Chapter C: Letter 211: To Mr. and Mrs. Allsop

Grove, Highgate, April 8th, 1824.

Dear Mrs. Allsop,

There are three rolls of paper, Mr. Wordsworth's translation of the first, second, and third books, two in letter-paper, one in a little writing-book, in the drawer under the side-board in your dining-room. Be so good as to put them up and give them to the bearer should Mr. Allsop not be at home.

My dear Allsop,

You I know will have approved of my instant compliance with Mr. Gillman's request of returning with him; and I know, too, that both Mrs. Allsop and yourself will think it superfluous in me to tell you what you must be sure I cannot but feel. I trust that when I next return from you, I shall have--not to thank you less--but with less painful recollections of the trouble and anxiety I have occasioned you.

In the agitation of leaving Mrs. Allsop, I forgot to take with me the translation of Virgil. Could I, that is, dared I, wait till Sunday, I might make it one way of inducing you to spend the day with me. Upon the whole, however, I had better send than increase my anxieties, so I will send Riley with this note.

My Grandfatherly love and kisses to the Fairy Prattler and the meek boy. I did heave a long-drawn wish this morning, as the sun and the air too were so genial, that the latter had been in the good woman's house at Highgate well wrapped up. A fortnight would do wonders for the dear little fellow. You and Mrs. Allsop may rely on it that I would see him every day during his stay here, if there were only one hour in which it did not rain vehemently.

God bless you,
And your obliged and most
affectionately attached friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.

T. Allsop, Esq.

Coleridge wrote about this time to Wordsworth regarding his translation of part of Virgil (Knight's _Life of Wordsworth_, ii, 302), and threw cold water on the project of Wordsworth's entering into rivalry with Dryden.