CCXXIV. TO J. H. GREEN.
[Postmark, January 16, 1819.]
My dear Green,—I forgot both at the Lecture Room and at Mr. Phillips’s to beg you to leave out for me Goethe’s “Zur Farbenlehre.” It is for a passage in the preface in which he compares Plato with Aristotle, etc., as far as I recollect, in a spirited manner. The books are at your service again, after the lecture. Either Mr. Cary or some messenger will call for them to-morrow! I piously resolve on Tuesday to put my books in some order, but at all events to select yours and send all of them that I do not want (and I do not recollect any that I do, unless perhaps the little volume edited by Tieck of his friend’s composition), back to you. I am more and more delighted with Chantrey. The little of his conversation which I enjoyed ex pede Herculem, left me no doubt of the power of his insight. Light, manlihood, simplicity, wholeness. These are the entelechy of Phidian Genius; and who but must see these in Chantrey’s solar face, and in all his manners? Item: I am bewitched with your wife’s portrait. So very like and yet so ideal a portrait I never remember to have seen. But as Mr. Phillips[175] said: “Why, sir! she was a sweet subject, sir! That’s a great thing.”
As to my own, I can form no judgment. In its present state, the eyes appear too large, too globose, and their colour must be made lighter, and I thought that the face, exclusive of the forehead, was stronger, more energetic than mine seems to be when I catch it in the glass, and therefore the forehead and brow less so—not in themselves, but in consequence of the proportion. But of course I can form no notion of what my face and look may be when I am animated in friendly conversation. My kind and respectful remembrances to your Mother, and believe me, most affectionately,
Your obliged friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
CCXXV. TO JAMES GILLMAN.
[Ramsgate, Postmark, August 20, 1819.]
My dear Friend,—Whether from the mere intensity of the heat, and the restless, almost sleepless, nights in consequence, or from incautious exposure to draughts; or whether simply the change of air and the sea bath was repairing the intestinal canal (and bad indeed must the road be which is not better than a road a-mending, a hint which our revolutionary reformers would do well to attend to) or from whatever cause, I have been miserably unwell for the last three days—but last night passed a tolerably good night, and, finding myself convalescent this morning, I bathed, and now am still better, having had a glorious tumble in the waves, though the water is still not cold enough for my liking. The weather, however, is evidently on the change, and we have now a succession of flying April showers, and needle rains. My bath is about a mile and a quarter from the Lime Grove, a wearisome travail by the deep crumbly sands, but a very pleasant breezy walk along the top of the cliff, from which you descend through a deep steep lane cut through the chalk rocks. The tide comes up to the end of the lane, and washes the cliff, but a little before or a little after high-tide there are nice clean seats of rock with foot-baths, and then an expanse of sand, greater than I need; and exactly a hundred of my strides from the end of the lane there is a good, roomy, arched cavern, with an oven or cupboard in it, where one’s clothes may be put free from the sand.... I find that I can write no more if I am to send this by the to-day’s post. Pray, if you can with any sort of propriety, do come down to me—to us, I suppose I ought to say. We are all as should be Βυτ μονστρουσλι φορμαλ....
God bless you and
S. T. C.