Coleridge was unfortunate in having lived in an age in which party spirit was bitter in the extreme, and literary criticism, either from this or other causes, was no less malignant and bitter. It seems that Coleridge claimed that the "Edinburgh Review" _employed_ the venomous Hazlitt to "run him down," in a criticism on the Lay Sermon--that Hazlitt had been employed by reason of his genius for satire, being a splenetic misanthropist, and for his known hostility to Coleridge. The "Edinburgh Review" denied that he was _employed_ for this purpose. Whether he did the job of his own volition and spontaneous motion or not, he did it, and did it well; he noted him closely to "abuse him scientifically." All this after Coleridge had received him at his house, and given him advice that proved greatly to his advantage. Hazlitt, in an essay on the poets, acknowledges and explicitly states that Coleridge roused him into a consciousness of his own powers--gave his mind its first impetus to unfolding. It is said that Coleridge encouraged him when every one did not perceive so much in the "rough diamond." Jeffrey, editor of the "Edinburgh Review," in a critique on the Christabel, took occasion to thoroughly personally abuse and villify Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. He accorded no merit whatever to the Christabel. This after he had been the recipient of Coleridge's hospitality, and had acted in a friendly manner. I copy the following from the memoir of Keats, introductory to a volume of his poetical works, edited by William B. Scott: "It is not worth while now to analyze the papers that first attracted notice to 'Blackwood's Magazine,' by calling Coleridge's 'Biographia Literaria' a most execrable performance, and the amiable, passive, lotus-eating author, a compound of egotism and malignity...." I think "respectable gentlemen" did "do things thirty years ago (now, say fifty), which they could not do now without dishonor." Thank Providence for the march of civilization, genius has now a better recognition, and knowledge and taste being more generally disseminated and cultivated, the masses of the reading people, who are now the true judges and regulators of these matters, would not brook it for a moment. In vulgar phrase, it is "played out." The genius is valued higher than the malignant hack critic. From what I read, Hazlitt died miserably as he had lived. "Sacked" by a woman beneath him in station, "and to recline upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor to those of his;"--now one of oblivion's ghosts. NOTE No. 2.--COLERIDGE AND PLAGIARISM.