265. To William Wordsworth Pub. Memoirs of Wordsworth, i. 138. This fragment and the one which follows are undated. They seem to have been written about the same time. Since the letter to Coleridge from William and Dorothy Wordsworth ( Early Letters, 208) in answer to Letter 266 mentions Coleridge's eyes, and since on 8 December Coleridge said, 'My eyes are painful --' ( Letter263), these two fragments probably belong to early December 1798. [Early December 1798] With regard to measures, I am convinced that our language is, in some instances, better adapted to these metres than the German: e.g. 'a' and 'the' are better short syllables than 'ein' and 'der;''not' than 'nicht.' . . . Is the German, in truth, adapted to these metres? I grievously suspect that it is all pure pedantry. Some advantages there, doubtless, are, for we cannot fall foul of any thing without advantages.