Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Keswick, to William Godwin, 1801 March 25 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying that he is not in the best frame of mind to judge Godwin's play (the tragedy Abbas, King of Persia), because he has been, over the past three months, "undergoing a process of intellectual exsiccation. In my long Illness I had compelled into hours of Delight many a sleepless, painful hour of Darkness by chasing down metaphysical Game - and since then I have continued the Hunt, till I found myself unaware at the Root of Pure Mathematics - and up that tall, smooth Tree, whose few poor Branches are all at it's very summit, am I climbing by pure adhesive strength of arms and thighs - still slipping down, still renewing my ascent;" saying that these intellectual endeavors have taken him far away from poetry and "I have forgotten how to make a rhyme;" describing how he sees everything around him through the lens of mathematics and geometry; adding "The Poet is dead in me - my imagination (or rather the Somewhat that had been imaginative) lies, like a Cold Snuff on the circular Rim of a Brass Candle-stick, without even a stink of Tallow to remind you that it was once cloathed & mitred with Flame [...] I was once a Volume of Gold Leaf, rising & riding on every breath of Fancy - but I have beaten myself back into weight & density, & now I sink in quicksilver, yea, remain squat and square on the earth amid the hurricane, that makes Oaks and Straws join in one Dance;" saying that he will do what he can, but he is unfit at the moment to "decide on any but works of severe Logic;" asking Godwin to send his play Antonio along with the tragedy, plus his copy of Thomas Campbell's The Pleasures of Hope, because Wordsworth would like to see it; asking if Godwin has seen the "second Volume of the Lyrical Ballads, & the Preface prefixed to the First - I should judge of a man's Heart, and Intellect precisely according to the degree & intensity of the admiration, with which he read those poems;" writing of Wordsworth's influence on him and his reverence for Wordsworth's work; mentioning in a postscript that he has inoculated Derwent with cowpox and that he has not suffered any sickness; referring to Humphry Davy's settling in London and saying "I hope, that his enchanting manners will not draw too many Idlers round him, to harrass & vex his mornings;" asking for Godwin's advice about what "an Author of reputation might fairly ask from a Bookseller for one Edition, of a 1000 Copies, of a five Shilling Book?"