Letter 206. To Gillman
Ramsgate, 28th Oct., 1822.
Dear Friend,
Words I know are not wanted between you and me. But there are occasions so awful, there may be instances and manifestations of friendship so affecting, and drawing up with them so long a train from behind, so many folds of recollection as they come onward on one’s mind, that it seems but a mere act of justice to oneself, a debt we owe to the dignity of our moral nature to give them some record; a relief which the spirit of man asks and demands to contemplate in some outward symbol, what it is inwardly solemnizing. I am still too much under the cloud of past misgivings, too much of the stun and stupor from the recent peals and thunder-crush still remains, to permit me to anticipate others than by wishes and prayers. What the effect of your unwearied kindness may be on poor M.’s mind and conduct, I pray fervently, and I feel a cheerful trust that I do not pray in vain, that on my own mind and spring of action, it will be proved not to have been wasted. I do inwardly believe, that I shall yet do something to thank you, my dear—in the way in which you would wish to be thanked—by doing myself honour.—Dear friend and brother of my soul, God only knows how truly, and in the depth, you are loved and prized by your affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge.[130]
Letter 207. To Allsop
Dec. 26th, 1822.
My very dear Friend,
I might with strict truth assign the not only day after day, but hour after hour employment, if not through the whole period of my waking time, yet through the whole of my writing power, as the cause of my not having written to you with my own hand; but then I ought to add that it was enforced and kept up by the expectation of seeing you. There are two ways of giving you pleasure and comfort; would to God I could have made the one compossible with the other and done both! The first, the having finished the Logic in its three main divisions,—as the Canon, or that which prescribes the rule and form of all conclusion or conclusive reasoning; second, as the Criterion, or that which teaches to distinguish truth from falsehood, containing all the sorts, forms, and sources of error, and means of deceiving or being deceived; third, as the Organ, or positive instrument for discovering truth, together with the general introduction to the whole.
The second was to come to town, and pass a week with you and Mrs. Allsop. The latter I could not have done, and yet have been able to send you the present good tidings that with regard to the former we are in sight of land; that Mr. Stutfield will give three days in the week for the next fortnight; and that I have no doubt, notwithstanding Mrs. Coleridge and my little Sara’s expected arrival on Friday next, that by the end of January the whole book will not only have been finished, for that I expect will be the case next Sunday fortnight, but ready for the press. In reality, I have now little else but to transcribe, and even this would in part only be necessary, but that I must of course dictate the sentences to Mr. Stutfield and Mr. Watson, and shall therefore avail myself of the opportunity for occasional correction and improvement. When this is done, and can be offered as a whole to Murray or other Publisher, I shall have the Logical Exercises, or the Logic exemplified and applied in a critique on—1. Condillac; 2. Paley; 3. The French Chemistry and Philosophy, with other miscellaneous matters from the present Fashions of the age, moral and political, ready to go to the press with by the time the other is printed off; and this without interrupting the greater work on Religion, of which the first Half, containing the Philosophy or ideal Truth, possibility, and a priori probability of the articles of Christian Faith, was completed on Sunday last.