Letter from William Godwin, London, to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1800 September 5 : autograph manuscript.

Describing, at length and in detail, his recent visit to Ireland at the invitation of John Philpot Curran and describing his impressions of Curran; expressing his disappointment at not being able to visit Coleridge in Keswick saying "I longed for the opportunity of engrafting your quince upon my apple-tree, & melting & combining several of your modes of feeling & deciding, into the substance of my mind. Perhaps too I mention something better than this, when I say, that I feel myself a purer, a simpler, a more unreserved & natural being in your company than in that of almost any human creature;" commenting on his visit to Ireland saying "I liked it as a foreign country, &, though the difference between that island & my own may not be very great, it is still something, & to me, who never before strayed more than 150 miles from this metropolis, was sufficiently discernible. I was much pleased with the character of the man whose invitation has drawn me thither, & the eminent situation he holds in the judgment of his countrymen gave me every opportunity of access to & intercourse with persons on that side of the water, whose reputation had most impressed my feeling or excited my curiosity on this. In the letter I began to you from Dublin, I occupied myself among other things in attempting a character of my host, Mr. Curran; & indeed a chief reason why the letter was never finished, was because, having once left it imperfect, I began to discern new traits in the characters of the man, which gradually increased my dissatisfaction with the sentiments with which I had commenced it. The observations I made of him convinced me more fully than ever, how incalculable a misfortune it is for a man to be devoted to the profession of a lawyer. I know not whether you entirely coincide with the opinions I have published on that subject; but, if you do not, I must nevertheless believe, that, had you seen what I saw, you would have become a convert...Curran is, as he himself assured me, & as closer observation led me to believe, constitutionally of a gloomy, choleric & atrabilaire turn of mind, habitually turned to comment upon himself & his actions, & to regard his efforts & story with dissatisfaction, as the abortion of a friend to his country & mankind. He is strongly imbued with enthusiasm & zeal : but the dissatisfaction I have mentioned has led him for the most part to take refuge in humour, frolic & drollery, so that superficial observers take him rather for a buffoon, than a melancholy man. Having once fallen into this pursuit, his imagination, which is more various & untired than I almost ever witnessed in a human being, comes in aid of the project, gives elevation to his facetiousness, & adorns his puns with several attributes of the most genuine wit. Must not this strange distortion of character have been in a great degree the consequence of his profession? a profession, base & lying, venal of lungs, prodigal of falshood, factitious of passion, sophistical, thorny, the natural & unappeasable assassin of truth. Could a less powerful cause have generated the dissatisfaction I describe? Must it not be greatly owing to the same cause that (while a production, a speech, I read of his in Ireland, convinced me that he was of the first order of logicians) I found him superficial in investigation, & unaccustomed to analysis in relation to the natures of things, at the same time he shrunk from no discussion, & was perhaps beyond any one I ever conversed with, patient of opposition? It was not however merely the men of Ireland, that at once excited, & gratified my curiosity; I was delighted with the features of the scenery. I traversed the mountainous & romantic county of Wicklow in almost all directions; & I am almost afraid to forfeit my character with you as a man of taste, when I add, that, having on my return surveyed, with some carefulness of leisure, several celebrated scenes of North Wales, I felt myself less impressed with the latter country than the former. It is true that to a surveyor, with his measuring scale in his hand, Wales must infallibly bear away the palm, as its mountains are, for aught I know, twice as high as those of Wicklow. The preference however that I felt, might very possibly be owing to the circumstance, that I, who had scarcely ever seen a mountain before, visited those of Wicklow first, giving to them the grace of novelty, & to those of Wales the disadvantage of a twice-told tale. - Since my return, I have found to my great mortification that the romance of those distant places, has greatly dulled my sense to the simpler beauties of every-day nature, which used to afford me a genuine & enviable pleasure. I hope this fastidiousness will wear off;" adding "Fanny & Mary often talk of Hartley, & received his message with pleasure."