Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
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Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 -- Correspondence
Coleridge had determined not to live in London; his engagement with
Stuart he regarded as only a temporary shift to clear off some debt
which he had incurred in his visit to Germany. After a short stay with
Lamb ("Ainger", i, 113), and a tour to the North to see Wordsworth (J.
Dykes Campbell's "Life", 113), he returned to Stowey, writing to Godwin
on 21st May.
LETTER 91. TO GODWIN
Wednesday, May 21, 1800.
Dear Godwin,
I received your letter this morning, and had I not, still I am almost
confident that I should have written to you before the end of the week.
Hitherto the translation of the "Wallenstein" has prevented me, not that
it engrossed my time, but that it wasted and depressed my spirits, and
left a sense of wearisomeness and disgust which unfitted me for anything
but sleeping or immediate society. I say this because I ought to have
written to you first; yet, as I am not behind you in affectionate
esteem, so I would not be thought to lag in those outward and visible
signs that both show and verify the inward spiritual grace. Believe me,
you recur to my thoughts frequently, and never without pleasure, never
without my making out of the past a little day-dream for the future. I
left Wordsworth on the 4th of this month; if I cannot procure a suitable
house at Stowey I return to Cumberland and settle at Keswick, in a house
of such prospect that if, according to you and Hume, impressions
constitute our being, I shall have a tendency to become a god, so
sublime and beautiful will be the series of my visual existence. But,
whether I continue here or migrate thither, I shall be in a beautiful
country, and have house-room and heart-room for you, and you must come
and write your next work at my house. My dear Godwin! I remember you
with so much pleasure, and our conversations so distinctly, that, I
doubt not, we have been mutually benefited; but as to your poetic and
physiopathic feelings, I more than suspect that dear little Fanny and
Mary have had more to do in that business than I. Hartley sends his love
to Mary. [1] "What, and not to Fanny?" "Yes, and to Fanny, but I'll
'have' Mary." He often talks about them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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