A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD.
[To van Eorma or ram "Srscrovoa.1
Sra,—The puppets which converse in "A Dialogue of the Dead" (Coleridge and. Sara Coleridge) in your issue of March 20th are, no doubt, privileged persona, and their kindly and, on the whole, agreeable reflections must not be taken too literally. But, presumably, their showman meant them to favour their originals, and here and there they seem to have forgotten their parts. For instance, the Aids to Reflietion puppet bewails his own failure to train up "hie precious little shoots" with the "tender solicitude" which his daughter displayed for the education of her little son. But on that score be had nothing to repent of. For his children as children he did much both in usual and unusual ways, There is abundant evidence that he nursed and petted and scolded his children as others use, and it is a fact that he compiled a longish Greek grammar for Hartley, a shorter one for Dement, and many pages of an Italian grammar for his little daughter Sara. It is true that all three contain a few seeds of "metaphysical conjecture," but there they are. Again, the "Sara" puppet, after a mysterious broken sentence about "Uncle Sonthey himself," goes on to say that "Mother cared for our bodily needs," not, apparently, for the needs of their minds. I do not think that the real Sara would have implied any such omission. Her mother was not a genius or such a " Latinist " as herself, but she taught, or at least began to teach, her daughter Italian; and so far from being an unlettered or unintellectual woman, as is commonly supposed, she could and did write better verses (not, of course, those published under her name) and better prose than the generaL In her old age her favourite books were a volume of her eon's Poems
(I possess her copy inscribed "To the best of mothers from her eldest son Hartley ") and her husband's Stowey poems. A clear and accurate copy in her handwriting of the then un- published " Christabel " is a touching and, I think, a convincing proof that she had "a soul above the works of creeping things."
I trust that the author of "A Dialogue" will forgive my strictures concerning his puppetry.—I am, Sir, do.,
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