. The whole of my public life may be comprised in
eight or nine months of my 22nd year; and the whole of my political sins
during that time, consisted in forming a plan of taking a large farm in
common, in America, with other young men of my age. A wild notion
indeed, but very harmless.
As to my principles, they were, at all times, decidedly anti-jacobin and
anti-revolutionary, and my American scheme is a proof of this.
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