... 'Ill besped' is indeed a sad blotch; but after having tried at least
a hundred ways, before I sent the Poem to you, and often since, I find it
incurable. This first Poem is but a so so composition. I wonder I could
have been so blinded by the ardour of recent composition, as to see
anything in it.

Your remarks are _perfectly just_ on the 'Allegorical lines,' except
that, in this district, corn is as often cut with a scythe, as with a
hook. However, for '_Scythesman_' read _Rustic_. For '_poor fond thing_'
read _foolish thing_, and for '_flung to fade, and rot, and die_,' read
_flung to wither and to die_.[30]

* * * * *

Milton (the carrier) waits impatiently.

S. T. C."


Having once inquired of Mr. Coleridge something respecting a nicety in
hexameters, he asked for a sheet of paper, and wrote the following. These
hexameters appear in the last edition of Mr. C.'s Poems, though in a less
correct form, and without the condensed and well-expressed preliminary
remarks. Two new lines are here also added.

"The Hexameter consists of six feet, or twelve times. These feet, in the
Latin and Greek languages, were always either dactyls, or spondees; the
time of a dactyl, being only that of a spondee. In modern languages,
however, metre being regulated by the emphasis, or intonation of the