S. T. COLERIDGE.
Sara desires her kind remembrances. Hartley is a spirit that dances on
an aspen leaf; the air that yonder sallowfaced and yawning tourist is
breathing, is to my babe a perpetual nitrous oxide. Never was more
joyous creature born. Pain with him is so wholly transubstantiated by
the joys that had rolled on before, and rushed on after, that oftentimes
five minutes after his mother has whipt him, he has gone up and asked
her to whip him again.[2]
[Footnote 1: "Ne sutor ultra crepidam."]
[Footnote 2: Letter CX follows No. 94.]
Coleridge was now as enamoured of the Lake District as he had been of
Stowey. On 22nd September he wrote to Godwin.
LETTER 95. TO GODWIN
Monday, Sept. 22, 1800.
Dear Godwin,
I received your letter, and with it the enclosed note,[1] which shall be
punctually re-delivered to you on the first of October.
Your tragedy [2] to be exhibited at Christmas! I have, indeed, merely
read through your letter; so it is not strange that my heart continues
beating out of time. Indeed, indeed Godwin, such a stream of hope and
fear rushed in on me, as I read the sentence, as you would not permit
yourself to feel! If there be anything yet undreamt of in our
philosophy; if it be, or if it be possible, that thought can impel
thought out of the usual limit of a man's own skull and heart; if the
cluster of ideas which constitute an identity, do ever connect and unite
into a greater whole; if feelings could ever propagate themselves
without the servile ministrations of undulating air or reflected light;
I seem to feel within myself a strength and a power of desire that might
dart a modifying, commanding impulse on a whole theatre.
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