In April 1801, some eight or nine months after his taking
possession of Greta Hall, Coleridge thus describes it to its future
occupant:--
"Our house stands on a low hill, the whole front of which
is one field and an enormous garden, nine-tenths of which is a nursery
garden. Behind the house is an orchard and a small wood on a steep
slope, at the foot of which is the river Greta, which winds round and
catches the evening's light in the front of the house. In front we have
a giant camp--an encamped army of tent-like mountains which, by an
inverted arch, gives a view of another vale. On our right the lovely
vale and the wedge-shaped lake of Bassenthwaite; and on our left
Derwentwater and Lodore full in view, and the fantastic mountains of
Borrowdale. Behind is the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, with two
chasms and a tent-like ridge in the larger. A fairer scene you have not
seen in all your wanderings."
There is here no note of discontent with
the writer's surroundings; and yet, adds Mr. Cuthbert Southey in his
_Life and Correspondence_ of his father, the remainder of this
letter was filled by Coleridge with "a most gloomy account of his
health.
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