BIB_ID
415050
Accession number
MA 1848.8
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Cambridge, England, circa 1794 October 23.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 22.5 x 18.4 cm
Notes
The letter is undated. In the Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Griggs suggests that it was probably written on or around October 23, 1794. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Coleridge does not list a place of writing, but based on references in the letter, it was most likely written at Cambridge.
The letter is not signed.
This collection, MA 1848, is comprised of 92 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Robert Southey, written between 1794 and 1819. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1848.1-92).
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 as MA 1848-1857.
Coleridge does not list a place of writing, but based on references in the letter, it was most likely written at Cambridge.
The letter is not signed.
This collection, MA 1848, is comprised of 92 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Robert Southey, written between 1794 and 1819. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1848.1-92).
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 as MA 1848-1857.
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
Saying that he had been invited the previous evening to the home of Dr. Thomas Edwards ("the great Grecian of Cambridge & heterodox Divine") where he also met a man named Lushington and spent six hours discussing Pantisocracy, "which is indeed the universal Topic at this University"; reporting that "Lushington & Edwards declared the System impregnable, supposing the assigned Quantum of Virtue and Genius in the first Individuals"; saying that he felt he acquitted himself well, "having exhibited closer argument in more elegant and appropriate Language, than I had ever conceived myself capable of"; adding that when he returned home, he found Southey's letter and it raised questions about the bases of the system; wishing for a "Lyncéan Eye, that can discover in the acorn of Error the rooted and widely spreading Oak of Misery"; posing a series of questions about the role of education and self-improvement in Pantisocracy and asking particularly whether "our Women have not been taught by us habitually to contemplate the littlenesses of indiv[id]ual Comforts, and a passion for the Novelty of the Scheme, rather than the generous enthusiasm of Benevolence? Are they saturated with the Divinity of Truth sufficiently to be always wakeful?"; suggesting that the "Mothers will tinge the Mind of the Infants with prejudications"; reflecting on how the presence of children in the Pantisocratic community might raise fundamental problems: "Southey! -- there are children going with us [...] The little Fricker for instance and your Brothers -- Are they not already deeply tinged with the prejudices and errors of Society? Have they not learnt from their Schoolfellows Fear and Selfishness -- of which the necessary offspring are Deceit, and desultory Hatred? How are we to prevent them from infecting the minds of our Children?"; concluding that the only way to prevent this contamination would be by enforcing obedience on these children through terror, and that this fundamentally betrays the system; adding "I have told you, Southey! that I will accompany you on an imperfect System. But must our System be thus necessarily imperfect?"; saying "I ask the Question that I may know whether or not I should write the Book of Pantisocracy" and posing other questions about Southey's approach to the scheme; adding that he would very much like "a Day's conversation with you [...] So much, that I seriously think of Mail coaching it to Bath -- altho' but for a Day"; saying that Southey's letter "brought a smile to a countenance, that for these three weeks has been ever cloudy & stern"; defending himself against an imputation of slovenliness and saying "I could mention a Lady of fashionable rank and most fashionable Ideas who declared to Caldwell -- that I (S.T. Coleridge) was a man of the most courtly & polished manners, of the most gentlemanly address -- she had ever met with."
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