S. T. COLERIDGE. T. Allsop, Esq. LETTER 198. TO ALLSOP Monday Morning (--1821). My dear Friend, Ab Hydromania, Hydrophobia: from Water-lust comes Water-dread. But this is a violent metaphor, and disagreeable to boot. Suppose then, by some caprice or colic of nature, an Aqueduct split on this side of the slider or Sluice-gate, the two parts removed some thirty feet from each other, and the communication kept up only by a hollow reed split lengthways, of just enough width and depth to lay one's finger in; the likeness would be fantastic to be sure, but still it would be no inapt likeness or emblem of the state of mind in which I feel myself as often as I have just received a letter from you!--and when, after the first flush of interest and rush of thoughts stirred up by it, I sit down, or am about to sit down, to write in answer, a poor fraction, or finger-breadth of the intended reply fills up three-fourths of my paper; so sinking under the impracticability of saying what seemed of use to say, I substitute what there is no need to say at all--the expression of my wishes, and the Love, Regard, and Affection, in which they originate. For the future, therefore, I am determined, whenever I have any time, however short, to write whatever is first in mind, and to send it off in the self-same hour. I do not know whether I was most affected or delighted with your last letter. It will endear Flower de Luce Court to me above all other remembrances of past efforts; and the pain, the restless aching, that comes instantly with the thought of giving out my soul and spirit where you cannot be present, where I could not see your beloved countenance glistening with the genial _spray_ of the outpouring; this, in conjunction with your anxiety and that of Mr. and Mrs. Gillman concerning my health, is the most efficient, I may say, imperious of the _retracting_ influences as to the Dublin scheme. Basil Montagu called on me yesterday. I could not but be amused to hear from him, as well as from Mrs. Chisholm and two other visitors, the instantaneous expression of surprise at the apparent change in my health, and the certain improvement of my looks. One lady said, "Well! Mr. Coleridge really _is_ very handsome." Highgate is in high feud with the factious stir against the governors of the chapel, one of whom I was advising against a reply addressed to the inhabitants as an _inconsistency_. "But, sir, we would not carry any thing to an extreme!" THIS IS THE DARLING WATCH-WORD OF WEAK MEN, _when they sit down on the edges of two stools. Press them to act on fixed principles, and they talk of extremes_; as if there were or could be any way of avoiding them but by keeping close to a fixed principle, _which is a principle only because it is the one medium between two extremes_.