"Stowey, Feb. 10, 1803.
My dear Wedgewood,
With regard to myself and my accompanying you, let me say thus much. My
health is not worse than it was in the North; indeed it is much better. I
have no fears. But if you fear that, my health being what you know it to
be, the inconveniences of my being with you will be greater than the
advantages; (I feel no reluctance in telling you so) it is so entirely an
affair of spirits and feeling that the conclusion must be made by you,
not in your reason, but purely in your spirit and feeling. Sorry indeed
should I be to know that you had gone abroad with one, to whom you were
comparatively indifferent. Sorry if there should be no one with you, who
could with fellow-feeling and general like-mindedness, yield you sympathy
in your sunshiny moments. Dear Wedgewood, my heart swells within me as it
were. I have no other wish to accompany you than what arises immediately
from my personal attachment, and a deep sense in my own heart, that let
us be as dejected as we will, a week together cannot pass in which a mind
like yours would not feel the want of affection, or be wholly torpid to
its pleasurable influences. I cannot bear to think of your going abroad
with a mere travelling companion; with one at all influenced by salary,
or personal conveniences. You will not suspect me of flattering you, but
indeed dear Wedgewood, you are too good and too valuable a man to deserve
to receive attendance from a hireling, even for a month together, in your
present state.
If I do not go with you, I shall stay in England only such time as may be
necessary for me to raise the travelling money, and go immediately to the
south of France. I shall probably cross the Pyrennees to Bilboa, see the
country of Biscay, and cross the north of Spain to Perpignan, and so on
to the north of Italy, and pass my next winter at Nice. I have every
reason to believe that I can live, even as a traveller, as cheap as I can
in England. God bless you. I will repeat no professions, even in the
superscription of a letter. You know me, and that it is my serious,
simple wish, that in everything respecting me, you would think altogether
of yourself, and nothing of me, and be assured that no resolve of yours,
however suddenly adopted, or however nakedly communicated, will give me
any pain, any at least arising from my own bearings. Yours ever,
S. T. Coleridge.
Thomas Wedgewood, Esq.