Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Keswick, to William Godwin, 1801 July 8 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying that he mailed Godwin's tragedy back to him that evening and he will probably receive it Saturday morning; adding that his "Criticisms &c were written in a style & with a boyish freedom of censure & ridicule, that would have given pain & perhaps, offence" and he will re-work them in a letter to follow; saying that he used various marks in the tragedy and providing a key for what the different marks mean (one symbol is used for "bad metre," another for places where "your Language is false or intolerable English," etc); including suggestions and criticisms of the play; responding to comments of Godwin's about his (Coleridge's) current ascetic and isolated mode of life; discussing his own and Godwin's opinions on a number of writers, including Mrs. Inchbald, Virgil, John Dryden, David Hume and Nicholas Rowe; stating "I have received, & I hope, still shall, great delight from Virgil, whose versification I admire beyond measure, & very frequently his Language. Of Dryden I am & have always been a passionate admirer. I have always placed him among our greatest men. - You must have misunderstood me - & considered me as detracting, when I considered myself only as discriminating;" responding to a comment of Godwin's about his "late acquisition of friends" and describing how close he feels, or doesn't feel, to John Stoddart, Richard Sharp and Samuel Rogers; referring to a proposed visit from James Webbe Tobin, with two other guests: "The whole visit should have been from Tobin, whom I greatly venerate - tho' certainly a four weeks' visit from him with two unpleasant uninvited men in his train would have been somewhat too much;" adding other comments about mutual acquaintances.