Coleridge must have been thinking of that "very pithy and profitable"
ballad by the Laureate, wherein is shown how a young man "would read
unlawful books, and how he was punished:"--
"The _young_ man, he began to read
He knew not what, but he would proceed,
When there was heard a sound at the door,
Which as he read on grew more and more.
"And more and more the knocking grew,
The young man knew not what to do:
But trembling in fear he sat within,
_Till the door was broke, and the devil came in_.
"'What would'st thou with me?' the wicked one cried;
But not a word the young man replied;
Every hair on his head was standing upright,
And his limbs like a palsy shook with affright.
"'What would'st thou with me?' cried the author of ill;
But the wretched young man was silent still," &c.
The catastrophe is very terrible, and the moral, though addressed by the
poet to young men only, is quite as applicable to old men, as the times
show.
"Henceforth let all young men take heed
How in a conjuror's books they read!"
_Southey's Minor Poems_, vol. iii. p. 92.--ED.]
* * * * *
_June_ 25. 1831.
GOVERNMENT.--POPULAR REPRESENTATION.
The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the
government of a nation, are,--1.
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