The cheapest way is the best; go by the common post wagons, or
stage coaches. What are called extraordinaries, or post-chaises, are
little wicker carts, uncovered, with moveable benches or forms in them,
execrable in every respect. And if you buy a vehicle at Hamburg, you can
get none decent under thirty or forty guineas, and very probably it will
break to pieces on the infernal roads. The canal boats are delightful,
but the porters everywhere in the United Provinces, are an impudent,
abominable, and dishonest race. You must carry as little luggage as you
well can with you, in the canal boats, and when you land, get
recommended to an inn beforehand, and bargain with the porters first of
all, and never lose sight of them, or you may never see your portmanteau
or baggage again.
My Sarah desires her love to you and yours. God bless your dear little
ones! Make haste and get rich, dear friend! and bring up the little
creatures to be playfellows and school-fellows with my little ones!
Again and again, sea serve you, wind speed you, all things turn out good
to you! God bless you,
S. T. COLERIDGE. [2]
John Stoddart, a friend of Coleridge, visited him while at Keswick in
the month of October, 1800, and saw the Wordsworths at Grasmere (Dorothy
Wordsworth's 'Journal', i, 55)--It was then that Stoddart obtained a
copy of 'Christabel', and read it shortly afterwards [3] to Sir Walter
Scott, then busy with his 'Border Minstrelsy'.
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