to the history of our native city, and the literature of our times.
Your prose has a natural ease which no study could acquire. I am very
confident you could make as delightful a book on this subject as
Isaac Walton has in his way. If you are drawing up your
'Recollections of Coleridge,' you are most welcome to insert anything
of mine which you may think proper. To be employed in such a work,
with the principles and frame of mind wherewith you would engage in
it, is to be instructing and admonishing your fellow-creatures; it is
employing your talents, and keeping up that habitual preparation for
the enduring inheritance in which the greater part of your life has
been spent. Men like us, who write in sincerity, and with the desire
of teaching others so to think, and to feel, as may be best for
themselves and the community, are labouring as much in their vocation
as if they were composing sermons, or delivering them from the
pulpit....

God bless you, my dear old friend. Always yours most affectionately,

Robert Southey."

On another occasion Mr. S. thus wrote.

"My dear Cottle,

I both wish and advise you to draw up your '_Reminiscences_', I
advise you for your own sake, as a valuable memorial, and wish it for
my own, that that part of my life might be faithfully reported by the
person who knows it best...." "You have enough to tell which is
harmless, as well as interesting, and not harmless only, but
instructive, and that ought to be told, _and which only you can