I do not wonder that your poem procured you kisses and hospitality. It is indeed a very sweet one, and I have not only admired your genius more, but I have loved you better since I have read it. Your sonnet (as you call it, and, being a freeborn Briton, who shall prevent you from calling twenty-five blank verse lines a sonnet, if you have taken a bloody resolution so to do)—your sonnet I am much pleased with; but the epithet “downy” is probably more applicable to Susan’s upper lip than to her bosom, and a mother is so holy and divine a being that I cannot endure any corporealizing epithets to be applied to her or any body of her—besides, damn epithets! The last line and a half I suppose to be miswritten. What can be the meaning of “Or scarce one leaf to cheer,” etc.? “Cornelian virtues”—pedantry! The “melancholy fiend,” villainous in itself, and inaccurate; it ought to be the “fiend that makes melancholy.” I should have written it thus (or perhaps something better), “but with matron cares drives away heaviness;” and in your similes, etc., etc., a little compression would make it a beautiful poem. Study compression!
I presume you mean decorum by Harum Dick. An affected fellow at Bridgwater called truces “trusses.” I told him I admired his pronunciation, for that lately they had been found “to suspend ruptures without curing them.”
There appeared in the “Courier” the day before yesterday a very sensible vindication of the conduct of the Directory. Did you see it?
Your news respecting Mrs. E. did not surprise me. I saw it even from the first week I was at Darley. As to the other event, our non-settlement at Darley, I suspect, had little or nothing to do with it—but the cause of our non-settlement there might perhaps—O God! O God! I wish (but what is the use of wishing?)—I wish that Walter Evans may have talent enough to appreciate Mrs. Evans, but I suspect his intellect is not tall enough even to measure hers.
Hartley is well, and will not walk or run, having discovered the art of crawling with wonderful ease and rapidity. Wordsworth and his sister are well. I want to see your wife. God bless her!...
Oh, my Tragedy! it is finished, transcribed, and to be sent off to-day; but I have no hope of its success, or even of its being acted.
God bless, etc.,
S. T. Coleridge.
Mr. John Thelwall, Derby.