others the road to that heaven, from which his crimes exclude him! In short, conceive whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hopeless, and you will form as tolerable a notion of my state, as it is possible for a good man to have.” The apology for Coleridge’s use of opium has been found in his own assertion, that he acquired the habit originally in an attempt to quiet physical pain. Southey denies this, and, indeed, imputes duplicity to Coleridge in all the apologies he makes for his vices of self-indulgence. Southey, it seems, from the first, never placed any dependence upon Coleridge. Writing to Cottle, in 1836, he says—“I know that Coleridge, at different times of his life, never let pass an opportunity of speaking ill of me. Both Wordsworth and myself have often lamented the exposure of duplicity which must result from the publication of his letters, and by what he has delivered by word of mouth to the worshipers by whom he was always surrounded. . . . I continued all possible offices of kindness to his children long after I regarded his own conduct with that _utter disapprobation_ which alone it can call forth from all who had any sense of duty and moral obligation.” When Coleridge placed himself under the care of his friend, Morgan, to be cured of his opium insanity, and while he was writing letters to the friends who lent him money, that he had reduced his allowance to twenty drops of laudanum a day, he was secretly taking his enormous doses, obtained by deceiving his benefactor, and by playing the meanest tricks upon his hired attendant. Coleridge’s whole life appears to have been that of a vagabond. He subsisted on the charity of friends whom he continually deceived or outraged. At least so he appears in the representations of Southey and Cottle, and partly in his own confessions. Many of Cottle’s remarks are sufficiently good for nothing; and he occasionally cants and whines distressingly, but we see no reason to doubt his statements of fact. We hope that if any thing can be said in his favor, his relations will promptly do it. In the present book the author is sunk to the level of the Savages and Dermodys of literary history.