Ratzeburg, Germany, December 3, 1798.
My dear Sir,—There is an honest heart out of Great Britain that enters into your good fortune with a sincere and lively joy. May you enjoy life and health—all else you have,—a good wife, a good conscience, a good temper, sweet children, and competence! The first glass of wine I drink shall be a bumper—not to you, no! but to the Bishop of Gloucester! God bless him!
Sincerely your friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
XCII. TO THOMAS POOLE.
January 4, 1799—Morning, 11 o’clock.
My friend, my dear friend! Two hours have past since I received your letter. It was so frightfully long since I received one!! My body is weak and faint with the beating of my heart. But everything affects me more than it ought to do in a foreign country. I cried myself blind about Berkeley, when I ought to have been on my knees in the joy of thanksgiving. The waywardness of the pacquets is wonderful. On December the seventh Chester received a letter from his sister dated November 27. Yours is dated November 22, and I received it only this morning. I am quite well, calm and industrious. I now read German as English,—that is, without any mental translation as I read. I likewise understand all that is said to me, and a good deal of what they say to each other. On very trivial and on metaphysical subjects I can talk tolerably—so, so!—but in that conversation, which is between both, I bungle most ridiculously. I owe it to my industry that I can read old German, and even the old low German, better than most of even the educated natives. It has greatly enlarged my knowledge of the English language. It is a great bar to the amelioration of Germany, that through at least half of it, and that half composed almost wholly of Protestant States, from whence alone amelioration can proceed, the agriculturists and a great part of the artizans talk a language as different from the language of the higher classes (in which all books are written) as the Latin is from the Greek. The differences are greater than the affinities, and the affinities are darkened by the differences of pronunciation and spelling. I have written twice to Mr. Josiah Wedgwood,[192] and in a few days will follow a most voluminous letter, or rather series of letters, which will comprise a history of the bauers or peasants collected, not so much from books as from oral communications from the Amtmann here—(an Amtmann is a sort of perpetual Lord Mayor, uniting in himself Judge and Justice of Peace over the bauers of a certain district). I have enjoyed great advantages in this place, but I have paid dear for them. Including all expenses, I have not lived at less than two pounds a week. Wordsworth (from whom I receive long and affectionate letters) has enjoyed scarcely one advantage, but his expenses have been considerably less than they were in England. Here I shall stay till the last week in January, when I shall proceed to Göttingen, where, all expenses included, I can live for 15 shillings a week. For these last two months I have drunk nothing but water, and I eat but little animal food. At Göttingen I shall hire lodging for two months, buy my own cold beef at an eating-house, and dine in my chamber, which I can have at a dollar a week. And here at Göttingen I must endeavour to unite the advantages of advancing in German and doing something to repay myself. My dear Poole! I am afraid that, supposing I return in the first week of May, my whole expenses[193] from Stowey to Stowey, including books and clothes, will not have been less than 90 pounds! and if I buy ten pounds’ worth more of books it will have been a hundred. I despair not but with intense application and regular use of time, to which I have now almost accustomed myself, that by three months’ residence at Göttingen I shall have on paper at least all the materials if not the whole structure of a work that will repay me. The work I have planned, and I have imperiously excluded all waverings about other works. That is the disease of my mind—it is comprehensive in its conceptions, and wastes itself in the contemplations of the many things which it might do. I am aware of the disease, and for the next three months (if I cannot cure it) I will at least suspend its operation. This book is a life of Lessing, and interweaved with it a true state of German literature in its rise and present state. I have already written a little life from three different biographies, divided it into years, and at Göttingen I will read his works regularly according to the years in which they were written, and the controversies, religious and literary, which they occasioned. But of this say nothing to any one. The journey to Germany has certainly done me good. My habits are less irregular and my mind more in my own power. But I have much still to do! I did, indeed, receive great joy from Roskilly’s good fortune, and in a little note to my dear Sara I joined a note of congratulation to Roskilly. O Poole! you are a noble heart as ever God made! Poor ——! he is passing through a fiery discipline, and I would fain believe that it will end in his peace and utility. Wordsworth is divided in his mind,—unquietly divided between the neighbourhood of Stowey and the North of England. He cannot think of settling at a distance from me, and I have told him that I cannot leave the vicinity of Stowey. His chief objection to Stowey is the want of books. The Bristol Library is a hum, and will do us little service; and he thinks that he can procure a house near Sir Gilford Lawson’s by the Lakes, and have free access to his immense library. I think it better once in a year to walk to Cambridge, in the summer vacation—perhaps I may be able to get rooms for nothing, and there for a couple of months read like a Turk on a given plan, and return home with a mass of materials which, with dear, independent Poetry, will fully employ the remaining year. But this is idle prating about a future. But indeed, it is time to be looking out for a house for me—it is not possible I can be either comfortable or useful in so small a house as that in Lime Street. If Woodlands can be gotten at a reasonable price, I would have it. I will now finish my long-neglected journal.
Sara, I suppose, is at Bristol—on Monday I shall write to her. The frost here has been uncommonly severe. For two days it was 20 degrees under the freezing point. Wordsworth has left Goslar, and is on his road into higher Saxony to cruise for a pleasanter place; he has made but little progress in the language. I am interrupted, and if I do not conclude shall lose the post. Give my kind love to your dear mother. Oh, that I could but find her comfortable on my return. To Ward remember me affectionately—likewise remember to James Cole; and my grateful remembrances to Mrs. Cole for her kindness during my wife’s domestic troubles. To Harriet, Sophia, and Lavinia Poole—to the Chesters—to Mary and Ellen Cruickshank—in short, to all to whom it will give pleasure remember me affectionately.
My dear, dear Poole, God bless us!
S. T. Coleridge.
P. S. The Amtmann, who is almost an Englishman and an idolizer of our nation, desires to be kindly remembered to you. He told me yesterday that he had dreamt of you the night before.