Note 37 — Chapter I

“Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge,” ii. 114. In different versions of the story the absent relative is described as father, husband, or brother; and in not a few cases the hero's action, through a mistake made by Miss Martineau when writing the History already alluded to, has been claimed for Rowland Hill, who is further supposed—quite erroneously—to have been then and there inspired with the resolve to undertake postal reformation.