And that all the stars hang bright above your dwelling,
Silent as tho' they watched the sleeping earth! [1]
S. T. COLERIDGE.
[Footnote 1: From 'Dejection: An Ode', the "Lady" of the later version of which was Sarah Hutchinson. See Knight's 'Life of Wordsworth', ii. 86.]
Coleridge now wrote to Tom Wedgwood of his determination to go to Malta.
Stoddart, his old friend, had invited him thither.
LETTER 128. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD
(24) March, 1804.
My dear friend,
Though fearful of breaking in upon you after what you have written to me, I could not have left England without having written both to you and your brother, at the very moment I received a note from Sharp, informing me that I must instantly secure a place in the Portsmouth mail for Tuesday, and if I could not, that I must do so in the light coach for Tuesday's early coach.
I am agitated by many things, and only write now because you desired an answer by return of post. I have been dangerously ill, but the illness is going about, and not connected with my immediate ill health, however it may be with my general constitution. It was the cholera-morbus. But for a series of the merest accidents I should have been seized in the streets, in a bitter east wind, with cold rain; at all events have walked through it struggling. It was Sunday-night.
I have suffered it at Tobin's; Tobin sleeping out at Woolwich. No fire, no wine or spirits, or medicine of any kind, and no person being within call, but luckily, perhaps the occasion would better suit the word providentially, Tuffin, calling, took me home with him. * * * I tremble at every loud sound I myself utter. But this is rather a history of the past than of the present. I have only enough for memento, and already on Wednesday I consider myself in clear sunshine, without the shadow of the wings of the destroying angel.