I cannot speak favourably of W.'s health, but, indeed, he has not done common justice to Dr. Beddoes's kind prescriptions. I saw his countenance darken, and all his hopes vanish, when he saw the _prescriptions_--his _scepticism_ concerning medicines! nay, it is not enough _scepticism_! Yet, now that peas and beans are over, I have hopes that he will in good earnest make a fair and full trial. I rejoice with sincere joy at Beddoes's recovery.
Wordsworth is fearful you have been much teased by the printers on his account, but you can sympathise with him. The works which I gird myself up to attack as soon as money concerns will permit me are the Life of Lessing, and the Essay on Poetry. The latter is still more at my heart than the former: its title would be an essay on the elements of poetry,--it would be in reality a disguised system of morals and politics. When you write,--and do write soon,--tell me how I can get your essay on the nitrous oxide. If you desired Johnson to have one sent to Lackington's, to be placed in Mr. Crosthwaite's monthly parcel for Keswick, I should receive it. Are your galvanic discoveries important? What do they lead to? All this is _ultra-crepidation_, but would to Heaven I had as much knowledge as I have sympathy!
My wife and children are well; the baby was dying some weeks ago, so the good people would have it baptized; his name is Derwent Coleridge,[238] so called from the river, for, fronting our house, the Greta runs into the Derwent. Had it been a girl the name should have been Greta. By the bye, Greta, or rather Grieta, is exactly the Cocytus of the Greeks. The word, literally rendered in modern English, is "the loud lamenter;" to griet in the Cambrian dialect, signifying to roar aloud for grief or pain, and it does _roar_ with a vengeance! I will say nothing about spring--a thirsty man tries to think of anything but the stream when he knows it to be ten miles off! God bless you!