wholly from the almost insurmountable difficulties which the anxieties of to-day oppose to my completion of the great work, the form and materials of which it has been the employment of the best and most genial hours of the last twenty years to mature and collect. If I could but have a tolerably numerous audience to my first, or first and second Lectures on the HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, I should entertain a strong hope of success, because I know that these lectures will be found by far the most interesting and _entertaining_ of any that I have yet delivered, independent of the more permanent interests of rememberable instruction. Few and unimportant would the errors of men be, if they did but know, first, _what they themselves meant_; and, secondly, what the _words_ mean by which they attempt to convey their meaning; and I can conceive no subject so well fitted to exemplify the mode and the importance of these two points as the History of Philosophy, treated as in the scheme of these lectures. Trusting that I shall shortly have the pleasure of seeing you here, I remain, my dear Sir, Yours, most sincerely, S. T. COLERIDGE.[101] T. Allsop, Esq. * * * * * At the close of 1818, Coleridge published his _Essay on Method_, an introduction to the _Encyclopedia Metropolitana_, which exhibits his grasping ambitious intellect. The two following letters to Mr. Britton were written regarding his lectures. Neither Thomas Ashe nor Dykes Campbell has been able to find any evidence that Coleridge delivered lectures on Shakespeare seventeen years before 1819. He must have been labouring under a delusion on this matter and mistaking the date of his lectures delivered in 1808. LETTER 174. TO MR. BRITTON Highgate, 28th Feb., 1819. Dear Sir,