342. To Humphry Davy Address: Mr Davy | Pneumatic Institution | Hotwells | Bristol MS. Royal Institution. Pub. E. L. G. i. 147. Postmark: 28 July 1800. Stamped: Keswick. Greta Hall, Keswick, Cumberland. Friday Evening -- July 25, 1800 My dear Davy Work hard, and if Success do not dance up like the bubbles in the Salt (with the Spirit Lamp under it) may the Devil & his Dam take Success! -- 'Sdeath, my dear fellow! from the Window before me there is a great Camp of Mountains -- Giants seem to have pitch'd their Tents there -- each Mountain is a Giant's Tent -- and how the light streams from them -- & the Shadows that travel upon them! -- Davy I ake for you to be with us --. W. Wordsworth is such a lazy fellow that I bemire myself by making promises for him -- the moment, I received your letter, I wrote to him. He will, I hope, write immediately to Biggs & Cottle 1 -- At all events those poems must not as yet be delivered up to them; because that beautiful Poem, the Brothers, which I read to you in Paul Street, I neglected to deliver to you -- & that must begin the Volume. 2 I trust however that I have invoked the ____________________ 1 On Tuesday, 28 [29] July, Wordsworth wrote at Coleridge's instigation to Humphry Davy, with whom he was as yet unacquainted, his letter accom. panying the first manuscript sheet of poems for the second volume of Lyrical Ballads: 'You would greatly oblige me by looking over the enclosed poems and correcting any thing you find amiss in the punctuation a business at which I am ashamed to say I am no adept. . . . I write to request that you would have the goodness to look over the proof-sheets of the 2ndvolume before they are finally struck off. In future I mean to send the Mss. to Biggs and Cottle with a request that along with the proof-sheets they may be sent to you. . . . Be so good as to put the enclosed Poems into Mr. Bigges hands as soon as you have looked them over in order that the printing may be commenced immediately.' Early Letters, 244-5. The 'enclosed Poems'. in Dorothy's handwriting, were Hart-leap Well, There was a Boy, Ellen Irwin, and the first part of The Brothers. 2 When Lyrical Ballads appeared, The Brothers was the third poem in the second volume. -611- sleeping Bard with a spell so potent, that he will awake & deliver up that Sword of Argantyr, which is to rive the Enchanter GAUDYVERSE from his Crown to his Fork. -- What did you think of that case, I translated for you from the German/? -- That I was a well meaning Sutor, who had ultracrepidated 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 Ireland-ward, 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 & saw the woods, & mountains, & lake all trembling, & as it were idealized thro' the subtle 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 alder bushes, whose twigs heaved & sobbed in the uprushing column of smoke -- & the Image of the Bonfire, & 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 & all his Sons love you as I do----- S. T. Coleridge Sara desires her kind remembrances-Hartley is a spirit that dances on an aspin leaf -- the air, which yonder sallow-faced & yawning Tourist is breathing, is to my Babe a perpetual Nitrous Oxyde. Never was more joyous creature born -- Pain with him is so wholly trans-substantiated by the Joys that had rolled on before, & rushed in after, that oftentimes 5 minutes after his Mother has whipt him, he has gone up & asked her to whip him again.-----