"Beauties of the Anti-jacobin," which after having informed the Public that I had been dishonoured at Cambridge for preaching Deism (about the time, when I was deemed a perfect Bigot by the reigning Philosophers and their proselytes for my youthful ardor in defence of Christianity) concludes with these words: "Since this time he (i. e. S. T. Coleridge) has left his native Country, commenced Citizen of the World, left his poor Children fatherless and his Wife destitute. Ex his disce his friends-" but I dare not desecrate their names. Suffice it to say, what may be said with severest truth, that it is absolutely impossible to select from the whole empire two men more exemplary in their domestic characters (both remarkably, and the one most awefully so) than the men, whose names were here printed at full length. Can it be wondered at, that some good men were not especially friendly to a Party, which encouraged and openly rewarded the Authors of such atrocious calumnies! ("Qualis es, nescio; sed per quales agis, scio et doleo.") Since this time, the envenomed weapon has been turned against themselves by one of their own agents. And it behoves those to consider, who bring forward the Gougers of slander to attack their real or imagined Enemies, that Savages are capricious in proportion as they are unprincipled and when they have none else to attack, will turn round and assail their Employers. For Attack is their vital Element: extract the venomous Sting, and the animal dies.

Again, will any man, who loves his Children and his Country, be slow to pardon me, if not in the spirit of vanity but of natural self-defence against yearly and monthly attacks on the very vitals of my character as an honest man and a loyal Subject, I prove the utter falsity of the charges by the only public means in my power, a citation from the last work published by me, in the close of the year 1798, and anterior to all the calumnies published to my dishonour. No one has charged me with seditious acts or conversation: if I have attempted to do harm, by my works must it have been effected. By my works therefore must I be judged: if indeed one obscure volume of juvenile poems, and one slight verse pamphlet of twenty pages, can without irony, be entitled works.) The poem was written during the first alarm of Invasion, and left in the Press on my leaving my country for Germany. So few copies were printed, and of these so few sold, that to the great majority of my readers they will be any thing rather than a citation from a known publication--but my heart bears me witness, that I am aiming wholly at the moral confidence of my Readers in my principles, as a man, not at their praises of me, as a Poet; to which character, in its' higher sense, I have already resigned all pretensions.

“Spare us yet awhile!
Father and God, O spare us yet awhile.
O let not English Women speed their flight
Fainting beneath the burthen of their Babes,
Of the sweet Infants, who but yesterday
Smiled at the bosom! Husbands, Brothers, all

Who ever gazed with fondness on the forms
Which grew up with you round the same fire-side,
And all who ever heard the Sabbath Bells

Without the Infidels' scorn; make yourselves strong,
Stand forth, be men, repel an impious race,
Impious and false, a light yet cruel race
That laugh away all virtue, mingling mirth
With deeds of murder! and still promising
Freedom, themselves too sensual to be free,
Poison Life's amities and cheat the heart

Of Faith and quiet Hope and all that soothes
And all that lifts the spirit! Stand ye forth,
Render them back upon th' insulted ocean
And let them float as idly on its waves

As the vile sea-weed, which the mountain blast
Sweeps from our Shores! And O! may we return
Not in a drunken triumph, but with awe,

Repentant of the wrongs, with which we stung
So fierce a race to Frenzy.

I have told,

O men of England! Brothers! I have told
Most bitter Truths but without bitterness.
Nor deem my zeal or factitious or mistimed:
For never can true Courage dwell with them
Who playing tricks with Conscience dare not look
At their own vices. We have been too long
Dupes of a deep delusion. Some, belike,
Restless in enmity, have thought all change
Involv'd in change of constituted power,

As if a Government were but a Robe

On which our Vice and Wretchedness were sewn Like fancy-points and fringes, with the Robe Pull'd off at pleasure.

others, meantime,

Dote with a mad Idolatry! and all

Who will not fall before their Images

And yield them worship, they are enemies

Even of their Country! Such have I been deem'd.
But O! dear Britain! O my Mother Isle !

Needs must thou be a name most dear and holy
To me a Son, a Brother, and a Friend,

A Husband, and a Parent, who revere

All Bonds of natural Love, and find them all
Within the circle of thy rocks/shores!

O native Britain! O my Mother Isle !

How should'st thou be aught else but dear and holy
To me, who from thy seas and rocky shores,
Thy quiet fields, thy streams and wooded Hills
Have drunk in all my intellectual life,

All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
All adoration of the God in nature,
All lovely and all honorable things,
Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joy and greatness of its' future Being!
There lives nor Form nor Feeling in my Soul
Unborrowed from my Country. O divine
And beauteous Island! thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent Temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs
Loving the God, who made me.

Fears of Solitude, a Poem.

Most unaffected has been my wonder, from what causes a man who has published nothing with his name but a single forgotten volume of verses, thirteen years ago, and a poem of two hundred lines a few years after, of which (to use the words of a witty writer) I made the Public my Confidant and it kept the secret, should have excited such long and implacable malignity. And anonymously I have only contributed the foil of three or four small poems to the volume of a superior mind, and sent a few Essays to a Newspaper in defence of all that is dear, or abhorrence of what must be most detestable, to good men and genuine Englishmen. With the exception of one solitary sonnet, which in what mood written, and by what accident published, personal delicacy forbids me to explain, which was rejected indignantly from the second Edition of my Poems, and re-inserted in the third in my absence and without my consent or knowledge, I may safely defy my worst enemy to shew, in any of my few writings, the least bias to Irreligion, Immorality, or Jacobinism: unless in the latter word, be implied sentiments which have been avowed by men who without recantation, direct or indirect, have been honored with the highest responsible offices of Government.

This is the first time that I have attempted to counteract the wanton calumnies of unknown and unprovoked persecutors. Living in deep retirement, I have only become acquainted with the greater part years after they had been published and individually forgotten. But the general effect remained: and if my Readers knew the cruel hindrances, which they have opposed to me, in the bringing about the present undertaking, I have honorably erred in my notions of human nature, if I should not be more than forgiven: especially if the number of attacks on myself and on one still more and more deservedly dear to me, should be more than equal to the number of the lines, in which I have, for the first time, been tempted to defend myself.

PENRITH: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. BROWN; AND SOLD BY MESERS. LONGMAN AND CO. PATERNOSTER ROW; AND

CLEMENT, 201, STRAND, LONDON.

THE FRIEND.

No. 3, THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1809.

ON THE COMMUNICATION OF TRUTH AND THE RIGHTFUL LIBERTY OF THE PRESS IN CONNECTION WITH IT.

In eodem pectore nullum est honestorum turpiumque consortium: et cogitare optima simul et deterrima non magis est unius animi quam ejusdem hominis bonum esse ac malum. QUINTILIAN.

There is no fellowship of Honor and Baseness in the same breast; and to combine the best and the worst designs is no more possible in one mind, than it is for the same man to be at the same instant virtuous and vicious.

Cognitio veritatis omnia falsa, si modo proferantur, etiam quæ prius inaudita erant, et dijudicare et subvertere idonea est.

AUGUSTINUS.

A knowledge of the truth is equal to the task both of discerning and of confuting all false assertions and erroneous arguments, though never before met with, if only they may freely be brought forward.

AMONG the numerous artifices, by which austere truths are to be softened down into palatable falsehoods, and Virtue and Vice, like the Atoms of Epicurus, to receive that insensible clinamen which is to make them meet each other half way, I have an especial dislike to the expression, PIOUS FRAUDS. Piety indeed shrinks trom the very phrase, as an attempt to mix poison with the cup of Blessing while the expediency of the measures which this phrase was framed to recommend or palliate, appears more and more suspicious, as the range of our experience widens, and our acquaintance with the records of History becomes more extensive and accurate. One of the most seductive arguments of Infidelity grounds itself on the numerous passages in the works of the Christian Fathers, asserting the lawfulness of Deceit for a good purpose. That the Fathers held almost without exception, "That wholly without breach of duty it is allowed to the Teachers and Heads of the Christian Church to employ arti

fices, to intermix falsehoods with truths, and especially to deceive the enemies of the faith, provided only they hereby serve the interests of Truth and the advantage of mankind," is the unwilling confession of RIBOF: (Program de Oeconomia Patrum). St. Jerom, as is shewn by the citations of this learned Theologian, boldly attributes this management (falsitatem dispensativam) even to the Apostles themselves. But why speak I of the advantage given to the opponents of Christianity? Alas! to this Doctrine chiefly, and to the practices derived from it, we must attribute the utter corruption of the Religion itself for so many ages, and even now over so large a portion. of the civilized world. By a system of accommodating Truth to Falsehood, the Pastors of the Church gradually changed the life and light of the Gospel into the very superstitions which they were commissioned to disperse, and thus paganized Christianity in order to christen Paganism. At this very hour Europe groans and bleeds in con

sequence.

So much in proof and exemplification of the probable expediency of pious deception, as suggested by its known. and recorded consequences. An honest man, however, possesses a clearer light than that of History. He knows, that by sacrificing the law of his reason to the maxims of pretended Prudence, he purchases the sword with the loss of the arm which is to wield it. The duties which we owe to our own moral being, are the ground and condition of all other duties; and to set our nature at strife with itself for a good purpose, implies the same sort of prudence, as a priest of Diana would have manifested, who should have proposed to dig up the celebrated charcoal foundations of the mighty Temple of Ephesus, in order to furnish fuel for the burnt-offerings on its' Altars. Truth, Virtue, and Happiness, may be distinguished

* Integrum omnino Doctoribus et cætus Christiani Antistitibus esse, ut dolos versent, falsa veris intermisceant et imprimis religionis hostes fallant, dummodo veritatis commodis et utilitati inserviant.—I trust, I need not add, that the impu tation of such principles of action to the first inspired Propagators of Christianity, is founded on the gross misconstruction of those passages in the writings of St. Paul, in which the necessity of employing different arguments to men of different capacities and prejudices, is supposed and acceded to. In other words, St. Paul strove to speak intelligibly, willingly sacrificed indifferent things to matters of importance, and acted courteously as a man, in order to win attention as an Apostle. A Traveller prefers for daily use the coin of the nation through which he is passing, to bullion or the mintage of his own country and is this to justify a succeeding Traveller in the use of counterfeit coin?