BIB_ID
190235
Accession number
MA 8815.3
Creator
Arnold, Matthew, 1822-1888.
Display Date
[1882] May 26.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1908.
Description
1 item (3 pages) ; 17.9 x 11.4 cm
Notes
Acquired as part of a large collection of letters addressed to William Angus Knight, Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews and Wordsworth scholar. Items in the collection have been individually accessioned and cataloged.
Identity of the recipient and year of writing from published letter. The letter is simply addressed as "My dear Sir."
Identity of the recipient and year of writing from published letter. The letter is simply addressed as "My dear Sir."
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from William Angus Knight, 1908.
Summary
Discussing the possible authorship of two stanzas; saying "When one looks uneasily at a poem it is easy to fidget oneself further, and neither the Wordsworth nor the Coleridge of our common notions seems to be exactly hit off in the 'Stanzas'; still, I believe, that the first described is Wordsworth, and that the second described is Coleridge[.] I have myself heard Wordsworth speak of his prolonged, exhausting wanderings among the hills. Then Miss Fenwick's notes show that Coleridge is certainly one of the two personages of the poem - and there are points in the description of the second man which suit him very well..I have a sort of recollection of having heard something about the 'inventions rare' - and Coleridge is certain to have dabbled, at one time or other, in natural philosophy;" adding that although he had wished to "keep clear of all literary societies" he finds it "ungracious to refuse the nomination you speak of, and it is a long time from now to next May."
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