BIB_ID
116976
Accession number
MA 1857.18
Creator
Stoddart, John, 1773-1856.
Display Date
England, 1801 January 12.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 19.3 x 15.8 cm
Notes
This collection, MA 1857, includes seventeen autograph letters signed from various correspondents to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, three autograph letters signed to Robert Southey, one each from Edward Coleridge, John Taylor Coleridge and Sara Fricker Coleridge and two autograph letters signed from William Wordsworth, one to Robert Southey and one to Joseph Henry Green. This collection of letters dates from 1794-1834.
This letter is from the Joanna Langlais Collection, a large collection of letters written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to various recipients. The collection has been divided into subsets, based primarily on Coleridge's addressees, and these sub-collections have been cataloged individually as MA 1848- MA 1857.
Address panel to "S. T. Coleridge Esq're / Greta Hall / Keswick / Cumberland / or Mrs. Coleridge."
Date of writing from postmark.
This letter is from the Joanna Langlais Collection, a large collection of letters written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to various recipients. The collection has been divided into subsets, based primarily on Coleridge's addressees, and these sub-collections have been cataloged individually as MA 1848- MA 1857.
Address panel to "S. T. Coleridge Esq're / Greta Hall / Keswick / Cumberland / or Mrs. Coleridge."
Date of writing from postmark.
Provenance
Purchased from Joanna Langlais in 1957 as a gift of the Fellows with the special assistance of Mrs. W. Murray Crane, Mr. Homer D. Crotty, Mr. and Mrs. Donald F. Hyde, Mr. Robert H. Taylor and Mrs. Landon K. Thorne. Formerly in the possession of Ernest Hartley Coleridge and Thomas Burdett Money-Coutts, Baron Latymer.
Summary
Discussing the book he is writing; saying "Alas my dear Coleridge your lecture on the impossibility of writing Metaphysics scientifically arriv'd when I was in the very midst of a most profound & ingenious Theory with which I mean to favor that admirable Critic the British Public - But I must go on in my humdrum way - You implicants are of a higher class in the Hierarchy. My consolation is that you of the Seraphim look with great condescension upon us Martyrs who broil & roast & flay our poor faculties on the dull Earth of Metaphysics - When you come hither you will see the stuff which I have sweat & shiver'd about, and you will criticise it kindly not for your own amusement but to afford me assistance - I am mixing up my tour into a kind of horse-draft for the palates of our modern dilettantistic literature, and I assure you I have some hopes of their approbation - by you I only aspire to be considered as a tolerable apothecary's prentice - That part of your letter which you call dull was exactly level to my capacity & gave me great pleasure; for I had never been able to comprehend what Davy told me viz: that you among others conversed with him in what I deem arrant jargon. My tour has in it's wording a great deal of Slip-sloppism; for I have admitted all words scientific as well as common; for two reasons, first because without great labour I could not have written (if at all) in common language throughout, & 2'y because the polysyllabic style is to the Critics what a Judge's or Doctor's wig is to the vulgar. By tomorrow's post I shall send the other half of the inclosed; for a 20£ note is too valuable to be trusted to a single conveyance - You may therefore come away as soon as you receive this [and] the other half will doubtless reach Mrs. C. in time for any use which she may have for it. Remember me most affectionately to Wordsworth; & if you possibly can, bring his play for me to read - Do not forget Christobel & any other of your own compositions now in hand.".
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