little chance of pleasing to the same extent. In their great admiration
of him, they would often say, "How fine he was in his discourse, for he
gave us the very words the spirit spoke in," viz. the Hebrew, with which
he frequently indulged them in his sermons, and which seems greatly to
have attracted the notice of the agricultural population, who flocked
from the neighbourhood, to the town in which he resided. Excited and
stimulated by curiosity, this class of persons might attend the church,
and in listening for the Hebrew they would perhaps be more attentive,
and carry away some useful portions of the English from this amiable and
accomplished pastor.

As a schoolmaster his singularities were of the same character,
manifesting the same simplicity and honesty of purpose. I have before
stated that he wrote a Latin Grammar for the use of his school, and
instead of the word ablative, in general use, he compounded three or
four Latin words [4] as explanatory of this case. Whether the mothers
were startled at the repetition of these words, and thought of the
hardships their sons would have to endure in the acquirement of this
grammar, I can only conjecture; but it seems he thought it his duty to
explain to the ladies, in justice to their feelings, his learned reasons
for the alteration he had made in the name of this case.

I had often pressed him to write some account of his early life, and of
the various circumstances connected with it. But the aversion he had to
read or write any thing about himself was so great, that I never
succeeded, except in obtaining a few notes, rather than a detailed
account. There would be little either useful or interesting in any
account of Coleridge's life, which a stranger to him could give;
therefore, from the best authorities with which I am acquainted, and
from an intimacy of nearly twenty years, is this memoir of my late