***

S

my True History from Fairy Land, or the World Without, and the World Within. 2. The commencement of the Annals and Philosophy of Superstition; for the completion of which I am waiting only for a very curious folio, in Mr **** possession. 3. The life of Holty, a German poet, of true genius, who died in early manhood; with specimens of his poems, translated, or freely imitated in English verse. It would have been more in the mode to have addressed myself to the Editor, but I could not give up this one opportunity of assuring you that I am, my dear Sir,

With every friendly wish, your obliged,

Mr. Blackwood.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Selection from Mr. Coleridge's Literary Correspondence with Friends, and Men of Letters.

No. I.

LETTER I. From a Professional Friend.

Y DEAR AND HONOURED SIR,—I was much

M struck

with your Excerpta from Porta, Eckartshausen, and others, as to the effect of the ceremonial drinks and unguents, on the (female) practitioners of the black arts, whose witchcraft you believe to have consisted in the unhappy craft of bewitching themselves. I at least know of no reason, why to these toxications, (especially when

the

taken through the skin, and to the cataleptic state induced by them,) we should not attribute the poor wretches' own belief of their guilt. I can conceive, indeed, of no other mode of accounting-I do not say for their suspicious last dying avowals at the stake; but for their private and voluntary confessions on their death-beds, which made a convert of your old favourite, Sir T. Brown. Perhaps my professional pursuits, and medical studies, may have predisposed me to be interested; but my mind has been in an eddy ever since I left you. The connections of the subject with classical and with druidical superstitions, pointed out by you Circeia pocula-the herbal spells of the Haxæ, or Druidesses-the somniloquism of the prophetesses, under the coercion of the Scandinavian enchanters -the dependence of the Greek oracles on mineral waters, and stupifying vapours from the earth, as stated by Plutarch, and more than once alluded to by Euripides-the vast spread of the same, or similar usages, from Greenland even to the southernmost point of America;-you sent me home with enough to think of!-But, more than all, I was struck and interested with your concluding remark, that these, and most other superstitions, were, in

your belief, but the CADAVER ET PUTRIMENTA OF A DEFUNCT NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.-Why not rather the imperfect rudiments? I asked. You promised me your reasons, and a fuller explanation. But let me speak out my whole wish; and call on

you to redeem the pledges you gave, so long back as October 1809, that you would devote a series of papers to the subject of Dreams, Visions, Presentations, Ghosts, Witchcraft, Cures by sympathy, in which you would select and explain the most interesting and best attested facts that have come to your knowledge from books or personal testimony.

You can scarcely conceive how deep an interest I attach to this request; nor how many, beside myself, in the circle of my own acquaintance have the same feeling. Indeed, my dear Sir! when I reflect, that there is scarcely a chapter of history in which superstition of some kind or other does not form or supply a portion of its contents, I look forward, with unquiet anticipation, to the power of explaining the more frequent and best attested narrations, at least without the necessity of having recourse to the supposition of downright tricks and lying, on one side, or to the Devil and his imps on the other.

****

Your obliged Pupil,

and affectionate Friend,
J. L

P.S.-Dr. L. of the Museum, is quite of your opinion, that little or nothing of importance to the philosophic naturalist can result from Comparative Anatomy on Cuvier's plan; and that its best trophies will be but lifeless skeletons, till it is studied in combination with a Comparative Physiology.

But you ought yourself to vindicate the priority of your claim. But I fear, dear C., that Sic Vos, non Vobis was made for your motto throughout life.

LETTER II. In Answer to the above.

W

ELL, my

dear pupil and fellow-student! I am willing to make the attempt. If the majority of my readers had but the same personal knowledge of me as you have, I should sit down to the work with good cheer. But this is out of the

question. Let me, however, suppose you for the moment, as an average reader-address you as such, and attribute to you feelings and language in character. Do not mistake me, my dear L—. Not even for a moment, nor under the pretext of mons a non movendo, would I contemplate in connection with your name" id genus lectorum, qui meliores obtrectare malint quam imitari: et quorum similitudinem desperent, eorundem affectent simultatem scilicet uti qui suo nomine obscuri sunt, meo innotescant."* The readers I have in view, are of that class who with a sincere, though not

The passage, which cannot fail to remind you of Hand his set, is from Apuleius's Lib. Floridorum-the two books of which, by the bye, seem to have been transcribed from his common-place-book of Good Things, happy phrases, Sc. that he had not had an opportunity of bringing in in his set writings.

very strong desire, of acquiring knowledge, have taken it for granted, that all knowledge of any value respecting the mind is either to be found in three or four books, the eldest not a hundred years old, or may be conveniently taught without any other terms or previous explanations than these works have already rendered familiar among men of edu

cation.

Well, friendly reader! as the problem of things little less (it seems to you,) than impossible, yet strongly and numerously attested by evidence which it seems impossible to discredit, has interested you, I am willing to attempt the solution. But then it must be under certain conditions. I must be able to hope, I must have sufficient grounds for hoping, that I shall be understood, or rather that I shall be allowed to make myself understood. And as I am gifted with no magnetic power of throwing my reader into the state of clear-seeing (clairvoyance) or luminous vision; as I have not the secret of enabling him to read with the pit of his stomach, or with his finger-ends, nor of calling into act "the cuticular faculty," dormant at the tip of his nose; but must rely on WORDS-I cannot form the hope rationally, unless the reader will have patience enough to master the sense in which I use them.

But why employ words that need explanation? And might I not ask in my turn, would you, gentle reader! put the same question to Sir Edward Smith, or any other member of the Linnæan Society, to