My compliments to Heath.
I will write you a huge, big letter next week. At present I have to transact the tragedy business, to wait on the Master, to write to Mrs. Southey, Lovell, etc., etc.
God love you, and
S. T. Coleridge.
XXXV. TO THE SAME.
Friday morning, September 19, 1794.
My fire was blazing cheerfully—the tea-kettle even now boiled over on it. Now sudden sad it looks. But, see, it blazes up again as cheerily as ever. Such, dear Southey, was the effect of your this morning’s letter on my heart. Angry, no! I esteem and confide in you the more; but it did make me sorrowful. I was blameless; it was therefore only a passing cloud empictured on the breast. Surely had I written to you the first letter you directed to me at Cambridge, I would not have believed that you could have received it without answering it. Still less that you could have given a momentary pain to her that loved you. If I could have imagined no rational excuse for you, I would have peopled the vacancy with events of impossibility!
On Wednesday, September 17, I arrived at Cambridge. Perhaps the very hour you were writing in the severity of offended friendship, was I pouring forth the heart to Sarah Fricker. I did not call on Caldwell; I saw no one. On the moment of my arrival I shut my door, and wrote to her. But why not before?
In the first place Miss F. did not authorize me to direct immediately to her. It was settled that through you in our weekly parcels were the letters to be conveyed. The moment I arrived at Cambridge, and all yesterday, was I writing letters to you, to your mother, to Lovell, etc., to complete a parcel.