“Thursday night, Oct. 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 Gazetteer, 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 moonlit rocks ... and dreams of wonderful things attached to your name.... 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, 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.... We mean to publish the Christabel, therefore, with a long blank-verse of Wordsworth’s, entitled The Pedlar [afterwards changed to ‘The Excursion’]. 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....
“Wordsworth is fearful you have been much teazed by the printers on his account, but you can sympathise with him....
“When you write, and do write soon, tell me how I can get your Essay on the Nitrous Oxide.... Are your galvanic discoveries important? What do they lead to? All this is ultra-crepidation, but would to heaven I had as much knowledge as I have sympathy!...
“God bless you! Your most affectionate
“S. T. Coleridge.”
* * * * *
“Greta Hall, Tuesday night, Dec. 2, 1800.
“My dear Davy,—By an accident I did not receive your letter till this evening. I would that you had added to the account of your indisposition the probable causes of it. It has left me anxious whether or no you have not exposed yourself to unwholesome influences in your chemical pursuits. There are few beings both of hope and performance, but few who combine the ‘are’ and the ‘will be.’ For God’s sake, therefore, my dear fellow, do not rip open the bird that lays the golden eggs....
“At times, indeed, I would fain be somewhat of a more tangible utility than I am; but so I suppose it is with all of us—one while cheerful, stirring, feeling in resistance nothing but a joy and a stimulus; another while drowsy, self-distrusting, prone to rest, loathing our own self-promises, withering our own hopes—our hopes, the vitality and cohesion of our being?
“I purpose to have Christabel published by itself—this I publish with confidence—but my travels in Germany come from me now with mortal pangs.
“Wordsworth has nearly finished the concluding poem. It is of a mild, unimposing character, but full of beauties to those short-necked men who have their hearts sufficiently near their heads—the relative distance of which (according to citizen Tourder, the French translator of Spallanzani) determines the sagacity or stupidity of all bipeds and quadrupeds....
“God love you!
“S. T. Coleridge.”
“No man ever had genius who did not aim to execute more than he was able.” So wrote Davy in one of his early note-books; and of no man was this more true than of Davy himself. Busy as he was with experimental research at this time, his mind was by no means wholly occupied with it. Change of mental occupation was, indeed, a necessity to him. At no period of his life could he exercise that power of sustained and concentrated thought which so strikingly characterised Newton or Dalton or Faraday. The following scheme of intellectual work which he marked out for himself shortly after his arrival in Bristol, is characteristic of the restless, changeful activity of his mind:—
“Resolution: To work two hours with pen before breakfast on the ‘Lover of Nature’; and ‘The Feelings of Eldon’ from six till eight; from nine till two in experiments; from four to six, reading; seven till ten, metaphysical reading (i.e. ‘System of the Universe’).” The “Lover of Nature” and “The Feelings of Eldon” were two among the half-dozen romances he projected at one time or other, and of which fragments were found amongst his papers, and by means of which he intended to inculcate his own metaphysical and philosophical ideas and his views on education and the development of character. Dr. John Davy tells us that his note-books at this period were not less characteristic; “they contain, mixed together, without the least regard to order, schemes and minutes of experiments, passing thoughts of various kinds, lines of poetry (but these are in small proportion), fragments of stories and romances, metaphysical fragments, and sketches of philosophical essays.”
Many of these jottings and reflections are evidently based on his own experience, and hence serve to illustrate his temperament and the workings of his mind. In an essay on “Genius,” written at this time, he says:—
“Great powers have never been exerted independent of strong feelings. The rapid arrangements of ideas, from their various analogies to the equally rapid comparisons of these analogies, with facts uniformly occurring during the progress of discovery, have existed only in those minds where the agency of strong and various motives is perceived—of motives modifying each other, mingling with each other, and producing that fever of emotion, which is the joy of existence and the consciousness of life.”
The following extracts relate to science and philosophy:—
“Philosophy is simple and intelligible. We owe confused systems to men of vague and obscure ideas.”
“We ought to reason from effects alone. False philosophy has uniformly depended upon making use of words which signify no definite ideas.”
“Experimental science hardly ever affords us more than approximations to truth; and whenever many agents are concerned we are in great danger of being mistaken.”
“Scepticism in regard to theory is what we ought most rigorously to adhere to.”
“The feeling generally connected with new facts enables us to reason more rapidly upon them, and is peculiarly active in calling up analogies.”
“Probabilities are the most we can hope for in our generalisation, and whenever we can trace the connection of a series of facts, without being obliged to imagine certain relations, we may esteem ourselves fortunate in our approximations.”
“One use of physical science is, that it gives definite ideas.”
To the same period belongs the sketch or plan of a poem, in blank verse, in six books, on the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, which either Southey or Coleridge had proposed to him as a joint-work, fragments of which are to be found amongst the note-books.