CXIX. TO THE SAME.
Wednesday, July 22, 1801.
My dear Southey,—Yesterday evening I met a boy on an ass, winding down as picturisk 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 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 desert of good things; but he is connected with the present race of men by a very awful 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 Chapter’s 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 assafœtida. Poor Joseph! [Cottle] 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 pony, 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 Hill,” 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
“Victorious o’er the Danes, I Alfred, preach,
Of my own forces, Chaplain-General!”
... Write immediately, directing Mr. Coleridge, Mr. George Hutchinson’s,[245] 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,[246] 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.
[Care of] Mrs. Danvers,
Kingsdown Parade, Bristol.