BIB_ID
415083
Accession number
MA 1848.12
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Place not identified, 1794 December 17.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 37.8 x 23.4 cm
Notes
The letter contains autograph corrections of various lines of poetry. On the address panel, Southey has written eight lines of verse dedicated to William Godwin, beginning "What tho' Oppression's blood-cemented fame."
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.
Address panel with postmarks: "Robert Southey / No 8 / Westgate Buildings / Bath."
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.
Address panel with postmarks: "Robert Southey / No 8 / Westgate Buildings / Bath."
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 "When I am unhappy, a sigh or a groan does not feel sufficient to relieve the oppression of my Heart -- I give a long whistle"; discussing the virtues of "Integrity of Heart" over "Effulgence of Intellect" and using a military metaphor to describe how he wishes he were more bound by fixed principles and "right onward Feelings"; mentioning that he dined with the editors of the Morning Chronicle yesterday and met Thomas Holcroft; adding that neither Holcroft nor Robert Lovell understand or sympathize with Pantisocracy: "Holcroft opposes it violently -- & thinks it not virtuous. His arguments were such as Nugent and twenty others have used to us before him -- they were nothing"; describing Holcroft's conversation and character: "He talks incessantly of Metaphysics, of which he appears to me to know nothing"; comparing him unfavorably to Richard Porson: "My God! to hear Porson crush [William] Godwin, Holcroft &c -- They absolutely tremble before him"; quoting an exchange he had with Holcroft; adding "He absolutely infests you with Atheism [...] As to his taste in Poetry -- he thinks lightly or rather contemptuously of Bowles' Sonnets"; defending Bowles; mentioning that he will dine with Godwin and another person on Sunday; expressing his astonishment at Southey's preference for an elegy ("I think it the worst thing, you ever wrote") and saying that it is almost as bad as "Lovell's Farm house"; including four lines of verse; critiquing the poem in detail and making an argument about poetic method: "Before you write a Poem, you should say to yourself -- What do I intend to be the Character of this Poem -- Which Feature is to be predominant in it? -- So you may make it a Unique"; including two sonnets, one on Joseph Priestley, the other on Tadeusz Kościuszko; saying that he has also written a sonnet to Godwin, though the first eight lines are "miserably magazinish"; including the last six lines and asking for Southey's assistance; asking also for Southey's "minutest opinion" on a sonnet dedicated to Richard Brinsley Sheridan and saying that he thinks it might be too original in its conception to be understood; giving the sonnet and following it with another dedicated to Edmund Burke; including a poem titled "Address to a young Jack Ass & it's tethered Mother"; adding at the end of the letter a sonnet to Southey beginning "Southey! thy Melodies steal o'er mine Ear"; sending love to "you & your Mother & Edith & Sara & Mary & little Eliza &&&&&& S.T. Coleridge."
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