[125] [_Letter to a Young Lady on the Choice of a Husband_ reprinted in _Miscellanies, Aesthetic and Literary_, p. 229.] CHAPTER XXVII THE GILLMANS Friendship is a Sheltering Tree.--_Youth and Age_, 1822-3. * * * * * [The Gillmans necessarily come much into notice in Coleridge's later letters. The following to Allsop have some references to his kind hosts, besides other friends and acquaintances of Coleridge. The Mr. Dawes referred to was the Rev. John Dawes, who kept a day school at Ambleside, and taught Hartley and Derwent classics and mathematics (_Letters_, 576). LETTER 203. TO ALLSOP May 30th, 1822. My very dear Friend, On my arrival at Highgate after our last parting, I ought to have written, if it were only that I had fully resolved to do so, and when I feel that I have not done what I ought, and what you would (have) done in my place, I will, as indeed too safely to make a merit of it I may do, leave the palliative and extenuating circumstance to your kindness to think of. This only let me say, that mournful as my experience of Messrs. ---- and ----[126] in my own immediate concerns had been, of the latter especially, I was not prepared for their late behaviour, or, to use Anster's words on the occasion, for "so piteous a lowering of human nature," as the contents of Mr. W.'s letters were calculated to produce. I have at _length_--for I really tore it out of my brain, as it were piecemeal, a bit one day and a bit the day after--finished and sent off a letter of two folio _large_ and close-written sheets--nine sides equal to twelve of this size paper--to Mr. Dawes, of Ambleside, the rough copy of which I will show you when we meet. The exceeding kindness and uncalculating instantaneous and decisive generous friendship of the Gillmans, and the presence of _you_ to my Thoughts, prevent all approach to misanthropy in my Feelings, but _for that reason_ render those feelings more _acutely_ painful. If I did not know that Genius, like Reason, though not perhaps so entirely, is rather a presence vouchsafed, like a guardian spirit, to an Individual, which departs whenever the Evil Self becomes decisively predominant, and not like Talents or the Powers of the Understanding, a personal property--the contemplation of ....'s[127] late and present state of Head and Heart would overwhelm me. But I must not represent my neglect as worse than I myself hold it to be; for I feel that I could not have omitted it had I not known that you were so busily engaged.