I am sure you did not mean that the interest I feel in this undertaking was one which I was likely to _throw_ off, or one which there was any chance of my not retaining; but I would fain have you not even speak or write below that line of friendship and mutual implicit reliance, on which you and I stand. We are in the world, and obliged to chafe and chaffer with it; _but we are not of the world, nor will we use its idioms or adopt its brogue_. God bless you, and your affectionate Friend, S. T. COLERIDGE. T. Allsop, Esq. LETTER 217. TO ALLSOP May 10th, 1825. My dearest Friend, I have been reflecting earnestly and actively on the subject of a Metropolitan University, now in agitation, and could conveniently comprise the results in three Lectures. On the Histories of Universities generally, the most interesting Features in the History of the most celebrated Universities in Great Britain, Germany, France, etc. Reduction of all Universities of any name, with respect to their construction and constitution, to three Classes. 2. The Meaning of the Term, University, and the one true and only adequate Scheme of a University stated and unfolded from the Seed (_i.e._ the idea) to the full Tree with all its Branches. 3. The advantages, moral, intellectual, national, developed from reason and established by proofs of History; and, lastly, a plan (and sketch of the _means_) of approximating to the Ideal, adapted and applied to this Metropolis. (N.B. The Plan _in detail_, salaries only not mentioned--the particular sums, I mean.) The obstacles, the favourable circumstances, the _pro_ and _con_ regarding the question of Collegiate Universities, etc. etc. That I could make these subjects not only highly interesting but even entertaining, I have not the least doubt. But would the subject excite an interest of _curiosity_? Would the anticipation of what I might say attract an audience of respectable smallclothes and petticoats sufficiently large to produce something more than, with the same exertions of Head and Hand, I might earn in my Garret (to give the precise Top-ography of my abode) here at Nemorosi, _alias_ Houses in the Grove. For the expense of coach-hire, the bodily fatigue, and (to borrow a phrase from poor Charles Lloyd) "_the hot huddle of indefinite sensations_" that hustle my inward man in the _monster_ city and a Crown and Anchor Room demand a +, and would an =, after all expenses paid, but ragged economy, unless I were certain of effecting more good in this than in a quieter way of industry.