331. To Robert Southey MS. Lord Latymer, Pub. Ill. London News, 27 May 1893, p. 634. Thursday, April [10,] 1800 1 Amblesides, Westmoreland. My dear Southey If you stay longer, than the year on the Continent, I and mine will join you -- & if you return at that Time, you must join us. Where we shall be, God knows! but in some interesting Country it will be, in Heaven or Earth. I feel assurances & comfortable Hopes of your full Recovery -- Of all that you have written to me I need not say I will be the Performer if needs be -- and so help me God & my Conscience, as all your's shall be to me as my very own. My next I will direct to Lisbon -- In a few days I move for Bristol -- I have been in excessive Perplexity of mind lately on sundry subjects -- and have besides over-worked myself -- but all will be calm again. Of your History of Portugal I anticipate great Things -it is a noble Subject & of a certain Sale. -- But still, Southeyl be ever a Poet in your higher moments. -- I will find out some Lisbon merchant in London or Liverpool, & manage to send you regularly, what is interesting, without expence. Wordsworth publishes a second Volume of Lyrical Ballads, & Pastorals. He meditates a novel -- & so do I -- but first I shall re-write my Tragedy. If that Reverend Sir continues his Insolence, 2 I will give him a scourging that shall flea him / I promise you to exert myself to procure subscribers for the Chatterton -- I have ample materials for a most interesting Historical & Metaphysical Essay on Literary Forgery from the Hymns of Orpheus which deceived Aristotle to the Vortigern of Shakespere that deceived Dr Parr -- but Dr Parr was the greater Booby. -- I cannot wholly approve of your Anthologizing; but you judge, I will believe, wisely. My objections are various -- & one of them of a moral nature. But on all this I will write. -- Edith! my Love! May God in Heaven bless you! -- ____________________ 1 This letter was written in answer to one from Southey, dated 1 Apr. 1800, in which he announced his impending departure for Lisbon. 2 Coleridge refers to a controversy between Southey and Sir Herbert Croft concerning Chatterton. See Monthly Magazine, Nov 1799, and the Gentleman's Magazine, Feb., Mar., and Apr 1800. -585- The time returns upon me, Southey! when we dreamt one Dream, & that a glorious one -- when we eat together, & thought each other greater & better than all the World beside, and when we were bed fellows. Those days can never be forgotten, and till they are forgotten, we cannot, if we would, cease to love each other. S. T. Coleridge