248. To John Prior Estlin

Address: Revd J. P. Estlin | St Michael's Hill | Bristol
MS. Bristol Central Lib. Pub. Letters, i. 245.

May, [ 18, 1798] 1 Friday Morning

My dear Friend

I write from Cross -- to which place I accompanied Mr Wordsworth, who will give you this letter. We visited Cheddar -- but his main business was to bring back poor Lloyd, whose infirmities have been made the instruments of another man's darker passions. -But Lloyd, (as we found by a letter that met us on the road) is off for Birmingham / Wordsworth proceeds lest possibly Lloyd may not be gone 2 -- & likewise to see his own Bristol Friends, as he is so near them. -- I have now known him a year & some months, and my admiration, I might say, my awe of his intellectual powers has increased even to this hour -- & (what is of more importance) he is a tried good man. -- On one subject we are habitually silent -- we found our data dissimiliar, & never renewed the subject / It is his practice & almost his nature to convey all the truth he knows without any attack on what he supposes falsehood, if that falsehood be interwoven with virtues or happiness -- he loves & venerates Christ & Christianity -- I wish, he did more -- but it were wrong indeed, if an incoincidence with one of our wishes altered our respect & affection to a man, whom we are as it were instructed by our great master to say that not being against us he is for us. -- His genius is most apparent in poetry -- and rarely, except to me in tete a tete, breaks forth in conversational eloquence.

My best & most affectionate wishes attend Mrs Estlin & your little ones -- &

believe me with filial & fraternal | Friendship | Your grateful

S. T. Coleridge
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1 	According to Dorothy Wordsworth's journal, she, Wordsworth, and Cole. ridge left for Cheddar on Wednesday, 16 May, and slept at Bridgwater. The next entry, again mentioning the visit to Cheddar and Cross, is obviously misdated Thursday, 22 May, for 17 May. ( Journals, i. 16.) This letter, written from Cross on 18 May, was to be delivered by Wordsworth on his arrival in Bristol.
2 	In June, as a result of Cottle's efforts to effect a reconciliation, Lloyd wrote to Cottle: 'I love Coleridge, and can forget all that has happened' (Early Rec. i. 804). It was, however, a long time before Coleridge could view with equanimity the baseness of Charles Lioyd.

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