[144] The Right Hon. John Hookham Frere, 1769-1846, now better known as the translator of Aristophanes than as statesman or diplomatist, was a warm friend to Coleridge in his later years. He figures in the later memoranda and correspondence as [Greek: ho kalokagathos], the ideal Christian gentleman.
[145] Samuel Purkis, of Brentford, tanner and man of letters, was an early friend of Poole's, and through him became acquainted with Coleridge and Sir Humphry Davy. When Coleridge went up to London in June, 1798, to stay with the Wedgwoods at Stoke House, in the village of Cobham, he stayed a night at Brentford on the way. In a letter to Poole of the same date, he thus describes his host: "Purkis is a _gentleman_, with the free and cordial and interesting manners of the man of literature. His colloquial diction is uncommonly pleasing, his information various, his _own mind_ elegant and acute." _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 271, _et passim_.
[146] For an account of Coleridge's relations with his publishers, Fenner and Curtis, see _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative_, by J. Dykes Campbell, p. 227. See, too, _Lippincott's Mag._ for June, 1870, art. "Some Unpublished Correspondence of S. T. Coleridge," and Brandl's _Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Romantic School_, 1887, pp. 351-353.
[147] J. H. Frere was, I believe, one of those who assisted Coleridge to send his younger son to Cambridge.
[148] John Taylor Coleridge (better known as Mr. Justice Coleridge), and George May Coleridge, Vicar of St. Mary Church, Devon, and Prebendary of Wells. Another cousin who befriended Hartley, when he was an undergraduate at Merton, and again later when he was living with the Montagus, in London, was William Hart Coleridge, afterward Bishop of Barbados. The poet's own testimony to the good work of his nephews should be set against Allsop's foolish and uncalled for attack on "the Bishop and the Judge." _Letters, etc., of S. T. Coleridge_, 1836, i. 225, note.
[149] Poole's reply to this letter, dated July 31, 1817, contained an invitation to Hartley to come to Nether Stowey. Mrs. Sandford tells us that it was believed that "the young man spent more than one vacation at Stowey, where he was well-known and very popular, though the young ladies of the place either themselves called him the Black Dwarf, or cherished a conviction that that was his nickname at Oxford." _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, ii. 256-258.