I have often been pained by observing in others, and was fully conscious in myself, of a sympathy with those of rank and condition in preference to their inferiors, and never discovered the source of this sympathy until one day at Keswick I heard a thatcher’s wife crying her heart out for the death of her little child. It was given me all at once to feel, that I sympathized equally with the poor and the rich in all that related to the best part of humanity—the affections; but that, in what relates to fortune, to mental misery, struggles, and conflicts, we reserve consolation and sympathy for those who can appreciate its force and value.
There are many men, especially at the outset of life, who, in their too eager desire for the end, overlook the difficulties in the way; there is another class, who see nothing else. The first class may sometimes fail; the latter rarely succeed.
Letter 190. To Allsop
June 23, 1821.
My dearest Friend,
Be assured that nothing bearing a nearer resemblance to offence, whether felt or perceived, than a syllogism bears to the colour of the man in the moon’s whiskers, ever crossed my brain: not even with that brisk diagonal traverse which Ghosts and apparitions always choose to surprise us in. I have indeed observed or fancied, that, for some time past, you have been anxious about something, have had something pressing upon your mind, which I wished out of you, though not particularly to have it out of you. I must explain myself. Say that X. were my dearest Friend, to whom I would be as it were transparent, and have him so to me in all respects that concerned our permanent Being, and likewise in all circumstantial accidents in which we could be of service to each other. Yet there are many things that will press upon us which are our individualities, which one man does not feel any tendency in himself to speak of to a man, however dear or valued. X. does not think or wish to think of it when with Y., nor Y. in his turn when with X., and yet still the great law holds good—whatever vexes or depresses ought if possible to be out of us. Now I say that I should rejoice if you had a female Friend—a Sister, an Aunt, or a Beloved to whom you could lay yourself open. I should further exult if your confidante were my Friend too, my Sister or my Wife.
God bless you.
S. T. Coleridge.
T. Allsop, Esq.