Ten Letters From Coleridge to Southey

IN the autumn of 1798, shortly after the publication of Lyrical Ballads, which contained The Ancient Mariner, Wordsworth and Coleridge went to Germany. Wordsworth made a short stay, but Coleridge spent a year abroad, part of the time at Ratzeburg, in the house of the village pastor, and part at Göttingen. Shortly after his return to England, at the close of 1799, he settled in London, and made a connection with the Morning Post. Before the end of 1800 he had left London, and established himself in Keswick.

Saturday, January 25, 1800.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY, — No day passes in which I do not, as it were, yearn after you, but in truth my occupations have lately swoln above smothering point. I am over mouth and nostrils. I have inclosed a poem which Mrs. Robinson gave me for your Anthology.¹ She is a woman of undoubted genius. There was a poem of hers in this morning’s paper which both in metre and matter pleased me much. She overloads everything; but I never knew a human being with so full a mind,— bad, good, and indifferent, I grant you, but full and overflowing. This poem I asked for you, because I thought the metre stimulating, and some of the stanzas really good. The first line of the twelfth would of itself redeem a worse poem. I think you will agree with me; but should you not, yet still put it in, my dear fellow, for my sake and out of respect to a woman-poet’s feelings.

Miss Hays ² I have seen. Charles Lloyd’s conduct has been atrocious beyond what you stated. Lamb himself confessed to me that, during the time in which he kept up his ranting, sentimental correspondence with Miss Hays, he frequently read her letters in company, as a subject for laughter, and then sate down and answered them quite àla Rousseau! Poor Lloyd! Every hour new-creates him ; he is his own posterity in a perpetually flowing series, and his body unfortunately retaining an external identity, their mutual contradictions and disagreeings are united under one name, and of course are called lies, treachery, and rascality ! I would not give him up, but that the same circumstances which have wrenched his morals prevent in him any salutary exercise of genius ; and therefore he is not worth to the world that I should embroil and embrangle myself in his interests. Of Miss Hays’s intellect I do not think so highly as you ; or rather, to speak sincerely, I think not contemptuously, but certainly despectively thereof. Yet I think you likely, in this case, to have judged better than I; for to hear a thing, ugly and petticoated, exsyllogize a God with cold-blooded precision, and attempt to run religion through the body with an icicle, an icicle from a Scotch hog-trough, — I do not endure it! My eye beholds phantoms, and “ nothing is, but what is not.舡

By your last I could not find whether or no you still are willing to execute the History of the Levelling Principle. Let me hear. Tom Wedgewood is going to the Isle of St. Nevis. As to myself, Lessing out of the question, I must stay in England. . . . Dear Hartley is well and in high force. He sported of his own accord a theologico-astronomical hypothesis. Having so perpetually heard of good boys being put up into the sky when they are dead, and being now beyond measure enamoured of the lamps in the street, he said, one night, coming through the streets, “ Stars are dead lamps; they be n’t naughty; they are put up in the sky.” Two or three weeks ago he was talking to himself while I was writing, and I took down his soliloquy. It would make a most original poem.

You say I illuminize. I think that property will some time or other be modified by the predominance of intellect, even as rank and superstition are now modified by and subordinated to property. That much is to be hoped of the future ; but first those particular modes of property which more particularly stop the diffusion must be done away as injurious to property itself: these are priesthood and the too great patronage of government. Therefore, if to act on the belief that all things are the process, and that inapplicable truths are moral falsehoods, be to illuminize, why, then I illuminize. I know that I have been obliged to illuminize so late at night, or rather mornings, that eyes have smarted as if I had allum in eyes. I believe I have misspelt the word, and ought to have written Alum; that aside, ’t is a humourous pun.

Tell Davy ³ that I will soon write. God love him! You and I, Southey, know a good and great man or two in this world of ours.

God love you, my dear Southey, and your affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

My kind love to Edith. Let me hear from you, and do not be angry with me that I don’t answer your letters regularly.

[Early in 1800.]

Mr DEAR SOUTHEY, — I shall give up this newspaper business ; it is too, too fatiguing. I have attended the Debates twice, and the first time I was twentyfive hours in activity, and that of a very unpleasant kind, and the second time from ten in the morning till four o’clock the next morning. I am sure that you will excuse my silence, though indeed after two such letters from you I cannot scarcely excuse it myself.

First, of the book business. I find a resistance which I did not expect to the anonymousness of the publication. Longman seems confident that a work on such a subject without a name would not do. Translations and perhaps satires are, he says, the only works that booksellers now venture on without a name. He is very solicitous to have your Thalaba, and wonders (most wonderful !) that you do not write a novel. That would be the thing! And truly, if, by no more pains than a St. Leon requires, you could get four hundred pounds, or half the money, I say so too. If we were together, we might easily toss up a novel, to be published in the name of one of us, or two, if that were all, and then christen ’em by lots. As sure as ink flows in my pen, by help of an amanuensis, I could write a volume a week. And Godwin got four hundred pounds for it! Think of that, Master Brook! I hope that some time or other you will write a novel on that subject of yours. I mean The Rise and Progress of a Laugher. Le Grice⁴ in your eye, — the effect of laughing on taste, manners, morals, and happiness. But as to the Jacobin book, I must wait till I hear from you. Phillips would be very glad to engage you to write a school-book for him, — The History of Poetry in all Nations ; about four hundred pages. But this, too, must have your name. He would give sixty pounds. If poor dear Burnett were with you, he might do it, under your eye and with your instructions, as well as you or I could do it, but it is the name. Longman remarked, acutely enough, “ The booksellers scarcely pretend to judge the merits of the book, but we know the saleableness of the name ; and as they continue to buy most books on the calculation of a first edition of a thousand copies, they are seldom much mistaken, for the name gives them the excuse for sending it to all the Gemmen in Great Britain and the colonies, from whom they have standing orders for new books of reputation.” This is the secret why books published by country booksellers, or by authors on their own account, so seldom succeed.

As to my schemes of residence, I am as unfixed as yourself, only that we are under the absolute necessity of fixing somewhere, and that somewhere will, I suppose, be Stowey. There are all my books and all our furniture. In May I am under a kind of engagement to go with Sara to Ottery. My family wish me to fix there, but that I must decline in the names of public liberty and individual free-agency. Elder brothers, not senior in intellect and not sympathizing in main opinions, are subjects of occasional visits, not temptations to a co-township. But if you go to Burton, Sara and I will waive the Ottery plan, if possible, and spend May and June with you, and perhaps July ; but she must be settled in a house by the latter end of July or the first week in August. Till we are with you. Sara means to spend five weeks with the Roskillies, and a week or two at Bristol, where I shall join her. She will leave London in three weeks, at least, perhaps a fortnight, and I shall give up lodgings, and billet myself, free of expense, at my friend Purkis’s at Brentford. This is my present plan. O my dear Southey ! I would to God that your health did not enforce you to migrate; we might most assuredly continue to fix a residence somewhere which might possess a sort of centrality. Alfoxden would make two houses sufficiently divided for unimpinging independence. . . .

Tell Davy that I have not forgotten him, because, without an epilepsy, I cannot forget him; and if I wrote to him as often as I think of him, Lord have mercy on his pocket!

God bless you again and again.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I pass this evening with Charlotte Smith at her house.

[Postmark, February 18, 1800.]

MY DEAR SOUTHEY, — What do you mean by the words “ it is indeed by expectation,” speaking of your state of health ? I cannot bear to think of your going to a strange country without any one who loves and understands you. But we wall talk of all this. I have not a moment’s time, and my head aches. I was up till five o’clock this morning. My brain is so overworked that I could doze troublously and with cold limbs, so affected was my circulation. I shall do no more for Stuart. Read Pitt’s speech in the Morning Post of to-day (February 18, Tuesday). I reported the whole with notes so scanty that — Mr. Pitt is much obliged to me. For, by Heaven, he never talked half as eloquently in his lifetime. He is a stupid, insipid charlatan, that Pitt. Indeed, except Fox, I, you, or anybody might learn to speak better than any man in the House. For the next fortnight I expect to be so busy that I shall go out of London a mile or so to be wholly uninterrupted. I do not understand the Beguin-nings of Holland.⁵ Phillips is a good-for-nothing fellow, but what of that? He will give you sixty pounds, and advance half the money now, for a book you can do in a fortnight, or three weeks at farthest. I would advise you not to give it up so hastily. Phillips eats no flesh. I observe wittily enough, that whatever might be thought of innate ideas, there could be no doubt to a man who had seen Phillips of the existence of innate beef. Let my Mad Ox keep my name. Fire and Famine do just what you like with. I have no wish either way. The Fears in Solitude, I fear, is not my property, and I have no encouragement to think it will be given up, but if I hear otherwise, I will let you know speedily ; in the mean time, do not rely on it. Your review-plan cannot answer for this reason. It could exist only as long as the ononymous anti-anonymists remained in life, health, and the humour, and no publisher would undertake a periodical publication on so gossamery a tie. Besides, it really would not be right for any man to make so many people have strange and uncomfortable feelings towards him; which must be the case, however kind the reviews might be — and what but nonsense is published ? The author of Gebir I cannot find out. There are none of his books in town. You have made a sect of Gebirites by your review, but it was not a fair, though a very kind review. I have sent a letter to Mrs. Fricker, which Sara directed to you. I hope it has come safe. Let me see, are there any other questions ?

So, my dear Southey, God love you, and never, never cease to believe that I am

Affectionately yours,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Love to Edith.

No. 21, BUCKINGHAM STREET, Saturday.

[Early in 1800.]

MY DEAR SOUTHEY, — I will see Longman on Tuesday, at the farthest, but I pray you send me up what you have done, if you can, as I will read it to him, unless he will take my word for it. But we cannot expect that he will treat finally without seeing a considerable specimen. Send it by the coach ; and be assured that it will be as safe as in your own escritoire, and I will remit it the very day Longman or any bookseller has treated for it satisfactorily. Less than two hundred pounds I would not take.

Have you tried warm bathing in a high temperature ? As to your travelling, your first business must of course be to settle. The Greek Islands, and Turkey in general, are one continued Hounslow Heath, only that the highwaymen there have an awkward habit of murdering people. As to Poland and Hungary, the detestable roads and inns of them both, and the severity of the climate in the former, render travelling there little suited to your state of health. Oh for peace and the south of France ! What a detestable villainy is not the new Constitution! I have written all that relates to it which has appeared in the Morning Post; and not without strength or elegance. But the French are children. ’T is an infirmity to hope or fear concerning them. I wish they had a king again, if it were only that Sieyès and Bonaparte might be hung. Guillotining is too republican a death for such reptiles!

You ’ll write another quarter for Mr. Stuart? You will torture yourself for twelve or thirteen guineas ? I pray you do not do so! You might get, without the exertion and with but little more expenditure of time, from fifty to an hundred pounds. Thus, for instance, bring together on your table, or skim over successively, Brücker, Lardner’s History of Heretics, Russell’s Modern Europe, and Andrews’ History of England, and write a history of levellers and the levelling principle under some goodly title, neither praising nor abusing them. Lacedæmon, Crete, and the attempts at Agrarian Laws in Rome, — all these you have by heart. . . . Plato and Zeno are, I believe, nearly all that relates to the purpose in Brücker. Lardner’s is a most amusing book to read. Write only a sheet of letter paper a day, which you can easily do in an hour, and in twelve weeks you will have produced (without any toil of brains, observing none but chronological arrangement, and giving you little more than the trouble of transcription) twentyfour sheets octavo. I will gladly write a philosophical introduction that shall enlighten without offending, and therein state the rise of property, etc. For this you might secure sixty or seventy guineas, and receive half the money on producing the first eight sheets, in a month from your first commencement of the work. Many other works occur to me, but I mention this because it might be doing great good, inasmuch as boys and youths would read it with far different impressions from their fathers and godfathers, and yet the latter find nothing alarming in the nature of the work, it being purely historical. If I am not deceived by the recency of their date, my Ode to the Duchess and my Xmas Carol will do for your Anthology. I have therefore transcribed them for you. But I need not ask you, for God’s sake, to use your own judgment without spare.

February 28, 1800.

It goes to my heart, my dear Southey, to sit down and write to you, knowing that I can scarcely fill half a side — the postage lies on my conscience. I am translating manuscript plays of Schiller. They are poems, full of long speeches, in very polish’d blank verse. The theatre ! the theatre ! my dear Southey! it will never, never, never do ! If you go to Portugal, your History thereof will do, but, for present money, novels or translations. I do not see that a book said by you in the Preface to have been written merely as a book for young persons could injure your reputation more than Milton’s Accidence injured his. I would do it because you can do it so easily. It is not necessary that you should say much about French or German literature. Do it so. Poetry of savage nations — Poetry of rudely-civilized — Homer and the Hebrew Poetry, etc. — Poetry of civilized nations under Republics and Polytheism — State of Poetry under the Roman and Greek Empires — Revival of it in Italy, in Spain and England — then go steadily on with England to the end, except one chapter about German Poetry to conclude with, which I can write for you.

In the Morning Post was a poem of fascinating metre by Mary Robinson; ’t was on Wednesday, February 26, and entitled The Haunted Beach. I was so struck with it that I sent to her to desire that [it] might be preserved in the Anthology. She was extremely flattered by the idea of its being there, as she idolizes you and your doings. So, if it be not too late, I pray you let it be in. If you should not have received that day’s paper, write immediately, that I may transcribe it. It falls off sadly to the last, wants tale and interest; but the images are new and very distinct; — that “silvery carpet” is so just that it is unfortunate it should seem so bad, for it is really good ; but the metre, — ay ! that woman has an ear. William Taylor,⁶ from whom I have received a couple of letters full of thought and information, says what astounded me, that double rhymes in our language have always a ludicrous association. Mercy on the man ! where are his ears and feelings ? His taste cannot be quite right, from this observation; but he is a famous fellow — that is not to be denied.

Sara is poorly still. Hartley rampant, and emperorizes with your pictures. Harry is a fine boy. Hartley told a gentleman, “ Metinks you are like Southey,”—and he was not wholly unlike you ; but the chick calling you simple “ Southey,” so pompously !

God love you and your Edith,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Love to Davy.

GRETA HALI., KESWICK.

[May 6, 1801.]

MY DEAR SOUTHEY, — I wrote you a very, very gloomy letter ; and I have taken blame to myself for inflicting so much pain on you without any adequate motive. Not that I exaggerated anything as far as the immediate present is concerned; but had I been in better health and a more genial state of sensation, I should assuredly have looked out upon a more cheerful future. Since I wrote you, I have had another and more severe fit of illness, which has left me weak, very weak, but with so calm a mind that I am determined to believe that this fit was bonâ fide the last. Whether I shall be able to pass the next winter in this country is doubtful, nor is it possible I should know till the fall of the leaf. At all events, you will (I hope and trust, and if need were entreat) spend as much of the summer and autumn with us as will be in your power; and if our healths should permit it, I am confident there will be no other solid objection to our living together in the same house, divided. We have ample room, room enough and more than enough, and I am willing to believe that the blessed dreams we dreamt some six years ago may be auguries of something really noble which we may yet perform together.

We wait impatiently, anxiously, for a letter announcing your arrival ; indeed, the article Falmouth has taken precedence of the Leading Paragraph with me for the last three weeks. Our best love to Edith. Derwent is the boast of the county — the little River-God is as beautiful as if he had been the child of Venus Anaduomene previous to her emersion. Dear Hartley ! we are at times alarmed by the state of his health, but at present he is well. If I were to lose him, I am afraid it would exceedingly deaden my affection for any other children I may have.

A very metaphysical account of fathers calling their children rogues, rascals, and little varlets, etc.

God bless you, my dear Southey ! I need not say, write.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. We shall have peas, beans, turnips (with boiled leg of mutton), cauliflowers, French beans, etc., etc., endless ! We have a noble garden.

Wednesday, July 22, 1801.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY, — Yesterday evening I met a boy on an ass, winding down as picturish a glen as eye ever looked at, he and his beast no mean part of the picture. I had taken a liking to the little blackguard at a distance, and I could have downright hugged him when he gave me a letter in your handwriting. Well, God be praised! I shall surely see you once more, somewhere or other. If it be really impracticable for you to come to me, I will doubtless do anything rather than not see you, though in simple truth travelling in chaises or coaches even for one day is sure to lay me up for a week. But do, do, for heaven’s sake, come, and go the shortest way, however dreary it be, for there is enough to be seen when you get to our house. If you did but know what a flutter the old moveable at my left breast has been in, since I read your letter. I have not had such a fillip for a many months. My dear Edith ! how glad you were to see old Bristol again !

I am again climbing up that rock of convalescence, from which I have been so often washed off and hurried back ; but I have been so unusually well these last two days that I should begin to look the damsel Hope full in the face, instead of sheep’s-eyeing her, were it not that the weather has been so unusually hot,—and that is my joy. Yes, sir! we will go to Constantinople ; but as it rains there, which my gout loves as the devil does holy water, the Grand Turk shall shew the exceeding attachment he will no doubt form towards us by appointing us his Viceroys in Egypt. I will be Supreme Bey of that showerless district, and you shall be my supervisor. But for God’s sake, make haste and come to me, and let us talk of the sands of Arabia while we are floating in our lazy-boat on Keswick Lake, with our eyes on massy Skiddaw, so green and high. Perhaps Davy might accompany you. Davy will remain unvitiated — his deepest and most recollectable delights have been in solitude, and the next to those — with one or two whom he loved. He is placed, no doubt, in a perilous desart of good things, but be is connected with the present race of men by a very aweful tie, that of being able to confer immediate benefit on them; and the cold-blooded, venom-toothed snake that winds around him shall be only his coat of arms, as God of Healing.

I exceedingly long to see Thalaba, and perhaps still more to read Madoc over again. I never heard of any third edition of my poems, I think; you must have confused it with the L. B. Longman could not surely be so uncouthly ill-mannered as not to write to me to know if I wished to make any corrections or additions. If I am well enough, I mean to alter, with a devilish sweep of revolution, my tragedy, and publish it, in a little volume by itself with a new name, as a poem. But I have no heart for poetry. Alas ! alas ! how should I, who have passed nine months with giddy head, sick stomach, and swoln knees ? My dear Southey, it is said that long sickness makes us all grow selfish, by the necessity which it imposes of continuously thinking about ourselves. But long and sleepless nights are a fine antidote.

Oh, how I have dreamt about you! Times that have been, and never can return, have been with me on my bed of pain, and how I yearned towards you in those moments I myself can know only by feeling it over again. But come “ strengthen the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

I am here, in the vicinity of Durham, for the purpose of reading from the Dean and Chapters Library an ancient of whom you may have heard, Duns Scotus ! I mean to set the poor old Gemman on his feet again; and in order to wake him out of his present lethargy, I am burning Locke, Hume, and Hobbes under his nose. They stink worse than feather or assafetida. Poor Joseph!⁷ he has scribbled away both head and heart. What an affecting essay I could write on that man’s character ! Had he gone in his quiet way on a little poney, looking about him with a sheep’s eye cast now and then at a short poem, I do verily think, from many parts of the Malvern Hills, that he would at last have become a poet better than many who have had much fame ; but he would be an epic, and so

. . . Write immediately, directing, 舠Mr. Coleridge, Mr. George Hutchinson’s, Bishop’s Middleham, Rushiford. Durham,” and tell me when you set off, and I will contrive and meet you at Liverpool, where, if you are jaded with the journey, we can stay a day or two at Dr. Crompton’s, and chat a bit with Roscoe and Curry, whom you will like as men far, far better than as writers.

O Edith ! how happy Sara will be, and little Hartley, who uses the air of the breezes as skipping-ropes, and fat Derwent, so beautiful, and so proud of his three teeth that there’s no bearing of him.

God bless you, dear Southey, and S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. Remember me kindly to Danvers and Mrs. Danvers.

DURHAM, Saturday,July 25,1801.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY, — I do loathe cities, that’s certain. I ’m in Durham, at an inn — and that too I do not like — and have dined with a large parcel of priests, all belonging to the cathedral, thoroughly ignorant and hard-hearted. I have had no small trouble in gaining permission to have a few books sent to me eight miles from the place, which nobody has ever read in the memory of man. Now you will think what follows a lie, and it is not. I asked a stupid, haughty fool, who is the librarian of the Dean and Chapters Library in this city, if he had Leibnitz. He answered, “ We have no museum in this library for natural curiosities; but there is a mathematical instrument setter in the town, who shews such animalcula through a glass of great magnifying powers.” Heaven and earth ! he understood the word “ live nits.” Well, I return early to-morrow to Middleham, to a quict, good family that love me dearly — a young farmer and his sister ; and he makes very droll verses in the northern dialects and in the metre of Burns, and is a great humorist, and the woman is so very good a woman that I have seldom indeed seen the like of her. Death! that everywhere there should be one or two good and excellent people like these, and that they should not have the power given ’em to edit a crepitus strong enough to whirl away the rest to Hell!

I do not approve the Palermo and Constantinople scheme, to be secretary to a fellow that would poison you for being a poet, while he is only a lame versemaker. But verily, dear Southey, it will not suit you to be under any man’s controll or biddances. What if you were a consul ? ’T would fix you to one place, as bad as if you were a parson. It won’t do. Now mark my scheme ! St. Nevis is the most lovely as well as the most healthy island in the West Indies. Pinny’s estate is there, and he has a country-house situated in a most heavenly way, a very large mansion. Now, between you and me, I have reason to believe that not only this house is at my service, but many advantages in a family way that would go one half to lessen the expences of living there; and perhaps Pinny would appoint us sine-cure negrodrivers, at a hundred a year each, or some other snug and reputable office ; and perhaps, too, we might get some office in which there is quite nothing to do under the Governor. Now I and my family, and you and Edith, and Wordsworth and his sister, might all go there, and make the island more illustrious than Cos or Lesbos! A heavenly climate, a heavenly country, and a good house. The seashore so near us, dells and rocks and streams. Do now think of this. But say nothing about it on account of old Pinny. Wordsworth would certainly go if I went. By the living God, it is my opinion that we should not leave three such men behind us. N. B. I have every reason to believe Kcswick (and Cumberland and Westmoreland in general) full as dry a climate as Bristol. Our rains fall more certainly in certain months; but we have fewer rainy days, taking the year through. As to cold, I do not believe the difference perceptible by the human body. But I feel that there is no relief for me in any part of England. Very hot weather brings me about in an instant, and I relapse as soon as it coldens.

You say nothing of your voyage homeward, or the circumstances that preceded it. This, however, I [would] far rather hear from your mouth than your letters. Come ! and come quickly. My love to Edith, and remember me kindly to Mary and Martha and Eliza and Mrs. Fricker. My kind respects to Charles and Mrs. Danvers. Is Davy with you ? If he is, I am sure he speaks affectionately of me. God bless you ! Write.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

SCARBOROUGH, August 1, 1801.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY, — On my return from Durham (I foolishly walked back) I was taken ill, and my left knee swelled “ pregnant with agony,” as Mr. Dodsley says in one of his poems. Dr. Fenwick has earnestly persuaded me to try horse-exercise and warm sea-bathing, and I took the opportunity of riding with Sara Hutchinson to her Brother Tom who lives near this place, where I can ride to and fro, and bathe with no other expence there than that of the bath. The fit comes on me either at nine at night or two in the morning: in the former case it continues nine hours, in the latter five. I am often literally sick with pain. In the daytime, however, I am well, surprisingly so, indeed, considering how very little sleep I am able to snatch.

Your letter was sent after me, and arrived here this morning; and but that my letter can reach you on the 5th of this month, I would immediately set off again, though I arrived hers only last night. But I am unwilling not to try the baths for one week. If therefore you have not made the immediate preparations, you may stay one week longer at Bristol; but if you have, you must look at the lake, and play with my babies three or four days, though this grieves me. I do not like it. I want to be with you, and to meet you — even to the very verge of the lake country. I would far rather that you would stay a week at Grasmere (which is on the road, fourteen miles from Keswick) with Wordsworth than go on to Keswick, and I not there. Oh, how you will love Grasmere !

All I ever wish of you with regard to wintering at Keswick is to stay with me till you find the climate injurious. When I read that cheerful sentence, “ We will climb Skiddaw this year, and scale Etna the next,” with a right piteous and humourous smile did I ogle my poor knee, which at this present moment is larger than the thickest part of my thigh.

A little Quaker girl (the daughter of the great Quaker mathematician Slee, a friend of anti-negro-trade Clarkson, who has a house at the foot of Ulleswater — which Slee Wordsworth dined with, a pretty parenthesis), this little girl, four years old, happened after a very hearty meal to eructate, while Wordsworth was there. Her mother looked at her, and the little creature immediately and formally observed, “ Yan belks when yan’s fu’ and when yan’s empty; ” that is, “ One belches when one’s full and when one ’s empty.” Since that time this is a favourite piece of slang at Grasmere and Greta Hall, whenever we talk of poor Joey, George Dyer, and other perseverants in the noble trade of Scribbleism.

Wrangham, who lives near here, one of your Anthology friends, has married again, a Lady of a neat £700 a year. His living by the Inclosure will be something better than £600, besides what little fortune he had with his last wife, who died in the first year. His present wife’s cousin observed, “ Mr. W. is a lucky man ; his present lady is very weakly and delicate.” I like the idea of a man’s speculating in sickly wives. It would he no bad character for a farce.

That letter was a kind-hearted, honest, well-spoken citizen. The three strokes, which did for him, were, as I take it, (1) the Ictus Cardiacus, which devitalized his moral heart; (2) the Stroke of the Apoplexy in his head; and (3) a stroke of the palsy in his right hand, which produces a terrible shaking and impotence in the very attempt to reach his breeches pocket. O dear Southey, what incalculable blessings, worthy of thanksgiving in heaven, do we not owe to our being and having been poor! No man’s heart can wholly stand up against property.

My love to Edith.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

NETHER STOWEY, BRIDGEWATER,
December 31, 1801.

DEAR SOUTHEY, — On Xmas day I breakfasted with Davy, with the intention of dining with you; but I returned very unwell, and in very truth in so utter a dejection of spirits as both made it improper for me to go anywhither, and a most unfit man to be with you. I left London on Saturday morning four o’clock, and for three hours was in such a storm as I was never before out in, for I was atop of the coach ; rain, and hail, and violent wind with vivid flashes of lightning that seemed almost to alternate with the flash-like re-emersions of the waning moon from the ever-shattered, ever-closing clouds. However, I was armed cap-a-pie in a complete panoply, namely, in a huge, most huge Roquelaire, which had cost the Government seven guineas, and was provided for the emigrants in the Quiberow expedition, one of whom, falling sick, stayed behind, and parted with his cloak to Mr. Howel, who lent it me. I dipped my head down, shoved it up, and it proved a complete tent to me. I was as dry as if I had been sitting by the fire. I arrived at Bath at eleven o’clock at night, and spent the next day with Warren, who has gotten a very sweet woman to wife, and a most beautiful house and situation at Whitcomb on the Hill over the bridge. On Monday afternoon I arrived at Stowey. I am a good deal better ; but my bowels are by no means de-revolutionized. So much for me.

I do not know what I am to say to you of your dear mother. Life passes away from us in all modes and ways, in our friends, in ourselves. We all “die daily.” Heaven knows that many and many a time I have regarded my talents and acquirements as a porter’s burthen, imposing on me the capital duty of going on to the end of the journey, when I would gladly lie down by the side of the road, and become the Country for a mighty nation of Maggots. For what is life, gangrened, as it is with me, in its very vitals, domestic tranquillity ? These things being so, I confess that I feel for you, but not for the event, as for the event only by an act of thought, and not by any immediate shock from the like feeling within myself.

When I return to town I can scarcely tell. I have not yet made up my mind whether or no I shall move Devonward. My relations wish to see me, and I wish to avoid the uneasy feeling I shall have if I remain so near them without gratifying the wish. No very brotherly mood of mind, I must confess, but it is, nine-tenths of it at least, a work of their own doing.

Poole desires to be remembered to you. Remember me to your wife and Mrs. Lovell. God bless you, and

S. T. COLERIDGE.