with. Yet I chuse to retain the word "lunar"--indulge a "lunatic" in his
loyalty to his mistress the moon. I have just been reading a most
pathetic copy of verses on Sophia Pringle, who was hanged and burn'd for
coining. One of the strokes of pathos (which are very many, all somewhat
obscure) is "She lifted up her guilty forger to heaven." A note explains
by forger her right hand with which she forged or coined the base metal!
For pathos read bathos. You have put me out of conceit with my blank
verse by your Religious Musings. I think it will come to nothing. I do
not like 'em enough to send 'em. I have just been reading a book, which
I may be too partial to, as it was the delight of my childhood; but I
will recommend it to you--it is "Izaak Walton's Complete Angler!" All
the scientific part you may omit in reading. The dialogue is very
simple, full of pastoral beauties, and will charm you. Many pretty old
verses are interspersed. This letter, which would be a week's work
reading only, I do not wish you to answer in less than a month. I shall
be richly content with a letter from you some day early in July--tho' if
you get any how _settled_ before then pray let me know it immediately--
'twould give me such satisfaction. Concerning the Unitarian chapel, the
salary is the only scruple that the most rigid moralist would admit as
valid. Concerning the tutorage--is not the salary low, and absence from
your family unavoidable? London is the only fostering soil for Genius.

Nothing more occurs just now, so I will leave you in mercy one small
white spot empty below, to repose your eyes upon, fatigued as they must
be with the wilderness of words they have by this time painfully
travell'd thro'. God love you, Coleridge, and prosper you thro' life,
tho' mine will be loss if your lot is to be cast at Bristol or at
Nottingham or any where but London. Our loves to Mrs. C--.

C. L.