with Sara. I repeat it, your letter was, and
will be, an inestimable treasure to me. You have a view of what my
situation demands of me, like my own view, and I trust a just one.

Coleridge, continue to write, but do not forever offend me by talking of
sending me cash. Sincerely and on my soul, we do not want it. God
love you both!

I will write again very soon. Do you write directly.

[1] John Lamb, the "James Elia" of the essay "My Relations."

[2] A Christ's Hospital schoolfellow.

VII.

TO COLERIDGE,

_October_ 17, 1796.

My dearest friend,--I grieve from my very soul to observe you in your
plans of life veering about from this hope to the other, and settling
nowhere. Is it an untoward fatality (speaking humanly) that does this
for you,--a stubborn, irresistible concurrence of events,--or lies the
fault, as I fear it does, in your own mind? You seem to be taking up
splendid schemes of fortune only to lay them down again; and your
fortunes are an _ignis fatuus_ that has been conducting you in thought
from Lancaster Court, Strand, to somewhere near Matlock; then jumping
across to Dr. Somebody's, whose son's tutor you were likely to be; and
would to God the dancing demon _may_ conduct you at last in peace and
comfort to the "life and labours of a cottager"! You see from the above
awkward playfulness of fancy that my spirits are not quite depressed. I
should ill deserve God's blessings, which, since the late terrible
event, have come down in mercy upon us, if I indulge in regret or
querulousness. Mary continues serene and cheerful. I have not by me a
little letter she wrote to me; for though I see her almost every day,
yet we delight to write to one another, for we can scarce see each other
but in company with some of the people of the house. I have not the
letter by me, but will quote from memory what she wrote in it: "I have
no bad, terrifying dreams. At midnight, when I happen to awake, the
nurse sleeping by the side of me, with the noise of the poor mad people
around me, I have no fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend and
smile upon me, and bid me live to enjoy the life and reason which the
Almighty has given me. I shall see her again in heaven; she will then
understand me better. My grandmother, too, will understand me better,
and will then say no more, as she used to do, 'Polly, what are those
poor crazy, moythered brains of yours thinking of always?'" Poor Mary!
my mother indeed _never un