ABSTRACT
In drawing up Cottle's “Early Recollections of S. T. Coleridge,” so many references had been made to Mr. Southey, that, notwithstanding his general permission, Cottle deemed it proper to transmit him the MS., with a request that he would, without hesitation, draw his pen across any portions to which he either objected, or thought it might be better to omit. Southey did draw his pen across several passages and commented that the easiest way of showing Cottle those small inaccuracies, will be by giving him a slight summary of the facts, most of them antecedent to Southey's introduction to Cottle. Southey knows that Coleridge at different times of his life never let pass an opportunity of speaking ill of him. Both Wordsworth and Southey have often lamented the exposure of duplicity which must result from the publication of his letters, and by what he has delivered by word of mouth to the worshippers by whom he was always surrounded.
