of skill acquired by practice.  These observations are not called out by any defects or imperfections in your last pieces especially:  they are equal to the former ones in effect, have many beauties, and are not inferior in execution; but again I do venture to submit to your consideration, whether the poetical parts of your nature would not find a field more favourable to their exercise in the regions of prose:  not because those regions are humbler, but because they may be gracefully and profitably trod with footsteps less careful and in measures less elaborate.  And now I have done with the subject, and have only to add, that when you write verses you would not fail, from time to time, to let me have a sight of them; provided you will allow me to defer criticism on your diction and versification till we meet.  My eyes are so often useless both for reading and writing, that I cannot tax the eyes and pens of others with writing down observations which to indifferent persons must be tedious.

Upon the whole, I am not sorry that your project of going to London at present is dropped.  It would have grieved me had you been unfurnished with an introduction from me to Mr. Coleridge; yet I know not how I could have given you one—­he is often so very unwell.  A few weeks ago he had had two attacks of cholera, and appears to be so much broken down that unless I were assured he was something in his better way I could not disturb him by the introduction of any one.  His most intimate friend is Mr. Green, a man of science and a distinguished surgeon.  If to him you could procure an introduction he would let you know the state of Coleridge’s health; and to Mr. Green, whom I once saw, you might use my name with a view to further your wish, if it were at all needful.

Shakspeare’s sonnets (excuse this leap) are not upon the Italian model, which Milton’s are; they are merely quatrains with a couplet tacked to the end; and if they depended much upon the versification they would unavoidably be heavy.

One word upon Reform in Parliament, a subject to which, somewhat reluctantly, you allude.  You are a Reformer!  Are you an approver of the Bill as rejected by the Lords? or, to use Lord Grey’s words, anything ’as efficient?’—­he means, if he means anything, for producing change.  Then I earnestly entreat you to devote hours and hours to the study of human nature, in books, in life, and in your own mind; and beg and pray that you would mix with society, not in Ireland and Scotland only, but in England; a fount of destiny which, if once poisoned, away goes all hope of quiet progress in well doing.  The constitution of England, which seems about to be destroyed, offers to my mind the sublimest contemplation which the history of society and government have ever presented to it; and for this cause especially, that its principles have the character of preconceived ideas, archetypes of the pure intellect, while they are, in fact, the results of a humble-minded experience.  Think about this, apply it to what we are threatened with, and farewell.