BIB_ID
415193
Accession number
MA 1848.26
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Nether Stowey, England, 1799 September 30.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 25.3 x 20.2 cm
Notes
Coleridge lists the date of writing as "Sept. 30" at the end of the letter, but does not give a year. In the Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Griggs argues that this letter was most likely written in 1799. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
No place of writing is given on the letter, but it is postmarked "Bridgewater." Based on references in the letter, it was most likely written at Nether Stowey, where the Coleridges were living.
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: "Mr Southey / Mr Tucker's / Forestreet Hill / Exeter / Single."
No place of writing is given on the letter, but it is postmarked "Bridgewater." Based on references in the letter, it was most likely written at Nether Stowey, where the Coleridges were living.
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: "Mr Southey / Mr Tucker's / Forestreet Hill / Exeter / Single."
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
Referring to Napoleon and it being "the mode & fashion" to deny that he is a "man of Science"; recommending that Southey procure a copy of John Bampfylde's sonnets from William Jackson and asking him to tell him what he thinks of Jackson; explaining the difference between male and female rhymes and giving examples; suggesting that Allah be substituted for God throughout in Southey's poem "Thalaba": "the so frequent repetition of that last word [God] gives somehow or other a sermonic Cast to a Poem / and perhaps too it might give a not altogether unfounded offence, that a name so connected with awful realities, is (so often & so solemnly) blended with those bold Fictions which ask & gain only a transient Faith"; describing his domestic situation: "Our little Hovel is almost afloat -- poor Sara tired off her legs with servanting -- the young one [Hartley] fretful & noisy from confinement exerts his activities on all forbidden Things -- the house stinks of Sulphur -- I however, sunk in Spinoza, remain as undisturbed as a Toad in a Rock / that is to say, when my rheumatic pains are asleep"; describing the girdles he and Sara have been wearing "as Preventives" (possibly against the illness mentioned in the previous letter, MA 1848.25); saying that it made him sweat terribly ("O Christus Jesus! -- how I stunk!") and that he has had a severe fit of rheumatism, with shooting pains: "You'd laugh to see how pale & haggard I look -- & by way of a Clincher, I am almost certain that Hartley has not had the Itch"; describing a local incident in which a mentally disturbed son attacked his father and Coleridge intervened to stop him; describing how the son now "grins with hideous distortions of rage" and threatens Hartley, whenever they encounter him; saying that he is going to demand that Thomas Poole call the parish and help the man's elderly parents; promising to pay the bookseller Gilbert Dyer when he receives the books he had ordered; quoting a passage about vultures and eagles from J.G. Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam and commenting on it; discussing his next projects, saying he is not inclined to publish either a collection of letters or a volume of poems, and that he is hopeful about the idea of a schoolbook: "When I have licked the plan enough for you to discern it's embryo Lineaments, I will send it you"; saying that there are two books by German writers (J.G. von Herder and E.A.W. von Zimmermann) that he needs and asking if he might be able to borrow them from William Taylor; mentioning that he has had "very serious Thoughts of trying to get a couple of Pupils"; including a comic epigram; dismissing some "long rigamarole Verses" he wrote as containing nothing but "facility of Language & oddity of Rhyme," but saying that if he goes to Bristol, he will leave them with Joseph Cottle to be sent to Southey; saying that Sara is anxious to hear from her sister Eliza and that Hartley is fast asleep: "When I told him, you had sent your love to him in the Letter, he sat, & thought & thought, and at last burst into a fit of Laughter --/."
Catalog link
Department