Gratitude is a plant indigenous to Heaven. Specimens are rarely found on
Earth. This is one.
Mr. Southey, on previous occasions had advised me to write my
"Recollections of Persons and Things," and it having been understood that
I was about to prepare a memoir of Mr. Coleridge, (1836) Mr. S. renewed
his solicitation, as will appear by the following extracts.
"Keswick, April 14, 1836.
My dear Cottle,
There is I hope, time enough for you to make a very interesting book
of your own 'Recollections,' a book which will be of no little value
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,