Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Keswick, to William Godwin, 1800 September 8 : autograph manuscript signed.

Telling him that ships travel every week from Dublin to Workington, which is sixteen miles from Keswick "thro' a divine Country - but this is an idle regret. I know not the nature of your present pursuits, whether or no they are such as to require the vicinity of large and curious Libraries - / if you were engaged in any work of imagination, or reasoning, not biographical, not historical, I should repeat & urge my invitation, after my wife's confinement;" describing the situation of their house (Greta Hall) and the surrounding countryside; saying that he has "no inconsiderable collection of Books - in my Library you will find all the Poets & Philosophers, & many of our best old Writers - below in our Parlor, belonging to my Landlord, but in my possession, are almost all the usual Trash of the Johnsons, Gibbons, Robertsons, &c with the Encyclopædia Britannica, &c &c. Sir Wilfrid Lawson's magnificent Library is at some 8 or 9 miles distant - and he is liberal in the highest degree in the management of it;" praising Godwin's letter highly, particularly "all that you have written, or shall write, against Lawyers & the Practice of the Law;" commenting on Godwin's description of John Philpot Curran: "The character of Curran, which you have sketched most ably, is a frequent one in it's moral Essentials ; tho', of course, among the most rare, if we take it with all it's intellectual accompaniments. Whatever I have read of Curran's has impressed me with a deep conviction of his Genius. Are not the Irish in general a more eloquent race, than we?"; commenting in detail on the landscapes of Wales and Cumbria: "I know of no mountain in the north altogether equal to Snowden, but then we have an encampment of huge Mountains, in no harmony perhaps to the eye of a mere painter, but always interesting, various, and, as it were, nutritive. Height is assuredly an advantage, as it connects the Earth with the Sky, by the clouds that are ever skimming the summits, or climbing up, or creeping down the sides, or rising from the chasms, like smokes from a Cauldron, or veiling or bridging the higher parts or the lower parts of the water-falls;" discussing travel and landscapes: "The first pause & silence after a return from a very interesting Visit is somewhat connected with a languor in all of us - / Besides, as you have observed, Mountains & mountainous Scenery, taken collectively & cursorily, must depend for their charms on their novelty - / they put on their immortal interest then first, when we have resided among them, & learnt to understand their language, their written characters, & intelligible sounds, and all their eloquence so various, so unwearied;" writing "I question, if there be a room in England which commands a view of Mountains & Lakes & Woods & Vales superior to that, in which I am now sitting. I say this, because it is destined for your Study, if you come;" responding to Godwin's comments about how he feels in Coleridge's presence: "You are kind enough to say, that you feel yourself more natural and unreserved with me, than with others. I suppose, that this arises in great measure from my own ebullient Unreservedness - something too, I will hope, may be attributed to the circumstance, that my affections are interested deeply in my opinions;" adding as inducements to visit that "here you will meet too with Wordsworth 'the latch of whose Shoe I am unworthy to unloose' - and four miles from Wordsworth Charles Lloyd has taken a house;" telling him that Wordsworth is publishing a second volume of his Lyrical Ballads and plans to change the title to "Poems;" asking questions about Godwin's play Antonio and the theater world generally: "Have you seen [Richard Brinsley] Sheridan since your return? How is it with your Tragedy? Were you in town, when Miss Bayley's [Joanna Baillie] Tragedy was represented? How was it, that it proved so uninteresting? Was the fault in the Theatre, the Audience, or the Play? [...] I know not indeed, how far [John Philip] Kemble might have watered & thinned it's consistence;" asking if Godwin has read Schiller's Wallenstein and commenting "Prolix & crowded & dragging as it is, yet it is quite a model for it's judicious management of the Sequence of Scenes - and such it is held on the German Theatres. Our English Acting Plays are many of them wofully deficient in this part of the dramatic Trade & Mystery;" mentioning that Hartley is well and that Sara is expected to give birth in seven or eight days and asks to be remembered to him; sending kisses in a postscript for Mary and Fanny and saying "I wish, you would come & look out for a house for yourself here. You know 'I wish' is privileged to have something silly follow it -."