"Yours in Christian fellowship,
"S. T. COLERIDGE."
Whether Coleridge had given Southey the opportunity to try his skill at
the drama or not does not appear; but the following letter to Cottle
shows that he had addressed himself to the task of composing a tragedy,
evidently "Osorio".
LETTER 56. TO COTTLE
Stowey, May, 1797.
My dearest Cottle,
I love and respect you as a brother, and my memory deceives me woefully,
if I have not evidenced, by the animated tone of my conversation when we
have been tete-a-tete, how much your conversation interested me. But
when last in Bristol, the day I meant to devote to you, was such a day
of sadness, I could do nothing. On the Saturday, the Sunday, and ten
days after my arrival at Stowey, I felt a depression too dreadful to be
described.
So much I felt my genial spirits droop,
My hopes all flat; Nature within me seemed
In all her functions, weary of herself,
Wordsworth's [1] conversation aroused me somewhat, but even now I am not
the man I have been, and I think I never shall. A sort of calm
hopelessness diffuses itself over my heart. Indeed every mode of life
which has promised me bread and cheese, has been, one after another,
torn away from me, but God remains. I have no immediate pecuniary
distress, having received ten pounds from Lloyd. I employ myself now on
a book of morals in answer to Godwin, and on my tragedy.
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