S. T. Coleridge.
T. Allsop, Esq.]
CHAPTER XXVII
THE GILLMANS
Friendship is a Sheltering Tree.—Youth and Age, 1822–3.
[The Gillmans necessarily come much into notice in Coleridge’s later letters. The following to Allsop have some references to his kind hosts, besides other friends and acquaintances of Coleridge. The Mr. Dawes referred to was the Rev. John Dawes, who kept a day school at Ambleside, and taught Hartley and Derwent classics and mathematics (Letters, 576).
Letter 203. To Allsop
May 30th, 1822.
My very dear Friend,
On my arrival at Highgate after our last parting, I ought to have written, if it were only that I had fully resolved to do so, and when I feel that I have not done what I ought, and what you would (have) done in my place, I will, as indeed too safely to make a merit of it I may do, leave the palliative and extenuating circumstance to your kindness to think of. This only let me say, that mournful as my experience of Messrs. —— and ——[126] in my own immediate concerns had been, of the latter especially, I was not prepared for their late behaviour, or, to use Anster’s words on the occasion, for “so piteous a lowering of human nature,” as the contents of Mr. W.’s letters were calculated to produce.