BIB_ID
127150
Accession number
MA 1857.14
Creator
Purkis, Samuel, active 1800.
Display Date
London, England, 1800 August 22.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 23.7 x 19.5 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 with postmarks to "S.T. Coleridge Esq / Greta Hall / Keswick / Cumberland."
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 with postmarks to "S.T. Coleridge Esq / Greta Hall / Keswick / Cumberland."
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
Regretting that he cannot visit him; saying "Your Letter did indeed tempt me to make an effort to view the sublime Scenes which you so sublimely describe - and if it had suited my friend Howard's convenience I should certainly have realized my wishes. He desired me to remember him kindly to you, with many thanks for your obliging offer, which necessity compels him to decline;" saying that he showed his (Coleridge's) letter to Mr. Glasse who said 'Thrice have I visited that wonderful spot : every feature - every passage in your Friend's letter is now present to the eye of my memory : but there was then no such sublime Enthusiast as Mr. Coleridge on the spot, to fix the varying beauties of the scenery by the magic of fine writing - to arrest a Cloud, or eternize a passing Sunbeam.' Again, my dear Coleridge, I wish I could have enjoyed a week with you in those grand scenes of nature...I hope that you do not waste your time while you are there - as to your practical Essays on Population, I consider those as mere amusement in a Summer's Evening - but I hope to hear of some great work worthy of the scene & of your talents. If your mind were not already stored with rich & varied imagery, the spectacle around would surely inspire you, unless the Leads on which you write communicate their torpid influence & benumb your faculties. 'Lord of the Leads on Greta's Hall sublime!' / M.S. Poem addressed to S.T.C;" commenting on Napoleon, the prospects for peace and the "...object of the Secret Expedition which is still a matter of doubt with the Politicians - Brest or Belleisle is supposed to be the point - be which it may, I fear it will end as our Expeditions generally do - in a fruitless wash of blood & treasure, without credit or profit. I am glad you saw Roscoe at Liverpool - from all I hear he is abundantly deserving the high praise you give him. I am told there are some other very ingenious men in that Town. Pray what is become of your friend Wordsworth? Is he yet at the Lakes?;" sending his regards to Mrs. Coleridge and "little Hartley."
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