DEAR Coleridge,—A Letter written in the blood of your poor friend
would indeed be of a nature to startle you; but this is nought but harmless red
ink, or, as the witty mercantile phrase hath it, Clerk’s Blood. Damn
’em! my brain, guts, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, Time, is all
theirs. The Royal Exchange, Gresham’s Folly, hath me body and spirit. I admire some
of Lloyd’s lines on you, and I
admire your postponing reading them. He is a sad Tattler, but this is under the
rose. Twenty years ago he estranged one friend from me quite, whom I have been
regretting, but never could regain since; he almost alienated you (also) from
me, or me from you, I don’t know which. But that breach is closed. The
dreary sea is filled up. He has lately been at work “telling
again,” as they call it, a most gratuitous piece of mischief, and has
caused a coolness betwixt me and (not a friend exactly, but) [an] intimate
acquaintance. I suspect, also, he saps Manning’s faith in me, who am to
Manning more than an acquaintance. Still I like his
writing verses about you. Will your kind host and hostess give us a dinner next
Sunday, and better still, not expect us if the weather
is very bad. Why you should refuse twenty guineas per sheet for Blackwood’s or any other
magazine passes my poor comprehension. But, as Strap says, you know best. I have no
| 1820 | LLOYD ON COLERIDGE | 537 |
