Note 470 — CANTO THE FOURTH[375]

[In Comparison of the Present State of France with that of Rome, etc., published in the Morning Post, September 21, 1802, Coleridge speaks of Buonaparte as the "new Cæsar," but qualifies the expression in a note: "But if reserve, if darkness, if the employment of spies and informers, if an indifference to all religions, except as instruments of state policy, with a certain strange and dark superstition respecting fate, a blind confidence in his destinies,—if these be any part of the Chief Consul's character, they would force upon us, even against our will, the name and history of Tiberius."—Essays on His Own Times, ii. 481.]