"Keswick, Nov. 1, 1800.
My dear Sir,
I would fain believe that the experiment which your brother has made in
the West Indies is not wholly a discouraging one. If a warm climate did
nothing but only prevented him from getting worse, it surely evidenced
some power; and perhaps a climate equally favorable in a country of more
various interest, Italy, or the South of France, may tempt your brother
to make a longer trial. If (disciplining myself into silent cheerfulness)
I could be of any comfort to him by being his companion and attendant,
for two or three months, on the supposition that he should wish to
travel, and was at a loss for a companion more fit, I would go with him
with a willing affection. You will easily see, my dear friend, that I say
this only to increase the range of your brother's choice--for even in
choosing there is some pleasure.
There happen frequently little odd coincidences in time, that recall
momentary faith in the notion of sympathies acting in absence. I heard of
your brother's return, for the first time, on Monday last, the day on
which your letter is dated, from Stoddart. Had it rained on my naked skin
I could not have felt more strangely. The 300 or 400 miles that are
between us seemed converted into a moral distance; and I knew that the
whole of this silence I was myself accountable for; for I ended my last
letter by promising to follow it with a second and longer one, before you
could answer the first. But immediately on my arrival in this country I
undertook to finish a poem which I had begun, entitled 'Christabel,' for
a second volume of the 'Lyrical Ballads.' I tried to perform my promise,
but the deep unutterable disgust which I had suffered in the translation
of the accursed Wallenstein, seemed to have stricken me with barrenness;
for I tried and tried, and nothing would come of it. I desisted with a
deeper dejection than I am willing to remember. The wind from the Skiddaw
and Borrowdale was often as loud as wind need be, and many a walk in the
clouds in the mountains did I take; but all would not do, till one day I
dined out at the house of a neighbouring clergyman, and some how or other
drank so much wine, that I found some effort and dexterity requisite to
balance myself on the hither edge of sobriety. The next day my
verse-making faculties returned to me, and I proceeded successfully, till
my poem grew so long, and in Wordsworth's opinion so impressive, that he
rejected it from his volume, as disproportionate both in size and merit,
and as discordant in its character. In the mean time I had gotten myself
entangled in the old sorites of the old sophist,--procrastination. I had
suffered my necessary businesses to accumulate so terribly, that I
neglected to write to any one, till the pain I suffered from not writing
made me waste as many hours in dreaming about it as would have sufficed
for the letter writing of half a life. But there is something beside time
requisite for the writing of a letter--at least with me. My situation
here is indeed a delightful situation; but I feel what I have lost--feel
it deeply--it recurs more often and more painfully than I had
anticipated, indeed so much so, that I scarcely ever feel myself
impelled, that is to say, pleasurably impelled to write to Poole. I used
to feel myself more at home in his great windy parlour than in my own
cottage. We were well suited to each other--my animal spirits corrected
his inclination to melancholy; and there was something both in his
understanding and in his affections, so healthy and manly, that my mind
freshened in his company, and my ideas and habits of thinking acquired
day after day more of substance and reality. Indeed, indeed, my dear sir,
with tears in my eyes, and with all my heart and soul, I wish it were as
easy for us all to meet as it was when you lived at Upcott. Yet when I
revise the step I have taken, I know not how I could have acted otherwise
than I did act. Everything I promised myself in this country has answered
far beyond my expectation. The room in which I write commands six
distinct landscapes--the two lakes, the vale, the river and mountains,
and mists, and clouds and sunshine, make endless combinations, as if
heaven and earth were for ever talking to each other. Often when in a
deep study, I have walked to the window and remained there looking
without seeing; all at once the lake of Keswick and the fantastic
mountains of Borrowdale, at the head of it, have entered into my mind,
with a suddenness as if I had been snatched out of Cheapside and placed
for the first time, in the spot where I stood--and that is a delightful
feeling--these fits and trances of novelty received from a long known
object. The river Greta flows behind our house, roaring like an untamed
son of the hills, then winds round and glides away in the front, so that
we live in a peninsula. But besides this etherial eye-feeding we have
very substantial conveniences. We are close to the town, where we have
respectable and neighbourly acquaintance, and a most sensible and truly
excellent medical man. Our garden is part of a large nursery garden,
which is the same to us and as private as if the whole had been our own,
and thus too we have delightful walks without passing our garden gates.
My landlord who lives in the sister house, for the two houses are built
so as to look like one great one, is a modest and kind man, of a singular
character. By the severest economy he raised himself from a carrier into
the possession of a comfortable independence. He was always very fond of
reading, and has collected nearly 500 volumes, of our most esteemed
modern writers, such as Gibbon, Hume, Johnson, &c. &c. His habits of
economy and simplicity, remain with him, and yet so very disinterested a
man I scarcely ever knew. Lately, when I wished to settle with him about
the rent of our house, he appeared much affected, told me that my living
near him, and the having so much of Hartley's company were great comforts
to him and his housekeeper, that he had no children to provide for, and
did not mean to marry; and in short, that he did not want any rent at all
from me. This of course I laughed him out of; but he absolutely refused
to receive any rent for the first half-year, under the pretext that the
house was not completely furnished. Hartley quite lives at the house, and
it is as you may suppose, no small joy to my wife to have a good
affectionate motherly woman divided from her only by a wall. Eighteen
miles from our house lives Sir Guilfred Lawson, who has a princely
library, chiefly of natural history--a kind and generous, but weak and
ostentatious sort of man, who has been abundantly civil to me. Among
other raree shows, he keeps a wild beast or two, with some eagles, &c.
The master of the beasts at the Exeter 'Change, sent him down a large
bear,--with it a long letter of directions, concerning the food &c. of
the animal, and many solicitations respecting the agreeable quadrupeds
which he was desirous to send to the baronet, at a moderate price, and
concluding in this manner: 'and remain your honour's most devoted humble
servant, J. P. Permit me, sir Guilfred, to send you a buffalo and a
rhinoceros.' As neat a postscript as I ever heard--the tradesmanlike
coolness with which these pretty little animals occurred to him just at
the finishing of his letter! You will in three weeks see the letters on
the 'Rise and Condition of the German Boors.' I found it convenient to
make up a volume out of my journey, &c. in North Germany--and the letters
(your name of course erased) are in the printer's hands. I was so weary
of transcribing and composing, that when I found those more carefully
written than the rest, I even sent them off as they were....
My littlest one is a very stout boy indeed. He is christened by the name
of 'Derwent,'--a sort of sneaking affection you see for the poetical and
novelist, which I disguised to myself under the show, that my brothers
had so many children Johns, Jameses, Georges, &c. &c., that a handsome
christian-like name was not to be had except by encroaching on the names
of my little nephews. If you are at Gunville at Christmas, I hold out
hopes to myself that I shall be able to pass a week with you there. I
mentioned to you at Upcott a kind of comedy that I had committed to
writing in part. This is in the wind.
Wordsworth's second vol. of the 'Lyrical Ballads' will I hope, and almost
believe, afford you as unmingled pleasure as is in the nature of a
collection of very various poems to afford to one individual mind.
Sheridan has sent to him too--requests him to write a tragedy for Drury
Lane. But W. will not be diverted by any thing from the prosecution of
his great work.
Southey's 'Thalaba,' in twelve books, is going to the press.
Remember me with great affection to your brother, and present my kindest
respects to Mrs. Wedgwood. Your late governess wanted one thing, which
where there is health is I think indispensable in the moral character of
a young person--a light and cheerful heart. She interested me a good
deal. She appears to me to have been injured by going out of the common
way without any of that imagination, which if it be a Jack o' Lanthern to
lead us that out way, is however, at the same time a torch to light us
whither we are going. A whole essay might be written on the danger of
thinking without images. God bless you, my dear sir, and him who is with
grateful and affectionate esteem,
Yours ever,
S. T. Coleridge.