But yet I never
should have had my present impulses to be with you, and this confidence,
that I may become an occasional comfort to you, if, independently of all
gratitude, I did not thoroughly esteem you; and if I did not appear to
myself to understand the nature of your sufferings; and within the last
year, in some slight degree to have felt myself, something of the same.
Forgive me, my dear sir, if I have said too much. It is better to write
it than to say it, and I am anxious in the event of our travelling
together that you should yourself be at ease with me, even as you would
with a younger brother, to whom, from his childhood you had been in the
habit of saying, "Do this Col." or "don't do that." All good be with
you.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Thomas Wedgwood, Esq.[2]
[Footnote: 1 Westbury, near Bristol, the then residence of Mr. John
Wedgwood.]
[Footnote 2: Letters CXXXII-CXXXIV follow 112.]
LETTER 113. To THOMAS WEDGWOOD
Keswick, January 9, 1803.
My dear Wedgwood,
I send you two letters, one from your dear sister, the second from
Sharp, by which you will see at what short notice I must be off, if I go
to the "Canaries", If your last plan continue in full force, I have not
even the phantom of a wish thitherward struggling, but if aught have
happened to you, in the things without, or in the world within, to
induce you to change the place, or the plan, relatively to me, I think I
could raise the money.
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