Chapter CXXXVII: Letter 126: To Davy

Tuesday morning, 7, Barnard's Inn, Holborn. [1]

My dear Davy,

I trusted my cause last Sunday, I fear, to an unsympathizing agent. To Mr. Tuffin I can scarcely think myself bound to make a direct apology, as my promise was wholly conditional. This I did, not only from general foresight, but from the possibility of hearing from you, that you had not been able to untie your former engagement. To you, therefore, I owe the apology: and on you I expressly and earnestly desired Tobin to call and to explain for me, that I had been in an utterly incompatible state of bodily feeling the whole evening at Mr. Renny's; that I was much hurt by the walk home through the wet; instantly on my return here had an attack in my bowels; that this had not wholly left me, and therefore that I could not come, unless the weather altered. By which I did not mean merely its 'holding up' (though even this it did not do at four o'clock at Barnard's Inn, the sleety rain was still falling, though slightly), but the drying up of the rawness and dampness, which would infallibly have diseased me, before I had reached the Institution--not to mention the effect of sitting a long evening in damp clothes and shoes on an invalid, scarcely recovered from a diarrhoea. I have thought it fit to explain at large, both as a mark of respect to you, and because I have very unjustly acquired a character for breaking engagements, entirely from the non-sympathy of the well with the sick, the robust with the weakly. It must be difficult for most men to conceive the extreme reluctance with which I go at all into 'company', and the unceasing depression which I am struggling up against during the whole time I am in it, which too often makes me drink more 'during dinner' than I ought to do, and as often forces me into efforts of almost obtrusive conversation, 'acting' the opposite of my real state of mind in order to arrive at a medium, as we roll paper the opposite way in order to smoothe it.

Be so good as to tell me what hour you expect Mr. Sotheby on Thursday.

I am, my dear Davy, with sincere and affectionate esteem, yours ever,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

[Footnote 1: The twopenny post-mark is that of 6th March, 1804.]

Amid these letters, complaining of ill health and full of apologies for broken engagements, Coleridge could write genuine literary criticisms of the first order. The following letter addressed to Sarah Hutchinson is his opinion of Sir Thomas Browne. He had presented her with a copy of 'Religio Medici' with copious annotations (see 'Athenaeum', 30 May 1896, p. 714).