1. THAT which is digested wholly, and part of which is assimilated, and part rejected, is

Food.

2. That which is digested wholly, and the whole of which is partly assimilated, and partly not, is Medicine.

3. That which is digested, but not assimilated, is Poison.

4. That which is neither digested nor assimilated is Mere Obstruction.

As to the stories of slow poisons, I cannot say whether there was any, or what, truth in them; but I certainly believe a man may be poisoned by arsenic a year after he has taken

it. In fact, I think that is known to have

PROFESSOR WILSON's character of Charles Lamb in the last Blackwood, Twaddle on Tweed-side*, is very sweet indeed, and gra

* "Charles Lamb ought really not to abuse Scotland in the pleasant way he so often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield; for Scotland loves Charles Lamb; but he is wayward and wilful in his wisdom, and conceits that many a Cockney is a better man even than Christopher North. But what will not Christopher forgive to genius and goodness! Even Lamb, bleating libels on his native land. Nay, he learns lessons of humanity even from the mild malice of Elia, and breathes a blessing on him and his household in their bower of rest."

Some of Mr. Coleridge's poems were first published with some of C. Lamb's at Bristol in 1797. The remarkable words on the title-page have been aptly cited

tified me much. It does honour to Wilson, to his head and his heart.

How can I wish that Wilson should cease to write what so often soothes and suspends my bodily miseries, and my mental conflicts! Yet what a waste, what a reckless spending, of talent, aye, and of genius, too, in his I know not how many years' management of Blackwood! If Wilson cares for fame, for an enduring place and prominence in literature, he should now, I think, hold his hand, and say, as he well may,

"Militavi non sine gloria:

Nunc arma defunctumque bello
Barbiton hic paries habebit."

Two or three volumes collected out of the magazine by himself would be very delight

in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1835, p. 198.: Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitiæ et similium junctarumque Camoenarum, — quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas." And even so it came to pass after thirty-seven years more had passed over their heads. - ED.

ful. But he must not leave it for others to do; for some recasting and much condensation would be required; and literary executors make sad work in general with their testators' brains.*

I believe it possible that a man may, under certain states of the moral feeling, entertain something deserving the name of love towards a male object - an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from appetite. In Elizabeth's and James's time it seems to have been almost fashionable to cherish such a feeling; and perhaps we may account in some measure for it by considering how very inferior the women of that age, taken generally, were in education and accomplishment of mind to the men. Of course there were brilliant exceptions enough; but the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher — the most popular dramatists that ever wrote

* True; and better fortune attend Mr. Coleridge's own! - ED.

for the English stage will show us what sort of women it was generally pleasing to represent. Certainly the language of the two friends, Musidorus and Pyrocles, in the Arcadia is such as we could not now use except to women; and in Cervantes the same tone is sometimes adopted, as in the novel of the Curious Impertinent. And I think there is a passage in the New Atlantis* of Lord Bacon, in which he speaks of the possibility of such a feeling, but hints the extreme danger of entertaining it, or allowing it any place in a moral theory. I mention this with reference to Shakspeare's sonnets, which have been supposed, by some, to be addressed to William Herbert, Earl of Pem

:

I cannot fix upon any passage in this work, to which it can be supposed that Mr. Coleridge alluded, unless it be the speech of Joabin the Jew; but it contains nothing coming up to the meaning in the text. The only approach to it seems to be:"As for masculine love, they have no touch of it; and yet there are not so faithful and inviolate friendships in the world again as are there; and to speak generally, as I said before, I have not read of any such chastity in any people as theirs.” — ED.