Monday, May 4, 1801.

My dear Davy,

I heard from Tobin the day before yesterday—nay, it was Friday. From him I learn that you are giving lectures on galvanism. Would to God I were one of your auditors! My motive muscles tingled and contracted at the news, as if you had bared them, and were 'zincifying' their life-mocking fibres.

When you have leisure and impulse—perfect leisure and a complete impulse—write to me, but only then. For though there does not exist a man on earth who yields me greater pleasure by writing to me, yet I have neither pain nor disquietude from your silence. I have a deep faith in the guardianship of Nature over you—of the Great Being whom you are manifesting. Heaven bless you, my dear Davy!

I have been rendered uneasy by an account of the Lisbon packet's non-arrival, lest Southey should have been on board it. Have you heard from him lately?

It would seem affectation to write to you and say nothing of my health; but in truth I am weary of giving useless pain. Yesterday I should have been incapable of writing you this scrawl, and to-morrow I may be as bad. "'Sinking, sinking, sinking!' I feel that I am 'sinking'." My medical attendant says that it is irregular gout, with nephritic symptoms. 'Gout', in a young man of twenty-nine!! Swollen knees, and knotty fingers, a loathing stomach, and a dizzy head. Trust me, friend, I am at times an object of moral disgust to my own mind! But that this long illness has impoverished me, I should immediately go to St. Miguels, one of the Azores—the baths and the delicious climate might restore me—and if it were possible, I would afterwards send over for my wife and children, and settle there for a few years; it is exceedingly cheap. On this supposition Wordsworth and his sister have with generous friendship offered to settle there with me—and happily our dear Southey would come too. But of this I pray you, my dear fellow, do not say a syllable to any human being, for the scheme, from the present state of my circumstances, is rather the thing of a "wish" than of a "hope".

If you write to me, pray in a couple of sentences tell me whether Herschell's thermometric "spectrum" (in the "Philos. Trans.") will lead to any revolution in the chemical philosophy. As far as "words" go, I have become a formidable chemist—having got by heart a prodigious quantity of terms, etc., to which I attach "some" ideas, very scanty in number, I assure you, and right meagre in their individual persons. That which must discourage me in it is, that I find all "power" of vital attributes to depend on modes of "arrangement", and that chemistry throws not even a distant rushlight glimmer upon this subject. The "reasoning", likewise, is always unsatisfactory to me. I am perpetually saying, probably there are many agents hitherto undiscovered. This cannot be reasoning: we must have a deep conviction that all the "terms" have been exhausted. This is saying no more than that (with Dr. Beddoes's leave) chemistry can never possess the same kind of certainty with the mathematics—in truth, it is saying nothing. I grow, however, exceedingly interested in the subject.

God love you, my dear friend! From Tobin's account, I fear that I must give up a very sweet vision—that of seeing you this summer. The summer after, my ghost perhaps may be a gas.

Yours affectionately,

S. T. COLERIDGE. [1]

[Footnote 1: Letter CXVIII follows No. 107.]