Monday, Oct. 13, 1800.

Dear Godwin,

I have been myself too frequently a grievous delinquent in the article of letter-writing to feel any inclination to reproach my friends when, peradventure, they have been long silent. But, this out of the question, I did not expect a speedier answer; for I had anticipated the circumstances which you assign as the causes of your delay.

An attempt to finish a poem of mine for insertion in the second volume of the "Lyrical Ballads", has thrown me so fearfully back in my bread and beef occupations, that I shall scarcely be able to justify myself in putting you to the expense of the few lines which I may be able to scrawl in the present paper—but some parts in your letter interested me deeply, and I wished to tell you so. First, then, you know Kemble, and I do not. But my conjectural judgments concerning his character lead me to persuade an absolute passive obedience to his opinion, and this, too, because I would leave to every man his own trade. "Your" trade has been, in the present instance, "first" to furnish a wise pleasure to your fellow-beings in general, and, "secondly", to give Mr. Kemble and his associates the power of delighting that part of your fellow-beings assembled in a theatre. As to what relates to the first point, I should be sorry indeed if greater men than Mr. Kemble could induce you to alter a "but" to a "yet" contrary to your own convictions. Above all things, an author ought to be sincere to the public; and, when William Godwin stands in the title-page, it implies that W. G. approves that which follows. Besides, the mind and finer feelings are blunted by such obsequiousness. But in the theatre it is Godwin and Co. "ex professo". I should regard it in almost the same light as if I had written a song for Haydn to compose and Mara to sing; I know, indeed, what is poetry, but I do not know so well as he and she what will suit his notes or her voice. That actors and managers are often wrong is true, but still their trade is "their" trade, and the presumption is in favour of their being right. For the press, I should wish you to be solicitously nice; because you are to exhibit before a larger and more respectable multitude than a theatre presents to you, and in a new part, that of a poet employing his philosophical knowledge practically. If it be possible, come, therefore, and let us discuss every page and every line.

Now for something which, I would fain believe, is still more important, namely, the propriety of your future philosophical speculations. Your second objection, derived from the present "ebb" of opinion, will be best answered by the fact that Mackintosh and his followers have the "flow". This is greatly in your favour, for mankind are at present gross reasoners. They reason in a perpetual antithesis; Mackintosh is an oracle, and Godwin therefore a fool. Now it is morally impossible that Mackintosh and the sophists of his school can retain this opinion. You may well exclaim with Job, "O that my adversary would write a book!" When he publishes, it will be all over with him, and then the minds of men will incline strongly to those who would point out in intellectual perceptions a source of moral progressiveness. Every man in his heart is in favour of your general principles. A party of dough-baked democrats of fortune were weary of being dissevered from their fellow rich men. They want to say something in defence of turning round. Mackintosh puts that something into their mouths, and for awhile they will admire and be-praise him. In a little while these men will have fallen back into the ranks from which they had stepped out, and life is too melancholy a thing for men in general for the doctrine of unprogressiveness to remain popular. Men cannot long retain their faith in the Heaven "above" the blue sky, but a Heaven they will have, and he who reasons best on the side of the universal wish will be the most popular philosopher. As to your first objection, that you are a logician, let me say that your habits are analytic, but that you have not read enough of travels, voyages, and biography—especially men's lives of themselves—and you have too soon submitted your notions to other men's censures in conversation. A man should nurse his opinions in privacy and self-fondness for a long time, and seek for sympathy and love, not for detection or censure. Dismiss, my dear fellow, your theory of Collision of Ideas, and take up that of Mutual Propulsion. I wish to write more, and state to you a lucrative job, which would, I think, be eminently serviceable to your own mind, and which you would have every opportunity of doing here. I now express a serious wish that you would come and look out for a house. Did Stuart remit you £10. on my account?

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I would gladly write any verses, but to a prologue or epilogue I am absolutely incompetent.

Coleridge was a tremendous walker and hill climber. The following letter narrates a curious adventure in a storm among the mountains.