Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Keswick, to William Godwin, 1801 June 23 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying that he has had numerous visitors in recent weeks and this prevented him from responding to Godwin's letter earlier; adding that he is writing from bed because of a severe relapse in his health, caused by "a very sudden change in the weather from intense Heat to a raw and scathing chillness;" describing an attack of gout in his left knee and foot, but saying that he is in good spirits and has been spared "confusion in the Head, or sensations of Disgust in the stomach [...] these, alas! insult and threaten the steadiness of our moral Being;" saying that he has not yet received either Godwin's play or his pamphlet "in answer to Dr [Samuel] Parr & the Scotch Gentleman [James Mackintosh]," though Daniel Stuart has sent him a review of the latter and Thomas Longman is holding a copy of it at his house for Coleridge; sending various critiques of the pamphlet and Godwin's Political Justice, and adding "If I had time, which I have not, I would write two or three sheets for your sole Inspection, entitled, History of the Errors & Blunders of the literary Life of William Godwin. To the World it would appear a Paradox to say, that you are all too persuadible a man ; but you yourself know it to be the truth;" promising to send back Godwin's manuscript with his criticisms on Friday; writing of his plans to leave England for his health: "Unless I can escape one English Winter & Spring, I have not any rational prospect of Recovery;" describing his symptoms in detail and the consolation he has found in living in "uninterrupted rural retirement;" writing "O God! all but dear & lovely Things seemed to be known to my Imagination only as Words - even the Forms which struck terror into me in my fever-dreams were still forms of Beauty - Before my last seizure I bent down to pick something from the Ground, & when I raised my head, I said to Miss Wordsworth - I am sure, Rotha! that I am going to be ill : for as I bent my head, there came a distinct & vivid spectrum upon my Eyes - it was one little picture - a Rock with Birches & Ferns on it, a Cottage backed by it, & a small stream;" saying that they have been visited by Richard Sharp and Samuel Rogers and that he expects they will return to London with a very different opinion of Wordsworth than the one promulgated by Mackintosh; calling Mackintosh's lectures and conversation the "Steam of an Excrement;" explaining what he meant by a sentence in his previous letter about Lyrical Ballads and saying that it was a "mere Tirade" but that he truly does believe he would have little fellow-feeling with a man who could read it with indifference "or (as some have done) with merriment;" discussing opinions on contemporary writers versus established ones as a marker of taste: "I have myself met with persons who professed themselves idolatrous admirers of Milton, & yet declared it to be their opinion that Dr [Erasmus] Darwin was as great a poet [...] Likewise, dear Godwin! highly as I respect the powers of Edmund Burke, I feel a sort of confidence that I could reason any candid man into a conviction that he had acted lightly & without due awe when he placed Burke's name by the side of Milton's & Shakespear's;" sending news of his family and saying that Derwent is "as fair & fat a creature, as ever had his naked Body circumnavigated by an old Nurse's kisses;" mentioning that he feels his "knee beginning to make ready for the reception of the Lady Arthritis. God bless you and S.T. Coleridge."