Chapter LXX: Letter 184: To Allsop

Oct. 20th, 1820.

My dear Friend,

Doubtless nothing can be more delightful to me, independent of Mrs. Gillman's kind but unnecessary anxieties, than to go to Oxford with you. Nay, though it will be but a flight to and fro, with a sojourn but of two days, if so much, yet I should even ask it of you if I were quite sure, absolutely sure, that it would not inconvenience you.

But in the fear of this, I could not ask or receive your companionship without some selfishness which would completely baffle itself.

I have not yet received an answer from Oxford respecting Dr. Coplestone's return to Oriel.

God bless you, my ever dear friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. Allsop, Esq.

* * * * *

The visit to Oxford was undertaken to try to get the authorities to mitigate the sentence on Hartley.

Queen Caroline and her misfortunes had been in his young days the subject of one of Coleridge's poems, _On a late Connubial Rupture in High Life_. She still engaged his attention, and he meditated writing on the matter, from which, however, Gillman dissuaded him.