59

I [S. T. C.] find the following lines among my papers, in my own writing, but whether an unfinished fragment, or a contribution to some friend's production, I know not:—

What boots to tell how o'er his grave
She wept, that would have died to save;
Little they know the heart, who deem
Her sorrow but an infant's dream
Of transient love begotten;
A passing gale, that as it blows
Just shakes the ripe drop from the rose—
That dies and is forgotten.
[[1012]] O Woman! nurse of hopes and fears,
All lovely in thy spring of years,
Thy soul in blameless mirth possessing,
Most lovely in affliction's tears,
More lovely still than tears suppressing.

Undated. First published in Allsop's Letters, Conversations, &c. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 373.

60

THE THREE SORTS OF FRIENDS

Though friendships differ endless in degree,
The sorts, methinks, may be reduced to three.
Acquaintance many, and Conquaintance few;
But for Inquaintance I know only two—
The friend I've mourned with, and the maid I woo!

My dear Gillman—The ground and matériel of this division of one's friends into ac, con and inquaintance, was given by Hartley Coleridge when he was scarcely five years old [1801]. On some one asking him if Anny Sealy (a little girl he went to school with) was an acquaintance of his, he replied, very fervently pressing his right hand on his heart, 'No, she is an inquaintance!' 'Well! 'tis a father's tale'; and the recollection soothes your old friend and inquaintance,

S. T. Coleridge.

Undated. First published in Fraser's Magazine for Jan. 1835, Art. Coleridgeiana, p. 54. First collected 1893.