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He had a kind heart too, withal. Sara, as a child, used to be 

 terrified at night with things she had heard spoken about : with lions, 

 the ghost in Hamlet, the picture of Death at Hell Gate, in an old edition 

 of Paradise Lost; and last, and worst of all, with her uncle Southey's 

 ballad horrors — above all, the "Old Woman of Berkeley." "Oh !" she 

 says, "the agonies I have endured between nine and twelve at night, 

 before mamma joined me in bed, in presence of that hideous assem- 

 blage of horrors, and the horse with eyes of flame." Her uncle only 

 laughed ; but her father understood the case better : " He insisted that 

 a lighted candle should be left in my room, in the interval between my 

 retiring and mamma's joining me. From that time forth my sufferings 

 ceased. I believe they would have destroyed my health had they 

 continued." 



During this period of ten years, in which it is by no means easy to 

 follow his movements, Coleridge delivered his celebrated Lectures on 

 Poetry and Fine Arts at the Royal Institution. Those on Shakespeare 

 and Education achieved the widest distinction. This line of authorship 

 he continued in the review of Wordsworth's poetry, so able, so pene- 

 trating, so lucid, which we find in the second volume of the Biographia. 

 And it was his excellence in this respect as a lecturing critic, which in a 

 short time afterwards gained him the pension of ^105 a year from 

 George IV. as an Academician of the Royal Society of Literature. His 

 great reputation as a critic of poetry and sesthetics is founded upon the 

 courses of Lectures delivered at this period, and upon his "written 

 recastings of their purport." He spoke from notes ; but frequently, and 

 at considerable length, launched out into extempore discourse. 



The publication, of this time, of most importance, however, was 

 the Friend, which came out in 1809, in a periodical form; and this was 

 followed by many contributions to the Courier. " My father," says Sara 

 Coleridge, "used to talk to me with much admiration and affection of 

 Sarah Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's sister, who resided partly with the 

 Wordsworths, partly with her own brothers. At this time she used to 

 act as my father's amanuensis : she wrote out a great part of the Friend 

 to his dictation." 



