May, 1797.
"... I fancy you see no hand-writing so often as mine. I have been much
pleased with your letter to Herbert Croft. I was at Dr. Gregory's last
night. He has a nasal twang, right priestly in its note. He said he would
gladly abridge his life of Chatterton, if I required it. But it is a bad
work, and Coleridge should write a new one, or if he declines it, let it
devolve on me.[56] They knew Miss Wesley, daughter of Charles Wesley,
with whom I once dined at your house. She told them, had he not
prematurely died, that she was going to be married to John Henderson. Is
this true?[57]
I have a treasure for you. A 'Treatise on Miracles,' written by John
Henderson, your old tutor, for Coleridge's brother George, and given to
me by a pupil of his, John May, a Lisbon acquaintance, and a very
valuable one. John May is anxious for a full life of John Henderson. You
should get Agutter's papers. You ought also to commit to paper all you
know concerning him, and all you can collect, that the documents may
remain, if you decline it. If the opportunity pass, he will die without
his fame.
I have lost myself in the bottomless profundity of Gilbert's papers.
Fire, and water, and cubes, and sybils, and Mother Church, &c. &c. Poor
fellow. I have been introduced to a man, not unlike him in his
ideas,--Taylor the Pagan, a most devout Heathen! who seems to have some
hopes of me. He is equally unintelligible, but his eye has not that
inexpressible wildness, which sometimes half-terrified us in Gilbert."
"Christ Church, June 14, 1797.
"... I am in a place I like: the awkwardness of introduction over, and
the acquaintance I have made here pleasant.... Your letter to Herbert
Croft has made him some enemies here. I wish much to see you on that
business. Bad as these times are for literature, a subscription might be
opened now with great success, for Mrs. Newton (Chatterton's sister) and
the whole statement of facts ought to be published in the prospectus.
Time gallops with me. I am at work now for the Monthly Magazine, upon
Spanish poetry. If we are unsuccessful here (in suiting ourselves with a
house) I purpose writing to Wordsworth, and asking him if we can get a
place in his neighbourhood. If not, down we go to Dorsetshire. Oh, for a
snug island in the farthest of all seas, surrounded by the highest of all
rocks, where I and some ten or twelve more might lead the happiest of all
possible lives, totally secluded from the worst of all possible monsters,
man...."
"Christ Church, June 18, 1797.
"... The main purport of my writing is to tell you that we have found a
house for the next half year. If I had a mind to affect the pastoral
style, I might call it a cottage; but, in plain English, it is exactly
what it expresses. We have got a sitting-room, and two bed-rooms, in a
house which you may call a cottage if you like it, and that one of these
bed-rooms is ready for you, and the sooner you take possession of it the
better. You must let me know when you come that I may meet you.
So you have had Kosciusco with you, (in Bristol) and bitterly do I regret
not having seen him. If he had remained one week longer in London, I
should have seen him; and to have seen Kosciusco would have been
something to talk of all the rest of one's life.
We have a congregation of rivers here, the clearest you ever saw: plenty
of private boats too. We went down to the harbour on Friday, in Mr.
Rickman's;[58] a sensible young man, of rough, but mild manners, and very
seditious. He and I rowed, and Edith was pilot.
God bless you.
Yours affectionately.