William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. I. 1800
Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Godwin, 21 May 1800
“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 so engrossed my time, but that it wasted and
depressed my spirits, and left a sense of ![]()
| CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE. | 3 |
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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, and 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 vivify the inward and spiritual grace. Believe
me, you recur to my thoughts frequently, and never without pleasure, never
without 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 a prospect, that if, according to you and
Hume, impressions and ideas 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 heartroom 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 benefitted; 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. ‘What? and not to
Fanny?’ ‘Yes, and to
Fanny, but I’ll have Mary.’ He often talks
about them. My poor Lamb! how cruelly
afflictions crowd upon him! I am glad that you think of him as I think; he has
an affectionate heart, a mind sui generis; his taste
acts so as to appear like the unmechanic simplicity of an instinct—in brief, he
is worth an hundred men of mere talents. Conversation
with the latter tribe is like the use of leaden bells—one warms by exercise,
Lamb every now and then irradiates, and the beam, though single and fine as a hair, is yet
rich with colours, and I both see and feel it. In Bristol I was much with
Davy, almost all day; he always talks
of you with great affection. . . . If I settle at Keswick, he will be with me
in the fall of the year, and so meet you. And let me tell you,
Godwin, four such men as you, I,
Davy, and Wordsworth, do not meet
together in one house every day of the year. I mean, four men so distinct with
so many sympathies.
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“I received yesterday a letter from Southey. He arrived at Lisbon, after a
prosperous voyage, on the last day of April. His letter to me is dated May-Day.
He girds up his loins for a great history of Portugal, which will be translated
into the Portuguese in the first year of the Lusitanian Republic.
“Have you seen Mrs
Robinson lately? How is she? Remember me in the kindest and most
respectful phrases to her. I wish I knew the particulars of her complaint. For
Davy has discovered a perfectly new
acid, by which he has restored the use of limbs to persons who had lost them
for years (one woman 9 years) in cases of supposed rheumatism. At all events,
Davy says it can do no harm in Mrs
Robinson’s case, and if she will try it, he will make up a
little parcel, and write her a letter of instructions, &c. . . .
“God bless you.—Yours sincerely affectionate,
“S. T.
Coleridge.
“Mr T.
Poole’s,
“N.
Stowey, Bridgewater.
“Sara
desires to be kindly remembered to you, and sends a kiss to Fanny and ‘dear meek little
Mary.’”
Hartley Coleridge [Old Bachelor] (1796-1849)
The eldest son of the poet; he was educated at Merton College, Oxford, contributed essays
in the
London Magazine and
Blackwood's, and
published
Lives of Distinguished Northerns (1832).
Sir Humphry Davy, baronet (1778-1829)
English chemist and physicist, inventor of the safety lamp; in Bristol he knew Cottle,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey; he was president of the Royal Society (1820).
Fanny Imlay Godwin (1794-1816)
The daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay; she lived in the Godwin household
and died a suicide.
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
David Hume (1711-1776)
Scottish philosopher and historian; author of
Essays Moral and
Political (1741-42),
Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
(1748) and
History of Great Britain (1754-62).
Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of
Essays of Elia published in the
London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.
Mary Robinson [née Darby] [Perdita] (1758-1800)
English actress and poet; shortly after her marriage she became the mistress of the young
Prince of Wales, who afterwards supplied her with a pension. She was a prominent Della
Cruscan poet, crippled in her later years.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley [née Godwin] (1797-1851)
English novelist, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecaft, and the second wife
of Percy Bysshe Shelley. She is the author of
Frankenstein (1818)
and
The Last Man (1835) and the editor of Shelley's works
(1839-40).
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
