The first paragraph in the 'Apology,' begins thus, the italics the author's own.
"The author has been ostracised from Parnassus by some tribe of the critics on his former work of Weight, if not Merit, one set of whom —the most ancient, the wisest of them all—condemned it in the lump. A whole volume of ten thousand lines, in one paragraph of their Monthly Catalogue, for which they were paid—nothing! without quoting one line! Whereas a score (!) out of some idle sonnet, or some wire-drawn Cibberian ode, shall be held up out of the mud with a placid grin of applause. The author has forgiven them, and keeps, therefore, the name of their pamphlet in the back ground, in the charitable hope of their having fifteen years ago, repented of that injustice' This ponderous work however, to which the author alludes, was his 'Poems and Imitations of the British Poets, in one large vol. in 4to, price only £1 1s. on excellent paper and print! The same price as even 'Jeffrey Gambado's Gambol of Horsemanship' went off as current, at the same time. He out-jockied me; I always was a bad Horseman." &c., &c.
As illustrating one of the extreme points of human nature, I may casually mention that, after Mr. Churchey's death, which soon succeeded the issuing of his 'Apology,' from understanding that his widow was in straitened circumstances, and meeting with a gentleman who was going to Brecon, I requested the favour of him to convey to her a guinea, as a small present. A week after, I received a letter from the widow, thanking me for my kind remembrance, but she said that she was not benefited by it, as Mr. —— said to her, 'This is a guinea, sent to you from Mr. Cottle, of Bristol, but as your husband owed me money, I shall carry it to the credit of his account'; when, buttoning his pocket, he walked away.' I immediately sent another guinea, and requested her not to name so disreputable an action, in one, from whom I had hoped better conduct. This gentleman, till the period of his death, twenty years after, always shunned me! At the time the abstraction took place, he was a wealthy man, and kept his carriage; but from that time he declined in prosperity, and died in indigence.
[65] In a better sent to me by Mr. Foster, dated June 22, 1843, he thus explains the mysterious circumstances, relating to the publication of "Wat Tyler."
"My dear sir,
… I wonder if Mr. Southey ever did get at the secret history of that affair. The story as I heard it was, that Southey visited Winterbottom in prison, and just as a token of kindness, gave him the M.S. of 'Wat Tyler.' It was no fault of Winterbottom that it was published. On a visit to some friends at Worcester, he had the piece with him; meaning I suppose, to afford them a little amusement, at Southey's expense, he being held in great reproach, even contempt, as a turn-coat. At the house where Winterbottom was visiting, two persons, keeping the piece in their reach at bed-time, sat up all night transcribing it, of course giving him no hint of the manoeuvre. This information I had from one of the two operators….
[66] Poor John Morgan was the only child of a retired spirit merchant of Bristol, who left him a handsome independence. He was a worthy kind-hearted man, possessed of more than an average of reading and good sense; generally respected, and of unpresuming manners. He was a great friend and admirer of Mr. Coleridge; deploring his habits, and labouring to correct them. Except Mr. Gillman, there was no individual, with whom Mr. Coleridge lived gratuitously so much, during Mr. M's. residence in London, extending to a domestication of several years. When Mr. Morgan removed to Calne, in Wiltshire, for a long time, he gave Mr. C. an asylum, and till his affairs, through the treachery of others, became involved, Mr. Coleridge, through him, never wanted a home. That so worthy, and generous a minded man should have been thus reduced, or rather ruined in his circumstances, was much deplored by all who knew him, and marked the instability of human possessions and prospects, often little expected by industrious parents.
[67] A large collection of animal bones, many of them in fossil state, consisting of the jaws and other bones, of tigers, hyenas, wolves, foxes, the horse, the bos, &c., the whole obtained by me, in the year 1822, from the Oreston caves, near Plymouth. The number of bones amounted to nearly two thousand. Many of the specimens were lent to Professor Buckland, to get engraved, for a new geological work of his. The major part of the collection I presented to the Bristol Philosophical Institution.
[68] The decrease of the remarkable young lady, Sarah Saunders, my niece, to whom the later Mr. Foster addressed a series of letters, during her illness. These letters are printed in Mr. F's. "Life and Correspondence."