ws
here preferred Sternhold and Hopkins, and said so;--'the fiend
receive their souls therefor!'

"I must go and dress for dinner. Poor, dear Murat, what an end! You
know, I suppose, that his white plume used to be a rallying point
in battle, like Henry IV.'s. He refused a confessor and a bandage;
so would neither suffer his soul or body to be bandaged. You shall
have more to-morrow or next day.

"Ever," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 230. TO MR. MURRAY.

"November 4. 1815.

"When you have been enabled to form an opinion on Mr. Coleridge's
MS.[88] you will oblige me by returning it, as, in fact, I have no
authority to let it out of my hands. I think most highly of it, and
feel anxious that you should be the publisher; but if you are not,
I do not despair of finding those who will.

"I have written to Mr. Leigh Hunt, stating your willingness to
treat with him, which, when I saw you, I understood you to be.
Terms and time, I leave to his pleasure and your discernment; but
this I will say, that I think it the _safest_ thing you ever
engaged in. I speak to you as a man of business; were I to talk to
you as a reader or a critic, I should say it was a very wonderful
and beautiful performance, with just enough of fault to make its
beauties more remarked and remarkable.

"And now to the last--my own, which I feel ashamed of after the
others:--publish or not as you like, I don't care _one damn_. If
_you_ don't, no one else shall, and I never thought or dreamed of
it, except as one in the collection. If it is worth being in the
fourth volume, put it there and nowhere else; and if not, put it in
the fire. Yours, N."

[Footnote 88: A tragedy entitled, I think, Zopolia.]

* * * * *

Those embarrassments which, from a review of his affairs previous to the
marriage, he had clearly foreseen would, before long, overtake him, were
not slow in realising his worst omens. The increased expenses induced by
his new mode of life, with but very little increase of means to meet
them,--the long arrears of early pecuniary obligations, as well as the
claims which had been, gradually, since then, accumulating, all pressed
upon him now with collected force, and reduced him to some of the worst
humiliations of poverty. He had been even driven, by