The simile, in question, if not a new subject, is at least, perhaps, as
energetically expressed as any five lines in Mr. Coleridge's writings.

As who, through many a summer night serene
Had hover'd round the fold with coward wish;
Horrid with brumal ice, the fiercer wolf,
From his bleak mountain and his den of snows
Leaps terrible and mocks the shepherd's spear.
Book 1. L. 47.


"June, 1796.

My dear Cottle,

I am sojourning for a few days at Racedown, Dorset, the mansion of our
friend Wordsworth; who presents his kindest respects to you....

Wordsworth admires my tragedy, which gives me great hopes. Wordsworth has
written a tragedy himself. I speak with heartfelt sincerity, and I think,
unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel myself a little man by
his side, and yet I do not think myself a less man than I formerly
thought myself. His drama is absolutely wonderful. You know I do not
commonly speak in such abrupt and unmingled phrases, and therefore will
the more readily believe me. There are, in the piece, those profound
touches of the human heart, which I find three or four times in the
"Robbers" of Schiller, and often in Shakspeare, but in Wordsworth there
are no inequalities....

God bless you, and eke,