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Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1.

C >> Coleridge, ed. Turnbull >> Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22



What did you think of that case I translated for you from the German?
That I was a well-meaning sutor who had ultra-crepidated[1] with more
zeal than wisdom!! I give myself credit for that word "ultra-
crepidated," it started up in my brain like a creation. I write to
Tobin by this post. Godwin is gone Irelandward, on a visit to Curran,
says the "Morning Post"; to Grattan, writes C. Lamb.

We drank tea the night before I left Grasmere, on the island in that
lovely lake; our kettle swung over the fire, hanging from the branch of
a fir-tree, and I lay and saw the woods, and mountains, and lake all
trembling, and as it were idealized through the suble smoke, which rose
up from the clear, red embers of the fir-apples which we had collected:
afterwards we made a glorious bonfire on the margin, by some elder
bushes, whose twigs heaved and sobbed in the uprushing column of smoke,
and the image of the bonfire, and of us that danced round it, ruddy,
laughing faces in the twilight; the image of this in a lake, smooth as
that sea, to whose waves the Son of God had said, "Peace!" May God, and
all his sons, love you as I do.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Sara desires her kind remembrances. Hartley is a spirit that dances on
an aspen leaf; the air that yonder sallowfaced and yawning tourist is
breathing, is to my babe a perpetual nitrous oxide. Never was more
joyous creature born. Pain with him is so wholly transubstantiated by
the joys that had rolled on before, and rushed on after, that oftentimes
five minutes after his mother has whipt him, he has gone up and asked
her to whip him again.[2]

[Footnote 1: "Ne sutor ultra crepidam."]

[Footnote 2: Letter CX follows No. 94.]

Coleridge was now as enamoured of the Lake District as he had been of
Stowey. On 22nd September he wrote to Godwin.




LETTER 95. TO GODWIN

Monday, Sept. 22, 1800.

Dear Godwin,

I received your letter, and with it the enclosed note,[1] which shall be
punctually re-delivered to you on the first of October.

Your tragedy [2] to be exhibited at Christmas! I have, indeed, merely
read through your letter; so it is not strange that my heart continues
beating out of time. Indeed, indeed Godwin, such a stream of hope and
fear rushed in on me, as I read the sentence, as you would not permit
yourself to feel! If there be anything yet undreamt of in our
philosophy; if it be, or if it be possible, that thought can impel
thought out of the usual limit of a man's own skull and heart; if the
cluster of ideas which constitute an identity, do ever connect and unite
into a greater whole; if feelings could ever propagate themselves
without the servile ministrations of undulating air or reflected light;
I seem to feel within myself a strength and a power of desire that might
dart a modifying, commanding impulse on a whole theatre. What does all
this mean? Alas! that sober sense should know no other way to construe
all this, than by the tame phrase, I wish you success! That which Lamb
informed you is founded on truth. Mr. Sheridan sent, through the medium
of Stuart, a request to Wordsworth to present a tragedy to his stage;
and to me a declaration, that the failure of my piece was owing to my
obstinacy in refusing any alteration. I laughed and Wordsworth smiled;
but my tragedy will remain at Keswick, and Wordsworth's is not likely to
emigrate from Grasmere. Wordsworth's drama is, in its present state, not
fit for the stage, and he is not well enough to submit to the drudgery
of making it so. Mine is fit for nothing, except to excite in the minds
of good men the hope "that the young man is likely to do better." In the
first moments I thought of re-writing it, and sent to Lamb for the copy
with this intent. I read an Act, and altered my opinion, and with it my
wish.

Your feelings respecting Baptism are, I suppose, much like mine! At
times I dwell on Man with such reverence, resolve all his follies into
such grand primary laws of intellect, and in such wise so contemplate
them as ever-varying incarnations of the Eternal Life--that the Llama's
dung-pellet, or the cow-tail which the dying Brahmin clutches
convulsively, become sanctified and sublime by the feelings which
cluster round them. In that mood I exclaim, my boys shall be christened!
But then another fit of moody philosophy attacks me. I look at my
doted-on Hartley--he moves, he lives, he finds impulses from within and
from without, he is the darling of the sun and of the breeze. Nature
seems to bless him as a thing of her own. He looks at the clouds, the
mountains, the living beings of the earth, and vaults and jubilates!
Solemn looks and solemn words have been hitherto connected in his mind
with great and magnificent objects only: with lightning, with thunder,
with the waterfall blazing in the sunset. Then I say, shall I suffer him
to see grave countenances and hear grave accents, while his face is
sprinkled? Shall I be grave myself, and tell a lie to him? Or shall I
laugh, and teach him to insult the feelings of his fellow men? Besides,
are we not all in this present hour, fainting beneath the duty of Hope?
From such thoughts I stand up, and vow a book of severe analysis, in
which I shall tell "all" I believe to be truth in the nakedest language
in which it can be told.

My wife is now quite comfortable. Surely you might come and spend the
very next four weeks, not without advantage to both of us. The very
glory of the place is coming on; the local genius is just arraying
himself in his higher attributes. But, above all, I press it because my
mind has been busied with speculations that are closely connected with
those pursuits that have hitherto constituted your utility and
importance: and, ardently as I wish you success on the stage, I yet
cannot frame myself to the thought that you should cease to appear as a
bold moral thinker. I wish you to write a book on the power of words,
and the processes by which human feelings form affinities with them--in
short, I wish you to "philosophize" Horne Tooke's system, and to solve
the great questions--whether there be reason to hold that an action
bearing the semblance of predesigning consciousness may yet be simply
organic, and whether a series of such actions are possible--and close on
the heels of this question would follow the old, "Is logic the essence
of thinking?"--in other words, "Is thinking possible without arbitrary
signs? or how far is the word arbitrary a misnomer? are not words, etc.,
parts and germinations of the plant, and what is the law of their
growth?" In something of this order I would endeavour to destroy the old
antithesis of Words and Things, elevating, as it were, Words into
Things, and living things too. All the nonsense of vibrations, etc., you
would, of course, dismiss.

If what I have here written appear nonsense to you, or common sense in a
harlequinade of "outre" expressions, suspend your judgment till we see
each other.

Yours sincerely,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I was in the country when "Wallenstein" was published. Longman sent me
down half-a-dozen--the carriage back the book was not worth.

[Footnote 1: A loan often pounds.]

[Footnote 2: "Antonio."]

Coleridge had asked Godwin to stand godfather to his child, which
compliment Godwin declined. Hence the passage in the above letter on
Baptism.

Davy now occupied a large part of Coleridge's attention. On 9th October
he wrote:





LETTER 96. To DAVY

Thursday night, October 9, 1800.

My dear Davy,

I was right glad, glad with a "stagger" of the heart, to see your
writing again. Many a moment have I had all my France and England
curiosity suspended and lost, looking in the advertisement front column
of the "Morning Post Gazetteer", for "Mr. Davy's Galvanic habitudes of
charcoal. ..." Upon my soul, I believe there is not a letter in those
words round which a world of imagery does not circumvolve; your room,
the garden, the cold bath, the moonlight rocks, Barristed, Moore, and
simple-looking Frere, and dreams of wonderful things attached to your
name--and Skiddaw, and Glaramara, and Eagle Crag, and you, and
Wordsworth, and me, on the top of them! I pray you do write to me
immediately, and tell me what you mean by the possibility of your
assuming a new occupation; [1] have you been successful to the extent of
your expectations in your late chemical inquiries?

In your poem,[2] "impressive" is used for "impressible" or passive, is
it not? If so, it is not English; life "diffusive" likewise is not
English. The last stanza introduces "confusion" into my mind, and
despondency--and has besides been so often said by the materialists,
etc., that it is not worth repeating. If the poem had ended more
originally, in short, but for the last stanza, I will venture to affirm
that there were never so many lines which so uninterruptedly combined
natural and beautiful words with strict philosophic truths, "i.e.",
scientifically philosophic. Of the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth,
and seventh stanzas, I am doubtful which is the most beautiful. Do not
imagine that I cling to a fond love of future identity, but the thought
which you have expressed in the last stanzas might be more grandly, and
therefore more consolingly exemplified. I had forgot to say that
sameness and identity are words too etymologically the same to be placed
so close to each other.

As to myself, I am doing little worthy the relation. I write for Stuart
in the "Morning Post", and I am compelled by the god Pecunia, which was
one name of the supreme Jupiter, to give a volume of letters from
Germany, which will be a decent "lounge" book, and not an atom more. The
"Christabel" was running up to 1,300 lines, and was so much admired by
Wordsworth, that he thought it indelicate to print two volumes with his
name, in which so much of another man's was included; and which was of
more consequence, the poem was in direct opposition to the very purpose
for which the lyrical ballads were published, viz., an experiment to see
how far those passions which alone give any value to extraordinary
incidents were capable of interesting in and for themselves in the
incidents of common life. We mean to publish the "Christabel",
therefore, with a long blank-verse poem of Wordsworth's, entitled "The
Pedlar".[3] I assure you I think very differently of "Christabel". I
would rather have written "Ruth", and "Nature's Lady",[4] than a million
such poems. But why do I calumniate my own spirit by saying I would
rather? God knows it is as delightful to me that they "are" written. I
"know" that at present, and I "hope" that it "will" be so; my mind has
"disciplined" itself into a willing exertion of its powers, without any
reference to their comparative value.

I cannot speak favourably of W.'s health, but indeed he has not done
common justice to Dr. Beddoes's kind prescriptions. I saw his
countenance darken, and all his hopes vanish, when he saw the
"prescriptions"--his "scepticism" concerning medicines! nay, it is not
enough "scepticism"! Yet, now that peas and beans are over, I have hopes
that he will in good earnest make a fair and full trial. I rejoice with
sincere joy at Beddoes's recovery.

Wordsworth is fearful you have been much teazed by the printers on his
account, but you can sympathise with him. The works which I gird myself
up to attack as soon as money concerns will permit me, are the "Life of
Lessing", and the "Essay on Poetry". The latter is still more at my
heart than the former: its title would be an essay on the elements of
poetry--it would in reality be a "disguised" system of morals and
politics.

When you write, and do write soon, tell me how I can get your essay on
the nitrous oxide. If you desired Johnson to have one sent to
Lackington's, to be placed in Mr. Crosthwaite's monthly parcel for
Keswick, I should receive it. Are your galvanic discoveries important?
What do they lead to? All this is "ultra crepidation", but would to
heaven I had as much knowledge as I have sympathy! My wife and children
are well; the baby was dying some weeks ago, so the good people would
have it baptized; his name is Derwent Coleridge, so called from the
river, for fronting our house the Greta runs into the Derwent. Had it
been a girl, the name should have been Greta. By the by, Greta, or
rather Grieta, is exactly the Cocytus of the Greeks; the word, literally
rendered in modern English, is, "The loud Lamenter;" to griet, in the
Cambrian dialect, signifying to roar aloud for grief or pain, and it
does "roar" with a vengeance!

I will say nothing about Spring--a thirsty man tries to think of
anything but the stream when he knows it to be ten miles off!

God bless you! Your most affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.[5]

Another letter to Godwin at this time indicates that Coleridge was still
expecting to be able to finish "Christabel", which as a completed poem,
Coleridge, as we have already seen, calculated would run up to 1,300
lines.

[Footnote 1: No doubt the leaving of the Pneumatic for the Royal
Institution.]

[Footnote 2: That entitled, "Written after Recovery from a Dangerous
Illness." It is to be found in the "Memoirs of his Life", vol. i, p.
390. Coleridge's critical remarks apply to it as it was first written;
the words objected to are not to be found in it in its corrected printed
state.]

[Footnote 1: A name changed to "The Excursion".]

[Footnote 2: "Three years she grew in sun and shower."]

[Footnote 5: Letter CXI is our 96.]




LETTER 97. TO GODWIN

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 L10. 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.




LETTER 98. TO DAVY

October 18, 1800.

My dear Davy,

Our mountains northward end in the mountain Carrock--one huge, steep,
enormous bulk of stones, desolately variegated with the heath plant; at
its foot runs the river Calder, and a narrow vale between it and the
mountain Bowscale, so narrow, that in its greatest width it is not more
than a furlong. But that narrow vale is "so" green, "so" beautiful,
there are moods in which a man might weep to look at it, On this
mountain Carrock, at the summit of which are the remains of a vast Druid
circle of stones, I was wandering, when a thick cloud came on, and
wrapped me in such darkness, that I could not see ten yards before me,
and with the cloud a storm of wind and hail, the like of which I had
never before seen and felt. At the very summit is a cone of stones,
built by the shepherds, and called the Carrock Man. Such cones are on
the tops of almost all our mountains, and they are all called "men". At
the bottom of the Carrock Man I seated myself for shelter, but the wind
became so fearful and tyrannous, that I was apprehensive some of the
stones might topple down upon me, so I groped my way farther down and
came to three rocks, placed on this wise 1/3\2*** each one supported by
the other like a child's house of cards, and in the hollow and screen
which they made, I sate for a long while sheltered, as if I had been in
my own study in which I am now writing: there I sate with a total
feeling worshipping the power and "eternal link" of energy. The darkness
vanished as by enchantment; far off, far, far off to the south, the
mountains of Glaramara and Great Gable and their family appeared
distinct, in deepest, sablest "blue". I rose, and behind me was a
rainbow bright as the brightest. I descended by the side of a torrent,
and passed, or rather crawled (for I was forced to descend on all
fours), by many a naked waterfall, till fatigued and hungry (and with a
finger almost broken, and which remains swelled to the size of two
fingers), I reached the narrow vale, and the single house nestled in ash
and sycamores. I entered to claim the universal hospitality of this
country; but instead of the life and comfort usual in these lonely
houses, I saw dirt, and every appearance of misery--a pale woman sitting
by a peat fire. I asked her for bread and milk, and she sent a small
child to fetch it, but did not rise herself. I ate very heartily of the
black, sour bread, and drank a bowl of milk, and asked her to permit me
to pay her. "Nay," says she, "we are not so scant as that--you are right
welcome; but do you know any help for the rheumatics, for I have been so
long ailing that I am almost fain to die?" So I advised her to eat a
great deal of mustard, having seen in an advertisement something about
essence of mustard curing the most obstinate cases of rheumatism. But do
write me, and tell me some cure for the rheumatism; it is in her
shoulders, and the small of her back chiefly. I wish much to go off with
some bottles of stuff to the poor creature. I should walk the ten miles
as ten yards. With love and honour,

My dear Davy, yours,

S. T. COLERIDGE. [1]

[Footnote 1: Letter CXII is our 98.]


The next letter relates how Coleridge wrote the Second Part of
"Christabel", which had been composed before 4th October (Dorothy
Wordsworth's "Journals", i, 51).




LETTER 99. TO JOSIAH WEDGWOOD

Keswick, Nov. 1, 1800.

My dear Sir,

I would fain believe that the experiment which your brother has made in
the West Indies is not wholly a discouraging one. If a warm climate did
nothing but only prevented him from getting worse, it surely evidenced
some power; and perhaps a climate equally favourable in a country of
more various interest, Italy, or the South of France, may tempt your
brother to make a longer trial. If (disciplining myself into silent
cheerfulness) I could be of any comfort to him by being his companion
and attendant, for two or three months, on the supposition that he
should wish to travel, and was at a loss for a companion more fit, I
would go with him with a willing affection. You will easily see, my dear
friend, that I say this only to increase the range of your brother's
choice--for even in choosing there is some pleasure.

There happen frequently little odd coincidences in time, that recall
momentary faith in the notion of sympathies acting in absence. I heard
of your brother's return, for the first time, on Monday last, the day on
which your letter is dated, from Stoddart. Had it rained on my naked
skin I could not have felt more strangely. The 300 or 400 miles that are
between us seemed converted into a moral distance; and I knew that the
whole of this silence I was myself accountable for; for I ended my last
letter by promising to follow it with a second and longer one, before
you could answer the first. But immediately on my arrival in this
country I undertook to finish a poem which I had begun, entitled
"Christabel", for a second volume of the "Lyrical Ballads". I tried to
perform my promise, but the deep unutterable disgust which I had
suffered in the translation of the accursed "Wallenstein", seemed to
have stricken me with barrenness; for I tried and tried, and nothing
would come of it. I desisted with a deeper dejection than I am willing
to remember. The wind from the Skiddaw and Borrowdale was often as loud
as wind need be, and many a walk in the clouds in the mountains did I
take; but all would not do, till one day I dined out at the house of a
neighbouring clergyman, and some how or other drank so much wine, that I
found some effort and dexterity requisite to balance myself on the
hither edge of sobriety. The next day my verse-making faculties returned
to me, and I proceeded successfully, till my poem grew so long, and in
Wordsworth's opinion so impressive, that he rejected it from his volume,
as disproportionate both in size and merit, and as discordant in its
character. In the mean time I had gotten myself entangled in the old
sorites of the old sophist,--procrastination. I had suffered my
necessary businesses to accumulate so terribly, that I neglected to
write to any one, till the pain I suffered from not writing made me
waste as many hours in dreaming about it as would have sufficed for the
letter writing of half a life. But there is something beside time
requisite for the writing of a letter--at least with me. My situation
here is indeed a delightful situation; but I feel what I have lost--feel
it deeply--it recurs more often and more painfully than I had
anticipated, indeed so much so, that I scarcely ever feel myself
impelled, that is to say, pleasurably impelled to write to Poole. I used
to feel myself more at home in his great windy parlour than in my own
cottage. We were well suited to each other--my animal spirits corrected
his inclination to melancholy; and there was something both in his
understanding and in his affections, so healthy and manly, that my mind
freshened in his company, and my ideas and habits of thinking acquired
day after day more of substance and reality. Indeed, indeed, my dear,
sir, with tears in my eyes, and with all my heart and soul, I wish it
were as easy for us all to meet as it was when you lived at Upcott. Yet
when I revise the step I have taken, I know not how I could have acted
otherwise than I did act. Everything I promised myself in this country
has answered far beyond my expectation. The room in which I write
commands six distinct landscapes--the two lakes, the vale, the river and
mountains, and mists, and clouds and sunshine, make endless
combinations, as if heaven and earth were for ever talking to each
other. Often when in a deep study, I have walked to the window and
remained there looking without seeing; all at once the lake of Keswick
and the fantastic mountains of Borrowdale, at the head of it, have
entered into my mind, with a suddenness as if I had been snatched out of
Cheapside and placed for the first time, in the spot where I stood--and
that is a delightful feeling--these fits and trances of novelty received
from a long known object. The river Greta flows behind our house,
roaring like an untamed son of the hills, then winds round and glides
away in the front, so that we live in a peninsula. But besides this
etherial eye-feeding we have very substantial conveniences. We are close
to the town, where we have respectable and neighbourly acquaintance, and
a most sensible and truly excellent medical man. Our garden is part of a
large nursery garden, which is the same to us and as private as if the
whole had been our own, and thus too we have delightful walks without
passing our garden gates. My landlord who lives in the sister house, for
the two houses are built so as to look like one great one, is a modest
and kind man, of a singular character. By the severest economy he raised
himself from a carrier into the possession of a comfortable
independence. He was always very fond of reading, and has collected
nearly 500 volumes, of our most esteemed modern writers, such as Gibbon,
Hume, Johnson, etc. etc. His habits of economy and simplicity, remain
with him, and yet so very disinterested a man I scarcely ever knew.
Lately, when I wished to settle with him about the rent of our house, he
appeared much affected, told me that my living near him, and the having
so much of Hartley's company were great comforts to him and his
housekeeper, that he had no children to provide for, and did not mean to
marry; and in short, that he did not want any rent at all from me. This
of course I laughed him out of; but he absolutely refused to receive any
rent for the first half-year, under the pretext that the house was not
completely furnished. Hartley quite lives at the house, and it is as you
may suppose, no small joy to my wife to have a good affectionate
motherly woman divided from her only by a wall. Eighteen miles from our
house lives Sir Guilfred Lawson, who has a princely library, chiefly of
natural history--a kind and generous, but weak and ostentatious sort of
man, who has been abundantly civil to me. Among other raree shows, he
keeps a wild beast or two, with some eagles, etc. The master of the
beasts at the Exeter 'Change, sent him down a large bear,--with it a
long letter of directions, concerning the food, etc. of the animal, and
many solicitations respecting other agreeable quadrupeds which he was
desirous to send to the baronet, at a moderate price, and concluding in
this manner: "and remain your honour's most devoted humble servant, J.P.
Permit me, sir Guilfred, to send you a buffalo and a rhinoceros." As
neat a postscript as I ever heard--the tradesmanlike coolness with which
these pretty little animals occurred to him just at the finishing of his
letter! You will in three weeks see the letters on the 'Rise and
Condition of the German Boors'. I found it convenient to make up a
volume out of my journey, etc. in North Germany--and the letters (your
name of course erased) are in the printer's hands. I was so weary of
transcribing and composing, that when I found those more carefully
written than the rest, I even sent them off as they were.

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