Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Keswick, to Sir George Beaumont, 1808 December 30 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
402397
Accession number
MA 1581.39
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Credit line
Purchased from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 24 x 19.2 cm
Notes
This letter was formerly identified as MA 1581 (Coleridge) 16.
This letter is from a large collection of letters written to Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827) and Lady Margaret Willes Beaumont (1758-1829) of Coleorton Hall and to other members of the Beaumont family. See collection-level record for more information (MA 1581.1-297).
Place of writing from postmarks and date of writing from published letter cited below.
Address panel with postmarks to "Sir G. Beaumont, Bart / Dunmow / Essex."
Provenance
Purchased as a gift of the Fellows from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Summary
Thanking him for his kind letter; discussing the Idea of Virtue, saying "...even so necessary is it for all men, the bad as well as the Good, that the Idea of Virtue should exist, and a Faith in it's Reality. Else we sacrifice the End to the Means;" discussing the "...union of Reason, Understanding, and Sense (i.e. the Senses);" adding "In my Essay these Thoughts will be developed popularly. This is my definition of a just popular Style : when the Author has had his own eye fixed steadily on the abstract, yet permits his Readers to see only the Concrete;" stating that it is a degradation of the New Testament to consider Christianity a "... mere Code of Ethics;" discussing, at length, redemption, fear, selfishness, virtue, love and obedience in Christianity; concluding "This is a very dull Letter; but even it's prolixity tho' it may tire you, yet will not be unpleasing, as an evidence of the Value, I set on your Esteem;" adding, in a postscript, that Mrs. Wordsworth will write to Lady Beaumont in a few days.