viii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. reasons of a different nature, to lay this correspondence before the public. It having been stated that Mr. Thomas Allsop was cognizant of and sanctioned the attempted tyrannicide of the 14th January, which resulted (as it could hardly have failed to do) in the death of innocent persons, I deem it my duty, by the republication of this work, to show to the world what manner of man he is, and in what estimation he was held by one of the greatest Philosophers and most profound Thinkers of this or any age. Independently of all personal considerations, I have a high gratification in giving increased publicity to this work. The vigorous manliness of tone and independence of thought with which it is pervaded, contrast markedly with the great bulk of conventional literature, and cannot fail to be appreciated by those who are accustomed to think for themselves, and not blindly to adopt the ideas and habits of mind prevailing at the time and place of their existence. STOCK EXCHANGE, R. A. PREFACE. HAVING for more than sixteen years enjoyed a large share of the affectionate regards, sympathy, and inmost confidence of the most variously gifted and extraordinary man that has appeared in these latter days, it has been to me a most melancholy, though not unpleasing, task, to arrange these materials, so as to give to you, my dearest children, some ideaalas, how poor! how inadequate it must be-of that friend for whose sake you are, if possible, more dear to me. To you, my dearest Elizabeth, the Fairy Prattler of the Letters, and to you, Robin, the still meek Boy, I am especially desirous to convey, through these fragments, some better, some more entirely individualised, notion of the earliest friend, best, and first lost. Of the no less loving, not less to be loved Charles Lamb, having been house-mates, your recollections need not this aid. I stood beside the Grave, and saw when it received their loved forms, and, since then, I seem to have lived on their memories. Lamentation and regrets for the loss of such men would be felt by all who knew-and were worthy to be known by-them, as a grievous wrong done to their memories. If we have not learned from, and for, these men, that boisterous grief, grief of which the signs are external and visible, is an inadequate and unfitting tribute; then, as relates to the manner in which they would be remembered, they have failed to make themselves understood. Thoughts that are indeed too deep for tears mingle with all our recollections of that grey-haired Old Man, that mightiest Master of Poetry and of Philosophy in its truest and only valuable sense. To have known such a man, to have shared his many sorrows and sufferings, and to have partaken of the few and far between gleams of glad and joyous sunshine which fell to his lot, are recollections to be cherished in the inner sanctuary of our hearts. Few indeed as were the gleams of genial and warm and cordial uprising of that noble and pure-minded Spirit in later years, still to him it was an ever new delight to impart all he had learnt, all he had experienced, and much in which he could only have been his own teacher, to those who sought him in sincerity and simplicity of heart. I seek most earnestly to make you know the minds of these, to you, Ancient of Days; and I think I shall best effect this by allowing them to speak for themselves. "Of the Dead," says the old adage, "nothing but what is good." I say to you "nothing -or what is true." Of the first of these friends, both lost in the past year, I shall chiefly speak to you; more full and sufficient records of the last I earnestly hope to see from the Pen of one every way fitted, both by love and fine appreciation of his Character, to the task. I have given with the Letters such brief Notices and Recollections as seemed likely to enable you to appreciate that great and extraordinary mind, that greatest and truest philosopher, in the highest and only true sense of that term, in its combination with Love. Upon the Letters and Conversations, however, I chiefly rely for conveying to you some slight image, though vastly inadequate, of the mind of this wonderful, this myriad-minded man, whose loss is however far too recent to admit of just or adequate Estimation. Cherished and sustained by his extraordinary Intellect, and still more by the Love and Sympathy in which, like a vast reservoir, he always superabounded, and the fullness of which seemed to arise from its overflowing, I have been able to arrive at settled and definite conclusions upon all matters to which I have heretofore attached value or interest. When I say that I have arrived at settled conclusions, you will not for a moment believe that my opinions can or ought to be received by others of a totally different experience, as truths for their minds; still less that matters which depend upon individual experience and temperament can be per would be felt by all who knew-and were worthy to be known by-them, as a grievous wrong done to their memories. If we have not learned from, and for, these men, that boisterous grief, grief of which the signs are external and visible, is an inadequate and unfitting tribute; then, as relates to the manner in which they would be remembered, they have failed to make themselves understood. Thoughts that are indeed too deep for tears mingle with all our recollections of that grey-haired Old Man, that mightiest Master of Poetry and of Philosophy in its truest and only valuable sense. To have known such a man, to have shared his many sorrows and sufferings, and to have partaken of the few and far between gleams of glad and joyous sunshine which fell to his lot, are recollections to be cherished in the inner sanctuary of our hearts. Few indeed as were the gleams of genial and warm and cordial uprising of that noble and pure-minded Spirit in later years, still to him it was an ever new delight to impart all he had learnt, all he had experienced, and much in which he could only have been his own teacher, to those who sought him in sincerity and simplicity of heart. I seek most earnestly to make you kn of these, to you, Ancient |