S. T. COLERIDGE.
P.S. You are a good prophet. Oh, into what a state have the scoundrels brought this devoted kingdom. If the House of Commons would but melt down their faces, it would greatly assist the copper currency—we should have brass enough.
Coleridge, like all the Return-to-Nature poets of the eighteenth century, Thomson, Cowper, Burns, and others, was given to that humanitarian regard for the lower creatures which brought forth such poems as Burns's "Address to a Mouse" and Coleridge's own lines to a "Young Ass". The following letter to Cottle is an amusing sample of that humanitarianism. George Burnett, one of the pantisocrats, occasionally resided with Coleridge, and during the latter's temporary absence from Stowey had taken ill. On reaching Stowey, Coleridge wrote to Cottle.