"municable, between it and its previous subjec"tive counterfeits, and anticipations. Even so "it is with friends.-O it is melancholy to think "how the very forms and geniality of my affec"tions, my belief of obligation, consequent gra"titude and anxious sense of duty were wasted "on the shadows of friendship. With few exceptions, I can almost say, that till I came to 'H—, I never found what FRIENDS were— "and doubtless, in more than one instance, I "sacrificed substances who loved me, for sem

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blances who were well pleased that I should "love them, but who never loved nor inwardly respected ought but themselves. The distinc"tion between the friends and the love is, that the latter we discover by itself to be, alone it"self-for it is in its nature unique and exclusive. (See Improvvisatore in the Amulet of “1826 (or 7).

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"But of the former we discover the genuine"ness by comparison and experience the rea"son is obvious-in the instances in which the

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person imagined himself to be in love with ano"ther (I use this phrase 'be in love with' for "the want of any other; for, in fact, from the "absence in our language of any appropriate "exponent of the thing meant), it is a delusion "in toto. But, in the other instance, the one “half (i. e. the person's own feelings and sense "of duty with acts accordant) remains the same

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(ex. gr. S. T. C. could not feel more deeply, "nor from abatement of nervous life by age and “sickness so ardently) he could not feel, think, “and act with a more entire devotion, to I. G. " or to H. G. than he did to W. W. and to "R. S., yet the latter were and remain most ho"nourable to his judgment. Their characters, "as moral and intellectual beings, give a dignity "to his devotion; and the imperishable consciousness of his devout and almost enthusiastic "attachment to them, still sanctifies their names, "and makes the men holy and revered to him."*

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Had Coleridge in early or even in later life paid an insincere, because undeserved, deference to outward show, and to the surface opinions counterfeiting depth, so attractive to the superficial observer-added to which, had he possessed a portion of that self-regarding policy which frequently aids success-he might have been idolized where he was neglected, and rewarded, if I might so profane this word, with high worldly honours in other quarters. But it was otherwise; and could a crown of gold have been offered him for the crown of glory of which he was in earnest search, he would have refused the exchange. The difference between time and eternity had already taken root, and he felt the mighty import of these words too strongly to have lost sight of

Extract of a note written Dec. 1829.

their practical use; all that his health and powers would allow him to acquire he did acquire, and freely gave all he had for the benefit of others.

animal

He says, "From the exuberance of my spirits, when I had burst forth from my misery " and moping and the indiscretions resulting from "those spirits-ex. gr. swimming over the New "River in my clothes, and remaining in them; "--full half the time from seventeen to eighteen

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was passed in the sick-ward of Christ's Hospital, "afflicted with jaundice and rheumatic fever." From these indiscretions and their consequences may be dated all his bodily sufferings in future life in short, rheumatism sadly afflicting him, while the remedies only slightly alleviated his sufferings, without hope of a permanent cure; though confined to his bed, his mind, ever active, still allowed him time to continue the exercise of his intellectual powers, and afforded him leisure for contemplation. Medical men are too often called upon to witness the effects of acute rheumatism in the young subject: in some, the attack is on the heart, and its consequences are immediate; in others, it leaves behind bodily sufferings, which may indeed be palliated, but terminate only in a lingering dissolution.

I have often heard Coleridge express regret that he had not cultivated mathematics, which he believed would have been of important use in life,

particularly had he arrived so far as to have mastered the higher calculus; but he was, by an oversight of the mathematical master, stopped on the threshold. When he was commencing Euclid, among some of its first axioms came this: "A line is length without breadth." "How can that be?" said the scholar, (Coleridge); " A "A "line must have some breadth, be it ever so thin." This roused the master's indignation at the impertinence of the scholar, which was instantly answered by a box on the ear, and the words, hastily uttered, "Go along, you silly fellow;" and here ended his first tuition, or lecture. His second efforts afterwards were not more successful; so that he was destined to remain ignorant of these exercises of the logic of the understanding.* Indeed his logical powers were so stupendous, from boyhood, as never to require such drilling. Bowyer, his classical master, was too skilful in the management of youth, and too much inte

Thought and attention very different things.-I never expected the German (viz. selbst-mühige Erzeugung dessen, wovon "meine Rede war) from the readers of the Friend.-I did ex"pect the latter, and was disappointed."

"This is a most important distinction, and in the new light "afforded by it to my mind, I see more plainly why mathematics "cannot be a substitute for Logic, much less for Metaphysics"¿. e. transcendental Logic, and why therefore Cambridge has "produced so few men of genius and original power since the time "of Newton.-Not only it does not call forth the balancing and

rested in the success of his scholars to overlook what was best fitted for them. He exercised their logical powers in acquiring and comparing the different classics. On him, as a teacher, Coleridge loved to dwell; and, with his grateful feelings, ever ready to acknowledge the sense of his obligations to him, particularly those relating to his mental improvement, he has, in his Biog. Lit. vol. i. p. 7, expressed himself in these words" He early moulded my taste to the "preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer "and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil "to Ovid. He habituated me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts as I then read,) Terence, and, above all, the chaster poems of Catullus, "not only with the Roman poets of the, so called, "silver and brazen ages; but with even those of "the Augustan æra: and, on grounds of plain "sense and universal logic, to see and assert the "superiority of the former in the truth and na

"discriminating powers (that I saw long ago), but it requires only "attention, not thought or self-production.'

"In a long-brief Dream-life of regretted regrets, I still find a "noticeable space marked out by the Regret of having neglected "the Mathematical Sciences. No week, few days pass unhaunted by a fresh conviction of the truth involved in the Platonic Su"perstition over the Portal of Philosophy,

Μήδεις ἀγεωμέτρητος εισίτω.

But surely Philosophy hath scarcely sustained more detriment "by its alienation from mathematics."

MS. Note.