"P. "True: now our dear excellent friend Coleridge, than whom God never made a creature more divinely endowed, yet, strange it is to say, sometimes steals from other people, just as you or I might do; I beg your

pardon, just as a poor creature like myself

might do, that sometimes have not wherewithal to make a figure from my own exchequer: and the other day at a dinner party, this question arising about Pythagoras and his beans, Coleridge gave us an interpretation, which, from his manner, I suspect not to have been original. Think, therefore, if you have any where read a plausible solution.'

"I have: and it was in a German author. This German, understand, is a poor stick of a man, not to be named on the same day with Coleridge: so that, if it should appear that Coleridge has robbed him, be assured that he has done the scamp too much honour.'

"P.' Well: what says the German?'

"Why, you know the use made in Greece of beans in voting and balloting? Well: the German says that Pythagoras speaks symbolically; meaning that electioneering, or, more generally, all interference with political intrigues, is fatal to a philosopher's pursuits and their appropriate serenity. Therefore, says he, followers of mine, abstain from public affairs as you would from parricide.'

"P. Well, then, Coleridge has done the scamp too much honour; for by Jove, that is the very explanation he gave us !'"

"Here was a trait of Coleridge's mind, to be first made known to me by his best friend, and first published to the world by me, the foremost of his admirers! But both of us had sufficient reasons," &c.

As Mr. Dequincey has asserted that all this dialogue took place twenty-eight years ago, I waive all objections to its apparent improbability. And I know nothing about

this "poor stick" of a German, whose name, by the by, Mr. Dequincey does not mention; but this I know, that I was a little boy at Eton in the fifth form, some six or seven years after this dialogue is said to have taken place, and I can testify, what I am sure I could bring fifty of my contemporaries at a week's notice to corroborate, that this solution of the Pythagorean abstinence from beans was regularly taught us in school, as a matter of course, whenever occasion arose. Whether this great discovery was a peculium of Eton I know not; nor can I precisely say that Dr. Keate, and the present Provost of King's, and the Bishop of Chester, and other assistant masters (for they all had the secret), did not in fact learn it from this German; but I exceedingly doubt their doing so, unless Mr. Dequincey will assure me that there was an English translation of the German book, if the book was in Ger

man, existing at that time. If I am asked whence the interpretation came, I must confess my ignorance, except that I very well remember that in Lucian's "Vitarum auctio," a favourite school treatise of ours, upon the bidder demanding of Pythagoras, who is put up to sale, why he had an aversion to beans, the philosopher says that he has no such aversion; but that beans are sacred things, first, for a physical reason there mentioned; but principally, because, amongst the Athenians, all elections for offices in the government took place by means of them. the correctness of this interpretation, if the Golden Verses were in fact genuine, which they are not, we might, indeed, well doubt; for there are numerous authorities which would lead us to believe that the practice of voting by beans or ballot was long subsequent to the time of Pythagoras, to whom in all probability the cheirotonia or natural mode of

Of

election by a show of hands was alone known. But let that pass. Mr. Coleridge, it seems, at a dinner party of country gentlemen in Somersetshire, mentioned this solution of the difficulty - a solution commonly taught at Eton then, and, as far as I can learn, for fifty years before, and I believe also at Westminster, Winchester, &c.-not to say a word of Oxford or Cambridge; — and, because he did not refer to a "poor stick" of a German, of whom and his book we even now know nothing," the foremost of Coleridge's admirers" publishes the tale as "the first hint he received of a singular infirmity besetting Coleridge's mind!" Very sharp, learned, and charitable at least; but let us go on.

Mr. Dequincey says, that Coleridge in one of his Odes describes France as

"Her footsteps insupportably advancing;" — (sic.)

and his charge is, not that the words were borrowed without marks of quotation, but —