thousand sources; I burned a little journal of my foolish passion which
I had a long time kept,--

"Noting, ere they past away,
The little lines of yesterday."

I almost burned all your letters; I did as bad,--I lent 'em to a friend
to keep out of my brother's sight, should he come and make inquisition
into our papers; for much as he dwelt upon your conversation while you
were among us, and delighted to be with you, it has been, his fashion,
ever since to depreciate and cry you down,--you were the cause of my
madness, you and your damned foolish sensibility and melancholy; and he
lamented with a true brotherly feeling that we ever met,--even as the
sober citizen, when his son went astray upon the mountains of Parnassus,
is said to have cursed wit, and poetry, and Pope. [2] I quote wrong, but
no matter. These letters I lent to a friend to be out of the way for a
season; but I have claimed them in vain, and shall not cease to regret
their loss. Your packets posterior to the date of my misfortunes,
commencing with that valuable consolatory epistle, are every day
accumulating,--they are sacred things with me.

Publish your _Burns_ [3] when and how you like; it will "be new to
me,"--my memory of it is very confused, and tainted with unpleasant
associations. Burns was the god of my idolatry, as Bowles of yours. I am
jealous of your fraternizing with Bowles, when I think you relish him
more than Burns or my old favorite, Cowper, But you conciliate matters
when you talk of the "divine chit-chat" of the latter; by the expression
I see you thoroughly relish him. I love Mrs. Coleridge for her excuses
an hundred-fold more dearly than if she heaped "line upon line,"
out-Hannah-ing Hannah More, and had rather hear you sing "Did a very