The reader of Coleridge's Poems will remember the beautiful lines "To a young friend, on his proposing to domesticate with the Author". They were written at this time and addressed to Lloyd; and it may be easily conceived what a deep impression of delight they would make on a mind and temperament so refined and enthusiastic as his. The Sonnet "To a Friend who asked how I felt when the Nurse first presented my infant to me"--is the metrical version of a passage in the foregoing letter. A short time before the birth of little Hartley C., Mr. Southey had returned to Bristol from Portugal, and was in lodgings nearly opposite to Mr. Coleridge's house in Oxford Street. There had been a quarrel between them on the occasion of the abandonment of the American scheme, which was first announced by Mr. Southey, and he and Coleridge had ceased to have any intercourse. But a year's absence had dissipated all angry feelings, and after Mr. C.'s return from Birmingham in the end of September, Southey took the first step, and sent over a slip of paper with a word or two of conciliation.[1] This was immediately followed by an interview, and in an hour's time these two extraordinary youths were arm in arm again. They were indeed of essentially opposite tempers, powers, and habits; yet each well knew and appreciated the other,--perhaps even the more deeply from the contrast between them. Circumstances separated them in after life; but Mr. Coleridge recorded his testimony to Southey's character in the "Biographia Literaria", and in his Will referred to it as expressive of his latest convictions. [In Ainger's "Letters of Charles Lamb" will be found a series of letters by Lamb to Coleridge on various matters, literary and domestic, which affords a good insight into the doings of Coleridge at this time. The following beautiful letter by Coleridge was written on the occasion of the death of Lamb's mother. [Footnote 1: The paper contained a sentence in English from Schiller's Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa. "Fiesko! Fiesko! du Sumst einen Platz in meiner Brust, den das Menschengeschlecht, dreifach genommen, nicht mehr besetzen wird". "Fiesco! Fiesco! thou leavest a void in my bosom, which the human race, thrice told, will never fill up." Act V, Sc. 16. S. C.] LETTER 40. TO CHARLES LAMB[1] (29 Sept. 1796.)