My dear Poole,—Your two letters[235] I received exactly four days ago—some days they must have been lying at Ambleside before they were sent to Grasmere, and some days at Grasmere before they moved to Keswick.... It grieved me that you had felt so much from my silence. Believe me, I have been harassed with business, and shall remain so for the remainder of this year. Our house is a delightful residence, something less than half a mile from the lake of Keswick and something more than a furlong from the town. It commands both that lake and the lake of Bassenthwaite. Skiddaw is behind us; to the left, the right, and in front mountains of all shapes and sizes. The waterfall of Lodore is distinctly visible. In garden, etc., we are uncommonly well off, and our landlord, who resides next door in this twofold house, is already much attached to us. He is a quiet, sensible man, with as large a library as yours,—and perhaps rather larger,—well stored with encyclopædias, dictionaries, and histories, etc., all modern. The gentry of the country, titled and untitled, have all called or are about to call on me, and I shall have free access to the magnificent library of Sir Gilfrid Lawson. I wish you could come here in October after your harvesting, and stand godfather at the christening of my child. In October the country is in all its blaze of beauty.
We are well and the Wordsworths are well. The two volumes of the “Lyrical Ballads” will appear in about a fortnight or three weeks. Sara sends her best kind love to your mother. How much we rejoice in her health I need not say. Love to Ward, and to Chester, to whom I shall write as soon as I am at leisure. I was standing at the very top of Skiddaw, by a little shed of slate stones on which I had scribbled with a bit of slate my name among the other names. A lean-expression-faced man came up the hill, stood beside me a little while, then, on running over the names, exclaimed, “Coleridge! I lay my life that is the poet Coleridge!”
God bless you, and for God’s sake never doubt that I am attached to you beyond all other men.
S. T. Coleridge.
CXI. TO SIR H. DAVY.
Thursday night, October 9, 1800.
My dear Davy,—I was right glad, glad with a stagger of the heart, to see your writing again. Many a moment have I had all my France and England curiosity suspended and lost, looking in the advertisement front column of the “Morning Post Gazeteer” for Mr. Davy’s Galvanic habitudes of charcoal.—Upon my soul I believe there is not a letter in those words round which a world of imagery does not circumvolve; your room, the garden, the cold bath, the moonlight rocks, Barristed, Moore, and simple-looking Frere, and dreams of wonderful things attached to your name,—and Skiddaw, and Glaramara, and Eagle Crag, and you, and Wordsworth, and me, on the top of them! I pray you do write to me immediately, and tell me what you mean by the possibility of your assuming a new occupation. Have you been successful to the extent of your expectations in your late chemical inquiries?
As to myself, I am doing little worthy the relation. I write for Stuart in the “Morning Post,” and I am compelled by the god Pecunia—which was one name of the supreme Jupiter—to give a volume of letters from Germany, which will be a decent lounge book, and not an atom more. The “Christabel” was running up to 1,300 lines,[236] and was so much admired by Wordsworth, that he thought it indelicate to print two volumes with his name, in which so much of another man’s was included; and, which was of more consequence, the poem was in direct opposition to the very purpose for which the lyrical ballads were published, viz., an experiment to see how far those passions which alone give any value to extraordinary incidents were capable of interesting, in and for themselves, in the incidents of common life. We mean to publish the “Christabel,” therefore, with a long blank-verse poem of Wordsworth’s, entitled “The Pedlar.”[237] I assure you I think very differently of “Christabel.” I would rather have written “Ruth,” and “Nature’s Lady,” than a million such poems. But why do I calumniate my own spirit by saying “I would rather”? God knows it is as delightful to me that they are written. I know that at present, and I hope that it will be so; my mind has disciplined itself into a willing exertion of its powers, without any reference to their comparative value.
I cannot speak favourably of W.’s health, but, indeed, he has not done common justice to Dr. Beddoes’s kind prescriptions. I saw his countenance darken, and all his hopes vanish, when he saw the prescriptions—his scepticism concerning medicines! nay, it is not enough scepticism! Yet, now that peas and beans are over, I have hopes that he will in good earnest make a fair and full trial. I rejoice with sincere joy at Beddoes’s recovery.