"Keswick, September 16, 1803.
My dear Wedgewood,
I reached home on yesterday noon. William Hazlitt, is a thinking,
observant, original man; of great power as a painter of
character-portraits, and far more in the manner of the old painters than
any living artist, but the objects must be before him. He has no
imaginative memory; so much for his intellectuals. His manners are to
ninety nine in one hundred singularly repulsive; brow-hanging;
shoe-contemplating--strange. Sharp seemed to like him, but Sharp saw him
only for half an hour, and that walking. He is, I verily believe,
kindly-natured: is very fond of, attentive to, and patient with children,
but he is jealous, gloomy, and of an irritable pride. With all this there
is much good in him. He is disinterested; an enthusiastic lover of the
great men who have been before us. He says things that are his own, in a
way of his own: and though from habitual shyness, and the outside of bear
skin, at least of misanthropy, he is strangely confused and dark in his
conversation, and delivers himself of almost all his conceptions with a
_Forceps_, yet he _says_ more than any man I ever knew (you yourself only
excepted) of that which is his own, in a way of his own: and often times
when he has wearied his mind, and the juice is come out, and spread over
his spirits, he will gallop for half an hour together, with real
eloquence. He sends well-feathered thoughts straight forward to the mark
with a twang of the bow-string. If you could recommend him as a portrait
painter, I should be glad. To be your companion, he is, in my opinion
utterly unfit. His own health is fitful.
I have written as I ought to do: to you most freely. You know me, both
head and heart, and I will make what deductions your reasons may dictate
to me. I can think of no other person [for your travelling
companion]--what wonder? For the last years, I have been shy of all new
acquaintance.
'To live beloved is all I need,
And when I love, I love indeed.'
I never had any ambition, and now, I trust I have almost as little
vanity.
For five months past my mind has been strangely shut up. I have taken the
paper with the intention to write to you many times, but it has been one
blank feeling;--one blank idealess feeling. I had nothing to say;--could
say nothing. How dearly I love you, my very dreams make known to me. I
will not trouble you with the gloomy tale of my health. When I am awake,
by patience, employment, effort of mind, and walking, I can keep the
Fiend at arm's length, but the night is my Hell!--sleep my tormenting
Angel. Three nights out of four, I fall asleep, struggling to lie awake,
and my frequent night-screams have almost made me a nuisance in my own
house. Dreams with me are no shadows, but the very calamities of my
life....
In the hope of drawing the gout, if gout it should be, into my feet, I
walked previously to my getting into the coach at Perth, 263 miles, in
eight days, with no unpleasant fatigue; and if I could do you any service
by coming to town, and there were no coaches, I would undertake to be
with you, on foot in seven days. I must have strength somewhere. My head
is equally strong: my limbs too are strong: but acid or not acid, gout or
not gout, something there is in my stomach....
To diversify this dusky letter, I will write an _Epitaph_, which I
composed in my sleep for myself while dreaming that I was dying. To the
best of my recollection I have not altered a word.
'Here sleeps at length poor Col. and without screaming
Who died, as he had always lived, a dreaming:
Shot dead, while sleeping, by the gout within,
Alone, and all unknown, at E'nbro' in an Inn.'
It was Tuesday night last, at the 'Black Bull,' Edinburgh. Yours, dear
Wedgewood, gratefully, and
Most affectionately,
S. T. Coleridge.