patient paralytic in both arms, prescribes, as the only possible cure, the use of the dumb-bells.[22] Whatever I publish, and in whatever form, this obstacle will be felt. _The Rambler_, which, altogether, has sold a hundred copies for one of the _Connoisseur_, yet, during its periodical appearance, did not sell one for fifty, and was dropped by reader after reader for its dreary gravity and massiveness of manner. Now what I wish you to do for me--if, amid your many labours, you can find or make a leisure hour--is, to look over the eight numbers, and to write a letter to _The Friend_ in a lively style, chiefly urging, in a humorous manner, my Don Quixotism in expecting that the public will ever pretend to understand my lucubrations, or feel any interest in subjects of such sad and unkempt antiquity, and contrasting my style with the cementless periods of the modern Anglo-Gallican style, which not only are understood _beforehand_, but, being free from all connections of logic, all the hooks and eyes of intellectual memory, never oppress the mind by any after recollections, but, like civil visitors, stay a few moments, and leave the room quite free and open for the next comers. Something of this kind, I mean, that I may be able to answer it so as, in the answer, to state my own convictions at full on the nature of obscurity, etc. * * * God bless you! S. T. COLERIDGE. SOUTHEY'S ANSWER To _The Friend_ [Without date.] Sir, I know not whether your subscribers have expected too much from you, but it appears to me that you expect too much from your subscribers; and that, however accurately you may understand the diseases of the age, you have certainly mistaken its temper. In the first place, Sir, your essays are too long. "Brevity," says a contemporary journalist, "is the humour of the times; a tragedy must not exceed fifteen hundred lines, a fashionable preacher must not trespass above fifteen minutes upon his congregation. We have short waistcoats and short campaigns; everything must be short--except lawsuits, speeches in Parliament, and tax-tables." It is expressly stated, in the prospectus of a collection of extracts, called the _Beauties of Sentiment_, that the extracts shall always be complete sense, and _not very long_. Secondly, Sir, though your essays appear in so tempting a shape to a lounger, the very fiends themselves were not more deceived by the _lignum vitae_ apples, when They, fondly thinking to allay Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit Chew'd bitter ashes,