My kindest remembrances to Mrs. Allsop, with kisses for little Titania Puckinella.

Years have passed since I heard the Nightingales sing as they did this evening in Mr. Robart’s Garden Grounds; so many, and in such full song, particularly that giddy voluminous whirl of notes which you never hear but when the Birds feel the temperature of the air voluptuous.

P.S. If I undertook these Lectures, I should compose the three, and write them out with as much care and polish as if for the Press, though I should probably make no use of the MS. in speaking, or at all attempt to recollect it. It would, relatively to my vivâ voce addresses, be only a way of premeditating the subject.

Letter 218. To Allsop

(— 1825.)

My dearest Friend,

The person to whom I alluded in my last is a Mr. T...,[140] who, within the last two or three years, has held a situation in the Colonial Office, but what, I do not know. From his age and comparatively recent initiation into the office, it is probably not a very influensive one; and, on the other hand, from the rank and character of his friends, he has occasionally brought up with him to our Thursday evening conver-, or, to mint a more appropriate term, one-versazione, it must be a respectable one. Mr. T... is Southey’s friend, and more than a literary acquaintance to me, only in consequence of my having had some friendly intercourse with his uncle during my abode in the north. Of him personally I know little more than that he is a remarkably handsome fashionable-looking young man, a little too deep or hollow mouthed and important in his enunciation, but clever and well read; and I have no reason to doubt that he would receive any one whom I had introduced to him as a friend of mine in whose welfare I felt anxious interest, with kindness and a disposition to forward his object should it be in his power.

But again, my dearest Friend, you must allow me to express my regret that I am acting in the dark, without any conviction on my mind that your present proceeding is not the result of wearied and still agitated spirits, an impetus of despondency, that fever which accompanies exhaustion. I can too well sympathise with you; and bitterly do I feel the unluckiness of my being in such a deplorable state of health just at the time when for your sake I should be most desirous to have the use of all my faculties. May God bless you, and your little-able but most sincere friend,

S. T. Coleridge.[141]

T. Allsop, Esq.]