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Coleridge’s comments in the letter are enhanced by the rhetoric he uses to set out the groundsfor Wordsworth’s ‘happiness’. To read the letter more closely is to appreciate that he contrastsThomas Wedgwood’s struggle to be a philosopher with Wordsworth’s comparative ease.Wedgwood’s effort deserves much praise, while Wordsworth does not attract such admiration, for heis not seen to struggle. Wordsworth is not a ‘happy man’ ‘from natural Temperament’ (Coleridgeinfers that his natural character is an obstacle), nor because of ‘his enjoyment of the good things ofthis world’. He is not an Epicurean in his attitude; but he can be identified as something of a Stoic.Coleridge does not explicitly use these terms, but they could be inferred by an educated eighteenthcenturyreader: ‘from the first Dawn of his Manhood he has purchased Independence and Leisure forgreat & good pursuits by austere frugality and daily Self-denial’. After suggesting three possiblecauses for Wordsworth’s ‘happiness’, all of which are put aside, Coleridge arrives at the actual finalcause in his list: ‘he is a happy man because he is a Philosopher – because he knows the intrinsic valueof the Different objects of human Pursuit and regulates his Wishes in Subordination of thatKnowledge’. It is important to note Coleridge’s specific recognition that Wordsworth has pursued thisphilosophy from ‘the first Dawn of his Manhood’. He suggests, therefore, that he has not been able tohave much success in influencing Wordsworth’s mind during the period of their friendship. His owncomments actually rebut the notion that he had furnished Wordsworth with a ‘one-life philosophy’. Inthis passage he explicitly identifies Wordsworth as a particular kind of philosopher, a ‘happy man’– a‘beatus vir – committed to eudaemonist moral principles.But Coleridge’s remarks also describe Wordsworth as an unsociable character. His happinessis not the result of sociable intercourse with ‘amiable and happy–making Friends and Relatives’; hissocial interactions are the result of careful, deliberate choice. Coleridge suggests that Wordsworth’scharacter is wholly based on his identity as a Philosopher, whose ‘practical faith’ is based on hiscarefully considered actions, carried out strictly according to his eudaemonist principles. Coleridgeinfers that Wordsworth’s friendship is calculated according to those principles and is not a genuineexpression of feeling. That his faith is practical, infers that it is based on material ends, and that helacks the faith in Christ and the Christian caritas that Coleridge believes necessary in order to be atruly ‘good man’ – a Christian. Wordsworth’s ‘virtue’, from Coleridge’s perspective, is in fact a vice.There is a sense of irony in Coleridge’s description, and a demonstration of the sense of envy thatintrudes into Coleridge’s comments on Wordsworth after the 1802 ‘difference’. His praise ofWordsworth’s philosophy registers a complaint about Wordsworth’s character – which is actually toohappy for Coleridge’s liking – and too moral.Coleridge’s comments are coloured by his own feelings of self-pity, his own faith is religiousrather than ‘practical’, and he knows that he cannot bind his own will down to ‘do but one thing well’,as Wordsworth can. He praises Wordsworth for his abilities, and hopes that he will achieve thesuccess he deserves, but his envy of those abilities has poisoned his own good will towardsWordsworth. But, typically, having got his animus towards Wordsworth off his chest, he continues, inthe next section of the letter, to propose that Wordsworth will succeed as a great philosophical poet.What follows is often quoted for its positive assessment of Wordsworth’s poetic abilities:59