...Your portrait of yourself interested me--As to me, my face, unless when animated by immediate eloquence, expresses great Sloth, & great, indeed almost ideotic, good nature. 'Tis a mere carcase of a face: fat, flabby, & expressive chiefly of inexpression.--Yet, I am told, that my eyes, eyebrows, & forehead are physiognomically good--; but of this the Deponent knoweth not. As to my shape, 'tis a good shape enough, if measured--but my gait is awkward, & the walk, & the Whole man indicates indolence capable of energies.--I am, & ever have been, a great reader--& have read almost every thing--a library-cormorant--I am deep in all out of the way books, whether of the monkish times, or of the puritanical æra. I have read & digested most of the Historical Writers--; but I do not like History. Metaphysics, & Poetry, & `Facts of mind'--(i.e. Accounts of all the strange phantasms that ever possessed your philosophy-dreamers, from Tauth, the Egyptian, to Taylor, the English Pagan), are my darling Studies.--In short, I seldom read except to amuse myself--& I am almost always reading.--Of useful knowledge, I am a so-so chemist, & I love chemistry--all else is blank,--but I will be (please God) an Horticulturalist & a Farmer. I compose very little--& I absolutely hate composition. Such is my dislike, that even a sense of Duty is sometimes too weak to overpower it.

I cannot breathe thro' my nose--so my mouth, with sensual thick lips, is almost always open. In conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem [error] with an eagerness, which is often mistaken for personal asperity--but I am ever so swallowed up in the thing, that I perfectly forget my opponent. Such am I. I am just about to read Dupuis' 12 octavos, which I have got from London. I shall read only one Octavo a week--for I cannot speak French at all, & I read it slowly.--

My wife is well and desires to be remembered to you and your Stella and little ones. N.B. Stella (among the Romans) was a man's name. All the classics are against you; but our Swift, I suppose, is authority for this unsexing.

Write on the receipt of this, and believe me as ever, with affectionate esteem,

Your sincere friend,

S. T. Coleridge

P.S. I have enclosed a five-guinea note. The five shillings over please to lay out for me thus. In White's (of Fleet Street or the Strand, I forget which--O! the Strand I believe, but I don't know which), well, in White's catalogue are the following books:

...

I make no apology for this commission, because I feel (to use a vulgar phrase) that I would do as much for you.

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