420. To Humphry Davy Address: Mr Davy | Royal Institution | Albermarle Street | London MS. Royal Institution. Pub. Frag. Remains, 91. Postmark: 3 November 1801. Stamped: Keswick. Greta Hall Keswick Cumberland. Oct. 81 1801. My dear Davy I do not know by what fatality it has happened; but so it is that I have thought more often of you, & I may say, yearned after your society more for the last 3 months than I ever before did -- & yet I have not written to you. But you know that I honor you, & that I love whom I honor. Love & Esteem with me have no dividual Being; & where ever this is not the case, I suspect, there must be some lurking moral superstition which Nature gets the better of -- & that the real meaning of the phrase -- 'I love him tho' I can not esteem him' -- is -- I esteem him but not according to my system of esteem -- but you, my dear Fellow! all men love and esteem -- which is the only suspicious part of your character -- at least, according to the 5th Chapter of St Matthew. -- God bless you - And now for the Business of this Letter. If I can, I leave this ____________________ 1 Three or four words inked out in manuscript. -773- place so as to be in London on Wednesday the eleventh of next mouth -- in London I shall stay a fortnight -- but as I am in feeble health, & have a perfect phobia of Inns & Coffee-houses, I should rejoice if you or Southey should be able to offer me a bedroom for the fortnight aforesaid. -- From London I move Southward. -Now for the Italicized words if I can -- the cryptical & implicit import of which is -- I have a damned Thorn in my leg, which the Surgeon has not been yet able to extract -- & but that I have metaph[ys]icized most successfully on Pain in consequence of the accident, by the great Scatterer of Thoughts, I should have been half-mad. -- But as it is I have borne it like a Woman -- which I believe to be two or three degrees at least beyond a Stoic. -- A suppuration is going on -- and I endure in hope. -- I have re-direct[ed] one of Southey's Letters to you, taking it for granted that you will see him immediately on his arrival in Town -- he left us yesterday afternoon. -- Let me hear from you if it be only to say what I know already that you will be glad to see me. -- O dear friend, thou one of the two human Beings of whom I dare hope with a hope, that elevates my own heart -- O bless you! -- S. T. Coleridge