Coleridge gives the date of writing as "Thursday, April 1800." In the Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Griggs notes that this letter was written in response to one by Southey dated April 1, 1800, telling Coleridge that he was leaving for Lisbon, and suggests that Coleridge's letter was written on the 10th, which was a Thursday. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
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.
Discussing their plans for the future and saying that perhaps his family will join Southey's on the Continent if they stay for longer than a year; adding that, if Southey and his family return before then, they could come live with him and his family; writing that he does not know where they will be in a year, "but in some interesting Country it will be, in Heaven or Earth"; saying that he feels "assurances & comfortable Hopes of your full Recovery"; promising to do all that Southey has asked of him; saying that he will send future letters to Lisbon; mentioning that he has been "in excessive Perplexity of mind lately on sundry subjects -- and have besides over-worked myself"; writing that he has great hopes for Southey's History of Portugal but urging him to "be ever a Poet in your higher moments"; promising to send him regularly anything that is interesting; mentioning that Wordsworth is publishing a second volume of Lyrical Ballads & Pastorals and that both he and Wordsworth are thinking of writing a novel, but he plans to re-write his tragedy (probably "Osorio") first; referring to Sir Herbert Croft's "Insolence" over a matter concerning Chatterton and saying that if he continues, he will "give him a scourging that shall flea him"; vowing to find subscribers for the Chatterton project and adding "I have ample materials for a most interesting Historical & Metaphysical Essay on Literary Forgery from the Hymns of Orpheus which deceived Aristotle to the Vortigern of Shakespeare that deceived Dr Parr -- but Dr Parr was the greater Booby"; mentioning that he doesn't wholly approve of Southey's "Anthologizing," but he will write more on this later; sending his love to Edith; concluding "The time returns upon me, Southey! when we dream one Dream, & that a glorious one -- when we eat together, & thought each other greater & better than all the World beside, and when we were bed fellows. Those days can never be forgotten, and till they are forgotten, we cannot, if we would, cease to love each other."