a manner, dried up and extinct; and you will find your old associate, in
his second volume, dwindled into prose and _criticism_.

Am I right in assuming this as the cause? or is it that, as years come
upon us, (except with some more healthy-happy spirits,) Life itself
loses much of its Poetry for us? we transcribe but what we read in the
great volume of Nature; and, as the characters grow dim, we turn off,
and look another way. You yourself write no Christabels, nor Ancient
Mariners, now.

Some of the Sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the
general reader, may happily awaken in you remembrances, which I should
be sorry should be ever totally extinct--the memory

Of summer days and of delightful years--

even so far back as to those old suppers at our old ****** Inn,--when life
was fresh, and topics exhaustless,--and you first kindled in me, if not
the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness.--

What words have I heard
Spoke at the Mermaid!

The world has given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time, but
either my eyes are grown dimmer, or my old friend is the _same_, who
stood before me three and twenty years ago--his hair a little confessing
the hand of time, but still shrouding the same capacious brain,--his
heart not altered, scarcely where it "alteration finds."

One piece, Coleridge, I have ventured to publish in its original form,