It is dated 13th April 1828; and one of the latest letters he indited from “21 Comely Bank, Edinburgh.”  After advising Scott that “Goethe has sent two medals which he is to deliver into his own hand,” he gives an extract from Goethe’s letter containing a criticism on Napoleon, with the apology that “it is seldom such a writer obtains such a critic,” and in conclusion he adds, “Being in this curious fashion appointed, as it were, ambassador between two kings of poetry, I would willingly discharge my mission with the solemnity that beseems such a business; and naturally it must flatter my vanity and love of the marvellous to think that by means of a foreigner whom I have never seen, I might soon have access to my native sovereign, whom I have so often seen in public, and so often wished that I had claim to see and know in private and near at hand. ...  Meanwhile, I abide your further orders in this matter, and so with all the regard which belongs to one to whom I in common with other millions owe so much, I have the honour to be, sir, most respectfully, your servant.—­T.C.”

[167] William Jacob, author of Travels in Spain in 1810-11, and several works on Political Economy.  Among others “some tracts concerning the Poor Colonies instituted by the King of the Netherlands, which had marked influence in promoting the scheme of granting small allotments of land on easy terms to our cottagers; a scheme which, under the superintendence of Lord Braybrooke and other noblemen and gentlemen in various districts of England, appears to have been attended with most beneficent results.”—­Life, vol. ix. p. 229.  Mr. Jacob died in 1852 aged eighty-eight.

[168] The widow of his old school-fellow, the Hon. Thomas Douglas, afterwards Earl of Selkirk.—­See Life, vol. i. p. 77, and 208 n.

[169] Ante, p. 10.  Afterwards included in her Poetical and Dramatic Works, Lond. 1851.

[170] Dr. Henry Phillpotts, consecrated Bishop of Exeter in 1830.

[171] Crabbe’s Tale of the Dumb Orators.—­J.G.L.

[172] Dr. Howley, raised in 1828 to the Archbishopric of Canterbury.—­J.G.L.

[173] Translated to the see of London in 1828, where he remained until his death in 1859.

[174] Mr. Lockhart gives an account of another dinner party at which Coleridge distinguished himself:—­“The first time I ever witnessed it [Hook’s improvisation] was at a gay young bachelor’s villa near Highgate, when the other lion was one of a very different breed, Mr. Coleridge.  Much claret had been shed before the Ancient Mariner proclaimed that he could swallow no more of anything, unless it were punch.  The materials were forthwith produced; the bowl was planted before the poet, and as he proceeded in his concoction, Hook, unbidden, took his place at the piano.  He burst into a bacchanal of egregious luxury, every line of which had reference to the author