Finally therefore, if you know that any unknown benefactor is in such circumstances, that, in doing what he offers to do, he transgresses no duty of morals, or of moral prudence, and does not do that from feeling which after reflection might perhaps discountenance, I shall gratefully accept it, as an unconditional loan, which I trust I shall be able to restore at the close of two years. This however, I shall be able to know at the expiration of one year, and shall then beg to know the name of my benefactor, which I should then only feel delight in knowing, when I could present to him some substantial proof, that I have employed the tranquillity of mind, which his kindness has enabled me to enjoy, in sincere desires to benefit my fellow men. May God bless you.

S. T. C.

The Tragedy here spoken of may have been a re-cast of Osorio or a projected play entitled The Triumph of Loyalty, of which one act was written, and of which the Night Scene, attributed to 1801, is a fragment.

The full account of De Quincey’s meeting, and description of Coleridge, is found in De Quincey’s Works, edited by Professor Masson, vol. ii, 139–164, 214–225. His dictum on Coleridge has been often quoted: “He is the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and most comprehensive that has yet existed among men.”]

CHAPTER XIV
FIRST LECTURES

[In August 1807 we find Humphry Davy writing to Poole that he had been corresponding with Coleridge urging him to undertake a course of Lectures at the Royal Institution, London, whither Davy had gone after leaving the Pneumatic Institute of Dr. Beddoes. Coleridge did not show alacrity in answering, one of the reasons being doubtless the attitude of his friend Tom Poole, who did not approve of Coleridge wasting his abilities in lecturing, even on Shakespeare. Southey, too, corroborated. When he heard that Coleridge was engaging to give lectures at the Royal Institution he wrote: “From this I shall endeavour to dissuade him, if it be not too late, because it will detain him from what is of greater immediate importance; because he will never be ready, and therefore always on the fret; and because I think his prospects such that it is not prudent to give lectures to ladies and gentlemen in Albemarle Street,—Sidney Smith is good enough for them.” (T. Poole and his Friends, ii, 177–8.)

At last Coleridge replied to Davy in a hesitating state of mind:

Letter 137. To Davy

September 11, 1807.