When you write, and do write soon, tell me how I can get your essay on
the nitrous oxide. If you desired Johnson to have one sent to
Lackington's, to be placed in Mr. Crosthwaite's monthly parcel for
Keswick, I should receive it. Are your galvanic discoveries important?
What do they lead to? All this is "ultra crepidation", but would to
heaven I had as much knowledge as I have sympathy! My wife and children
are well; the baby was dying some weeks ago, so the good people would
have it baptized; his name is Derwent Coleridge, so called from the
river, for fronting our house the Greta runs into the Derwent. Had it
been a girl, the name should have been Greta. By the by, Greta, or
rather Grieta, is exactly the Cocytus of the Greeks; the word, literally
rendered in modern English, is, "The loud Lamenter;" to griet, in the
Cambrian dialect, signifying to roar aloud for grief or pain, and it
does "roar" with a vengeance!
I will say nothing about Spring--a thirsty man tries to think of
anything but the stream when he knows it to be ten miles off!
God bless you! Your most affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.[5]
Another letter to Godwin at this time indicates that Coleridge was still
expecting to be able to finish "Christabel", which as a completed poem,
Coleridge, as we have already seen, calculated would run up to 1,300
lines.
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