XXXI. TO THE SAME.
May 1, 1794.
My dear Brother,—I have been convened before the fellows.[48] Dr. Pearce behaved with great asperity, Mr. Plampin[49] with exceeding and most delicate kindness. My sentence is a reprimand (not a public one, but implied in the sentence), a month’s confinement to the precincts of the College, and to translate the works of Demetrius Phalareus into English. It is a thin quarto of about ninety Greek pages. All the fellows tried to persuade the Master to greater leniency, but in vain. Without the least affectation I applaud his conduct, and think nothing of it. The confinement is nothing. I have the fields and grove of the College to walk in, and what can I wish more? What do I wish more? Nothing. The Demetrius is dry, and utterly untransferable to modern use, and yet from the Doctor’s words I suspect that he wishes it to be a publication, as he has more than once sent to know how I go on, and pressed me to exert erudition in some notes, and to write a preface. Besides this, I have had a declamation to write in the routine of college business, and the Rustat examination, at which I got credit. I get up every morning at five o’clock.
Every one of my acquaintance I have dropped solemnly and forever, except those of my College with whom before my departure I had been least of all connected—who had always remonstrated against my imprudences, yet have treated me with almost fraternal affection, Mr. Caldwell particularly. I thought the most decent way of dropping acquaintances was to express my intention, openly and irrevocably.
I find I must either go out at a by-term or degrade to the Christmas after next; but more of this to-morrow. I have been engaged in finishing a Greek ode. I mean to write for all the prizes. I have had no time upon my hands. I shall aim at correctness and perspicuity, not genius. My last ode was so sublime that nobody could understand it. If I should be so very lucky as to win one of the prizes, I could comfortably ask the Doctor advice concerning the time of my degree. I will write to-morrow.
God bless you, my brother! my father!
S. T. Coleridge.
XXXII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
Gloucester, Sunday morning, July 6, 1794.
S. T. Coleridge to R. Southey, Health and Republicanism to be! When you write, direct to me, “To be kept at the Post Office, Wrexham, Denbighshire, N. Wales.” I mention this circumstance now, lest carried away by a flood of confluent ideas I should forget it. You are averse to gratitudinarian flourishes, else would I talk about hospitality, attentions, etc. However, as I must not thank you, I will thank my stars. Verily, Southey, I like not Oxford nor the inhabitants of it. I would say, thou art a nightingale among owls, but thou art so songless and heavy towards night that I will rather liken thee to the matin lark. Thy nest is in a blighted cornfield, where the sleepy poppy nods its red-cowled head, and the weak-eyed mole plies his dark work; but thy soaring is even unto heaven. Or let me add (for my appetite for similes is truly canine at this moment) that as the Italian nobles their new-fashioned doors, so thou dost make the adamantine gate of democracy turn on its golden hinges to most sweet music. Our journeying has been intolerably fatiguing from the heat and whiteness of the roads, and the unhedged country presents nothing but stone fences, dreary to the eye and scorching to the touch. But we shall soon be in Wales.