Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, place not identified, to Robert Southey, 1795 November 13 : autograph manuscript signed.

Telling Southey "You are lost to me, because you are lost to Virtue"; giving the history of their friendship up until that point, "[a]s this will probably be the last time I shall have occasion to address you"; describing his own struggles with the compromises that would be necessary for the creation of Pantisocracy, including his recent marriage to Sara Fricker (of which he also writes "I love and am beloved, and I am happy!"); describing in detail, incident by incident, his increasing disenchantment with Southey and his suspicions about Southey's commitment to the principles of Pantisocracy, especially when he discovered that Southey wished to retain his own property in the Welsh farming scheme that would precede the establishment of a community in America: "In short, we were to commence partners in a petty Farming Trade. This was the Mouse of which the Mountain Pantisocracy was at last safely delivered!"; writing of how he began to distance himself from Southey, and Southey's responses to this ("I locked up my heart from you, and you perceived it and I intended you to perceive it"); saying that this did not affect his high opinion of Southey's literary gifts; discussing Southey's indecision about whether to join the church or study law, and his own efforts to show him the immorality of taking holy orders given Southey's skepticism about the church; responding to charges that he had misrepresented Southey's statements during this period; accusing Southey of abandoning the scheme, himself, and George Burnett, who was to be part of it; drawing Southey's attention to how the collapse of the scheme will affect Burnett particularly; criticizing Southey's selfishness, inconsistency, and cowardice: "O Selfish, money-loving Man! what Principle have you not given up? -- Tho' Death had been the consequence, I would have spit in that man's Face & called him Liar, who should have spoken that last sentence concerning you, 9 months ago. For blindly did I esteem you. O God! that such a mind should fall in love with that low, dirty, gutter-grubbing Trull, Worldly Prudence!!"; defending himself against Southey's assertion to Robert Lovell that Coleridge's indolence was the reason he abandoned Pantisocracy; listing all the work he did on their joint projects and claiming that the quality of what he contributed outweighed the amount of it; admitting that he is indolent and saying that he had always been forthright about his imperfections; saying that Southey had never accused him of this face-to-face or given it as the reason for withdrawing from Pantisocracy, even when questioned about it by Coleridge; adding that this would have been a fair justification for expelling himself from the scheme, but not for abandoning it altogether; saying that he has heard that Southey is about to depart for Lisbon on Saturday morning; wishing him happiness and writing "You have left a large Void in my Heart -- I know no man big enough to fill it [...] I did not only venerate you for your own Virtues, I prized you as the Sheet Anchor of mine! And even [as] a Poet, my Vanity knew no keener gratification than your Praise"; advising him to "meditate adoringly on him, the Source of all Virtue" (i.e. God); assuring him that Burnett "still loves you" and asking that he accept Sara's "Love & Blessing [...] as the future Husband of her best-loved Sister"; bidding him "Farewell!"