Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, place not identified, to Robert Southey, 1794 December 29 : autograph manuscript signed.

Describing himself as "calm [...] as an Autumnal Day, when the Sky is covered with grey moveless Clouds," in the wake of receiving a letter from Mary Evans; saying that he continues to love her, but since he no longer has any hope of it being returned, his passion has lost its "disquieting Power"; describing their fraternal feelings for each other when they were together, and how only being absent from her caused "gnawings of Suspense, and that Dreaminess of Mind"; calling Evans "my ideal Standard of female excellence"; saying that their separation is all to the good and, if they had been married, "the Excess of my Affection would have effeminated my Intellect"; writing that he can bear losing Evans, but it is far harder to contemplate marrying Sara Fricker: "to marry a woman whom I do not love -- to degrade her, whom I call my Wife, by making her an Instrument of low Desire -- and on the removal of a desultory Appetite, to be perhaps not displeased with her Absence!"; promising, however, that "I will do my Duty"; responding to a letter from Southey; saying that Southey's "Sensibilities are tempestuous" and warning him against feeling "Indignation at Weakness"; adding that he wishes Southey were "a Necessitarian -- and (believing in an all-loving Omnipotence) an Optimist"; writing that, contrary to appearances, he is eager to leave town and has thought of walking down to Bath; asking if he knows who the author of some verses addressed to himself and published in the Morning Chronicle is; speculating "Would a Pistol preserve Integrity? -- To concentrate Guilt -- no very philosophical mode of preventing it"; praising several of Southey's sonnets and discussing the form generally; copying out, with his own revisions, a sonnet by Southey that begins "With wayworn Feet a Pilgrim woe-begone"; relaying that Charles Lamb likes it "with tears in his Eyes"; commenting on Mary Lamb's health and the close relationship between the brother and sister; mentioning that he was writing a poem and wished Lamb to "describe the Character & Doctrines of Jesus Christ for me -- but his low Spirits prevented him -- The Poem is in blank Verse on the Nativity"; telling Southey that he sent Lamb a poem "which flowed from my Pen extemporaneously" and including that poem, which is titled "To C. Lamb"; agreeing that "Wynne [C.W.W. Wynn, a friend of Southey's] is indeed a noble Fellow -- more when we meet --."