Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

ARTICLE ON COLERIDGE. 265
work which was to bring him the chief successes of
his Hfe. But the Chaldee Manuscript had not as yet
been thought of, and it was that wild onslaught which
excited the brotherhood and woke them to full exer-
cise of their powers. We should have been glad not
to have the assurance thus conveyed that the article
on Coleridge—a very much greater offence against
public morality and humanity—was Wilson's doing.
Perhaps the lost article, which dropped out of his
careless pocket on the slopes of Cairngorm, was written
in a better spirit, and the loss of it lent bitterness to
the after-writing. Anyhow, the offence of the Chaldee
Manuscript was as nothing in comparison to this re-
view, with which, we are sad to say, ' Blackwood's
Edinburgh Magazine ' began.
In the years immediately following there is little
correspondence, presumably because of the close personal
intercourse between author and publisher. The
following letter was evidently written in the interest
of one of the feebler members of that Lake School
which Wilson alternately assailed and caressed. The
reader will probably feel that it carries sympathy for
one friend too courageously to the debit of another :
John Wilson to W. Blackwood.
I enclose for your perusal a letter from Mr Lloyd. I feel so
extremely for him, knowing his character and all the circum-
stances of his life, that I would not for any consideration give
him pain, which might produce fatal effects upon him.
When I first wrote to him about his Tragedy I stated posi-
tively that it would be inserted at ten guineas per sheet, as I
did not doubt it would be worth it. You see what his feeling
about it is. With respect to the Tragedy or Drama I have not
read it ; but it cannot, heavy as it may be, but be exceedingly
—