It will be seen from the postscript of the last letter that Hartley and Derwent, Coleridge's sons, were on a visit to Highgate.] FOOTNOTES: [98] [Letters CCXIX-CCXXI follow 170.] [99] [Letter CCXXII follows 172.] [100] [Wordsworth.] [101] [CCXXIII is our 173, CCXXIV follows.] [102] [Letter CCXXV follows 175.] [103] [_Biographia Literaria_.] [104] [Letter CCXXVI follows 176.] [105] [Letter CCXXVII follows 177.] [106] [Bohn Library edition of the _Friend_, p. 344.] CHAPTER XXIV SIR WALTER SCOTT [Coleridge and Sir Walter Scott met at least three times during their lives, once in 1807,[107] once in 1820, and again in 1828. Sir Walter was cognizant of the genius of Coleridge both as the author of _Christabel_ and of the translation of _Wallenstein_, which he praised highly; and he had on the last occasion of their meeting to acknowledge Coleridge's extraordinary colloquial power. His tribute to the genius of Coleridge is well known to readers of Lockhart's _Life of Scott_. The next letter to Allsop contains Coleridge's estimate of Scott. No greater contrast than Scott and Coleridge as literary men, the two greatest, with the exception of Goethe, of their generation, could be conceived. Scott, successful, the darling of the hour, reaping thousands of pounds for his literary output and almost unable to keep pace with the demand for his creations; Coleridge, always unable to obtain anything like remuneration for his more profound and original work, and never the possessor in advance of £50 which he could call his own. And yet, both were the victims of a fate which seemed to brood over them; and, after all, it is difficult to say from a worldly point of view which was really the more successful, the creator of a whole gallery of characters known throughout Anglo-Saxondom as household beings, or the other the disseminator of the most fruitful ideas in all departments of human thought. LETTER 180. TO ALLSOP Highgate, April 8th, 1820.[108] My dear Friend, It is not the least advantage of friendship, that by communicating our thoughts to another, we render them distinct to ourselves, and reduce the subjects of our sorrow and anxiety to their just magnitude for our own contemplation.