[115] "The thoughts of Coleridge, even during the whirl of passing events, discovered their hidden springs, and poured forth, in an obscure style, and to an unheeding age, the great moral truths which were then being proclaimed in characters of fire to mankind." Alison's _History of Europe_, ix. 3 (ninth edition).
[116] The eight "Letters on the Spaniards," which Coleridge contributed to the _Courier_ in December, January, 1809-10, are reprinted in _Essays on His Own Times_, ii. 593-676.
[117] The character of Pitt appeared in the _Morning Post_, March 19, 1800; the letters to Fox, on November 4, 9, 1802; the Essays on the French Empire, etc., September 21, 25, and October 2, 1802; the Essay on the restoration of the Bourbons, October, 1802. They are reprinted in the second volume of _Essays on His Own Times_.
Six Letters to Judge Fletcher on Catholic Emancipation, which appeared at irregular intervals in the _Courier_, September-December, 1814, are reprinted in _Essays on His Own Times_, iii. 677-733.
The Essay on Taxation forms the seventh Essay of Section the First, on the Principles of Political Knowledge. _The Friend_; _Coleridge's Works_, Harper & Brothers, 1853, ii. 208-222.
[118] Neither the original nor the transcript of this letter has, to my knowledge, been preserved.
[119] He reverts to this "turning of the worm" in a letter to Morgan dated January 5, 1818. He threatened to attack publishers and printers in "a vigorous and harmonious satire" to be called "Puff and Slander." I am inclined to think that the remarkable verses entitled "A Character," which were first printed in 1834, were an accomplished instalment of "these two long satires." Letter in British Museum. MSS. Addit. 25612. _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative_ by J. Dykes Campbell, p. 234, note; _Poetical Works_, pp. 195, 642.
[120] A work which should contain all knowledge and proclaim all philosophy had been Coleridge's dream from the beginning, and, as no such work was ever produced, it may be said to have been his dream to the end. And yet it was something more than a dream. Besides innumerable fragments of metaphysical and theological speculation which have passed into my hands, he actually did compose and dictate two large quarto volumes on formal logic, which are extant. "Something more than a volume," a portentous introduction to his _magnum opus_, was dictated to his amanuensis and disciple, J. H. Green, and is now in my possession. A commentary on the Gospels and some of the Epistles, of which the original MS. is extant, and of which I possess a transcription, was an accomplished fact. I say nothing of the actual or relative value of this unpublished matter, but it should be put on record that it exists, that much labour, ill-judged perhaps, and ineffectual labour, was expended on the outworks of the fortresses, and that the walls and bastions are standing to the present day.