I found George Burnet ill enough, heaven knows, Yellow Jaundice,---the introductory symptoms very violent. I return to Bristol on Thursday, and shall not leave till _all be done._ Remind Mrs. Coleridge of the kittens, and tell her that George's brandy is just what smuggled spirits might be expected to be, execrable! The smack of it remains in my mouth, and I believe will keep me most horribly temperate for half a century. He (Burnet) was bit, but I caught the Brandiphobia.[36] [obliterations ...]--scratched out, well knowing that you never allow such things to pass, uncensured. A good joke, and it slipped out most impromptu--ishly. The mice play the very devil with us. It irks me to set a trap. By all the whiskers of all the pussies that have mewed plaintively, or amorously, since the days of Whittington, it is not fair. 'Tis telling a lie. 'Tis as if you said, 'Here is a bit of toasted cheese; come little mice! I invite you!' when, oh, foul breach of the rites of hospitality! I mean to assassinate my too credulous guests! No, I cannot set a trap, but I should vastly like to make a Pitt--fall. (Smoke the Pun!). But concerning the mice, advise thou, lest there be famine in the land. Such a year of scarcity! Inconsiderate mice! Well, well, so the world wags. Farewell, S. T. C. P. S. A mad dog ran through our village, and bit several dogs. I have desired the farmers to be attentive, and to-morrow shall give them, in writing, the first symptoms of madness in a dog. I wish my pockets were as yellow as George's phiz!"[37] The preceding letter is about a fair example of that playful and ebullient imagination for which Mr. Coleridge, at this time, was distinguished. Subjects high and low received the same embellishment. Figure crowded on figure, and image on image, in new and perpetual variety. He was once reprobating the introduction of all bull and bear similes into poetry. "Well," I replied, "whatever your antipathies may be to bulls and bears, you have no objection to wolves." "Yes," he answered, "I equally abominate the whole tribe of lion, bull, bear, boar, and wolf similes. They are more thread-bare than a beggar's cast-off coat. From their rapid transition from hand to hand, they are now more hot and sweaty than halfpence on a market day. I would as soon meet a wolf in the open field, as in a friend's poem." I then rejoined, "Your objection, once at least, to wolf similes, was not quite so strong, seeing you prevailed on Mr. Southey to throw into the first book of "Joan of Arc," a five-line flaming wolf simile of yours. One could almost see the wolf leap, he was so fierce!" "Ah" said Mr. C. "but the discredit rests on him, not on me." The simile, in question, if not a new subject, is at least, perhaps, as energetically expressed as any five lines in Mr. Coleridge's writings.