Besides the evidence of Lamb and Purkis and Wordsworth, regarding the success of the lectures, Henry Crabb Robinson gives some short notices of them. He heard at least four of the course. The second Lecture, delivered on 5th February, he reports to have been largely taken up with discoursing on the origin of the Greek mythology and Greek drama, and in showing that the Modern Drama, like the Ancient, originated in Religion. The character of Hamlet was also treated of. The lectures were much in substance similar to the course afterwards given in 1811, in which Coleridge more fully developed his views.
In one of his lectures Coleridge made an attack on Lancaster, the founder of the method of education which went under his name, which caused some recrimination on the part of the adherents of Lancaster. Coleridge about this time had, through the Wordsworths, become acquainted with Dr. Andrew Bell, the originator of the Madras system of education, and he spoke as the champion of Bell against Lancaster in the controversy that ensued between the partisans of the two. Bell seemingly, from the evidence of Coleridge's letters, expostulated with Coleridge for his having too warmly espoused his cause. Of the four letters written to Dr. Bell at this time (Southey's _Life of Bell_, II, 575-584), we give the first. The others are of little importance. The dates of the three others are: II, April 1808; III, 17th May 1808, in which Coleridge asserts that he is "a convinced and fervent son of the Church of England"; and IV, May, 1808. The first letter relates to the _Elements of Tuition_, which Dorothy Wordsworth had been revising for Dr. Bell, and was also submitted to Coleridge for his opinion.
A concurrence of intelligence from my friends in the North, has not only made it difficult for me to force my mind away from dreaming about them, but has employed me in running about after my friends day after day; yet even this would not have prevented my commencing (according to my judgment, which, on such a work, is but another word for my feelings) on the sheets you have sent me, if I had seen aught which appeared to me likely to diminish its _present utility_. I confess that I seem to perceive some little of an effort produced by talking with _objectors_, with men who, to a man like you, are far, far more pernicious than avowed antagonists. Men who are actuated by fear and perpetual suspicion of human nature, and who regard their poorer brethren as possible highwaymen, burglarists, or Parisian revolutionists (which includes all evil in one), and who, if God gave them grace to know their own hearts, would find that even the little good they are willing to assist proceeds from fear, from a momentary variation of the balance of probabilities, which happened to be in favour of letting their brethren know just enough to keep them from the gallows. O dear Dr. Bell, you are a great man! Never, never permit minds so inferior to your own, however high their artificial rank may be, to induce you to pare away _an atom_ of what you know to be right! The sin that besets a truly good man is, that, naturally desiring to see instantly done what he knows will be eminently useful to his fellow beings, he sometimes will consent to sacrifice a part, in order to realize, in a given spot (to construct, as the mathematicians say), his idea in a given diagram. But yours is for the world--for all mankind; and all your opposers might, with as good chance of success, stop the half-moon from becoming full--all they can do is, a little to retard it. Pardon, dear sir, a great liberty taken with you, but one which my heart and sincere reverence for you impelled--as the Apostle said, Rejoice!--so I say to you _Hope_! From hope, faith and love, all that is good, all that is great, all lovely and "all honourable things," proceed, from fear, distrust and the spirit of compromise--all that is evil. You and Thomas Clarkson have, in addition to your _material_ good works, given to the spiritual world a benefaction of incalculable value. You have both--he in removing the evil, you in producing good--afforded a practicable proof how great things one good man may do, who is thoroughly in earnest.