As who, through many a summer night serene
Had hover'd round the fold with coward wish;
Horrid with brumal ice, the fiercer wolf,
From his bleak mountain and his den of snows
Leaps terrible and mocks the shepherd's spear.
Book 1. L. 47.
"June, 1796.
My dear Cottle,
I am sojourning for a few days at Racedown, Dorset, the mansion of our friend Wordsworth; who presents his kindest respects to you….
Wordsworth admires my tragedy, which gives me great hopes. Wordsworth has written a tragedy himself. I speak with heartfelt sincerity, and I think, unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel myself a little man by his side, and yet I do not think myself a less man than I formerly thought myself. His drama is absolutely wonderful. You know I do not commonly speak in such abrupt and unmingled phrases, and therefore will the more readily believe me. There are, in the piece, those profound touches of the human heart, which I find three or four times in the "Robbers" of Schiller, and often in Shakspeare, but in Wordsworth there are no inequalities….
God bless you, and eke,
S. T. Coleridge."
Respecting this tragedy of Mr. W.'s, parts of which I afterwards heard with the highest admiration, Mr. Coleridge in a succeeding letter gave me the following information. "I have procured for Wordsworth's tragedy, an introduction to Harris, the manager of Covent Garden, who has promised to read it attentively, and give his answer immediately; and if he accepts it, to put it in preparation without an hour's delay.
This tragedy may or may not have been deemed suitable for the stage. Should the latter prove the case, and the closet be its element, the public after these intimations, will importunately urge Mr. W. to a publication of this dramatic piece, so calculated still to augment his high reputation.
There is a peculiar pleasure in recording the favorable sentiments which one poet and man of genius entertains of another, I therefore state that Mr. Coleridge says, in a letter received from him March 8th, 1798, "The Giant Wordsworth-God love him! When I speak in the terms of admiration due to his intellect, I fear lest these terms should keep out of sight the amiableness of his manners. He has written near twelve hundred lines of blank verse, superior, I hesitate not to aver, to any thing in our language which any way resembles it."