Thomas Beddoes to William Reynolds, [September?] 1792 [fragment]
He begins a second letter on the same subject with an abruptness which, had it been intercepted in a season of political agitation, might have excited some alarm. ‘The plot thickens,’ he observes, ‘and we shall certainly have a volcanic eruption in full form in the West. My pupil has found the aperture whence the glassy lava issued. This he has clearly ascertained, and he has made a great number of acute and curious observations besides. He has found granite including masses of other substances, and injected into fissures, with a variety of appearances clearly indicating the posterior and igneous origin of this supposed primitive material; posterior only in this and similar cases. I doubt not of your being willing and even desirous to inspect such a scene. The only question is can you leave Shropshire for three or four days? If you can, say so; et era tibi magnus Apollo. I will shew you what you never could expect to see. You might bring, a third person to Bristol; he should not be too corpulent, and we will drive over the hills and far away. But alas, we shall only snuff the gales of Cornwall, and not even that, but upon certain contingencies. There will still between us, not, as Achilles says, many shadowy mountains and resounding seas, but many a clift without grandeur, and many a plain without grace.
Published: Stock, pp. 43–44