but fragments of his different courses are left. In the volumes of his Literary Remains " we have extracts from lectures of all dates from 1802, partly in the words of the critic's own manuscripts, partly the mere notes of his hearers; we have isolated memoranda, of which most are the writer's own, but some are only quotations; we have changes of opinion stated without being accounted for, and hints of other opinions insufficiently explained." And yet these fragments contain much that is valuable. His criticisms on Shakespeare, which were first delivered in one of these courses, and which have since been collected and published by themselves, are among the best in the language, and though of very unequal value, are distinguished by their keenness, subtlety, and discrimination.

But few letters which were written during the years of his residence at Highgate have since been published. The most of them are to be found in the work already referred to, entitled, "Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of Samuel Taylor Coleridge." Worthless as Mr. Alsop's portion of this book is, the volume is nevertheless of much importance in furnishing the means for forming an estimate of Coleridge's character during the period to which it refers. It was no work of friendship to publish it. It presents a sad picture of intellectual vagaries and decline.

In a letter, written in January, 1821, very remarkable for the view it gives of his state of mind and plans during this period, Coleridge says,

"My health, I have reason to believe, is so intimately connected with the state of my spirits, and these again are so dependent on my thoughts, prospective and retrospective, that I should not doubt the being favoured with a sufficiency for my noblest undertaking, had I the ease of heart requisite for the necessary abstraction of the thoughts, and such a reprieve from the goading of the immediate exigencies as might make tranquillity possible. But, alas! I know by experience (and the knowledge is not the less because the regret is not unmixed with self-blame, and the consciousness of want of exertion and fortitude) that my health will continue to decline as long as the pain from reviewing the barrenness of the past is great in an inverse proportion to any rational anticipations of the future."

He goes on to give a very extraordinary account of the interruptions to which he was exposed,-letters from lords and ladies urging him to write reviews, letters from actors, entreaties for money, or for recommendations to publishers, &c.; he then states that he had the written materials and contents, requiring only to be put together, of

a work on Shakespeare and the English Drama, which with every art of compression would amount to three volumes of five hundred pages each. In the same state with this was a Philosophical Analysis of the Genius and Works of Dante, Spenser, Milton, and other poets, in one large volume. "These two works will, I flatter myself, form a complete code of the principles of judgment and feeling applied to works of taste; and not of poetry only, but of poesy in all its forms, painting, statuary, music, &c." But besides these, he had, thirdly, in a state of preparation,

"The History of Philosophy considered as a Tendency of the Human Mind to exhibit the Powers of the Human Reason, to discover by its own Strength the Origin and Laws of Man and the World, from Pythagoras to Locke and Condillac. Two volumes. - IV. Letters on the Old and New Testaments, and on the Doctrine and Principles held in common by the Fathers and Founders of the Reformation, addressed to a Candidate for Holy Orders; including Advice on the Plan and Subjects of Preaching, proper to a Minister of the Established Church."

For the completion of these four works, he says he had literally nothing more to do than to transcribe; but from so many scraps, from the margins of books, from blank pages, that unfortunately he.

must be his own scribe, or they would be all but lost.

......

"In addition to these-of my great work, to the preparation of which more than twenty years of my life have been devoted, and on which my hopes of extensive and permanent utility, of fame, in the noblest sense of the word, mainly rest— .... of this work, to which all my other writings (unless I except my poems, and these I can exclude in part only) are introductory and preparative; and the result of which, (if the premises be-as I, with the most tranquil assurance, am convinced they are-insubvertible, the deductions legitimate, and the conclusions commensurate, and only commensurate, with both,) must finally be a revolution of all that has been called Philosophy or Metaphysics in England and France, since the era of the commencing predominance of the mechanical system, at the restoration of our second Charles, and with this the present fashionable views, not only of religion, morals, and politics, but even of the modern physics and physiology— (you will not blame the earnestness of my expressions, nor the high importance which I attach to this work; for how, with less noble objects, and less faith in their attainment, could I stand acquitted of folly, and abuse of time, talents, and learning, in a labor of three fourths of my intellectual life?)—of this work, something more than a volume

has been dictated by me, so as to exist fit for the press, to my friend and enlightened pupil, Mr. Green. . . . . . And here comes, my dear friend, here comes my sorrow and my weakness, my grievance and my confession. Anxious to perform the duties of the day arising out of the wants of the day, these wants, too, presenting themselves in the most painful of all forms,—that of a debt owing to those who will not exact it, and yet need its payment, and the delay, the long (not live-long, but death-long,) behindhand of my accounts to friends, whose utmost care and frugality on the one side, and industry on the other, the wife's management and the husband's assiduity, are put in requisition to make both ends meet,— I am at once forbidden to attempt, and too perplexed earnestly to pursue, the accomplishment of the works worthy of me, those, I mean, above enumerated. . .... Now I see but one possible plan of rescuing my permanent utility. It is briefly this, and plainly-for what we struggle with inwardly, we find at least easiest to bolt out,— namely, that of engaging from the circle of those who think respectfully and hope highly of my powers and attainments a yearly sum, for three or four years, adequate to my actual support, with such comforts and decencies of appearance as my health and habits have made necessaries, so that my mind may be unanxious as far as the present time is concerned; that thus I should stand both