the cayenne and capsicum of personality), depend upon it, something in the heart is warped or warping, more or less according to the greater or lesser power of the counteracting causes. I confess to you, that being exceedingly low and heart-fallen, I should have almost sunk under the operation of reproof and admonition (the whole too, in my conviction, grounded on utter mistake) at the moment I was quitting, perhaps for ever! my dear country and all that makes it so dear--but the high esteem which I cherish towards you, and my sense of your integrity and the reality of your attachment and concern blows upon me refreshingly as the sea-breeze on the tropic islander. Show me anyone made better by blunt advice, and I may abate of my dislike to it, but I have experienced the good effects of the contrary in Wordsworth's conduct toward me; and, in Poole and others, have witnessed enough of its ill-effects to be convinced that it does little else but harm both to the adviser and the advisee.[1] * * * * * There is some dubiety as to whether the J. Tobin to whom the above letter was addressed is John Tobin, the dramatist, or his brother James. But Coleridge had taken up quarters with either of the brothers in London before sailing for Malta (Dykes Campbell's _Life_, p. 141); and the letter is Coleridge's parting shot for his host's over solicitous advice. On 16th April he was off Oporto, and wrote a description of the place, as seen from the sea, for Southey (_Letters_, 469). The "Speedwell" was convoyed by the "Leviathan," man-of-war of 74 guns. Lisbon and the rest of the Portuguese coast are described by Coleridge, and on 19th April the "Speedwell" reached Gibraltar, where Coleridge landed and scrambled on the rocks among the monkeys, "our poor relations." In his note-books he describes more fully the scene around the Rock of Gibraltar with its multitude and discordant complexity of associations--the Pillars of Hercules, Calpe, and Abyla, the realms of Masinissa, Jugurtha, and Syphax; Spain, Gibraltar, the Dey of Algiers, dusky Moor, and black African. "At its feet mighty ramparts establishing themselves in the sea, with their huge artillery, hollow trunks of iron where Death and Thunder sleep," and "the abiding things of Nature, great, calm, majestic, and one!" (_Letters_, pp. 478-9; _Anima Poetae_, pp. 70, 74.)