BIB_ID
415357
Accession number
MA 1848.42
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1801 October 21.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 24.4 x 19.5 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives the date of writing as "Oct. 21. 1801" and then adds "The day after my Birth day -- 29 years of age! -- Who on earth can say that without a sigh!"
No place of writing is given, though based on the contents of the letter, it seems most likely that it was written in Keswick. 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.
No place of writing is given, though based on the contents of the letter, it seems most likely that it was written in Keswick. 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.
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 that Southey did not stay long enough to "love these mountains & this wonderful vale"; describing the landscape and the weather; saying that he hopes to go south for "warm Rooms & deep tranquility," possibly traveling to London with Southey and his wife Edith; describing himself as "sadly shattered" and saying that the least agitation brings on bowel complaints and vomiting; writing of Sara: "alas! we are not suited to each other"; saying that while he is away from her, he will be practicing self-discipline and will try to draw her nearer to him "by a regular development of all the sources of our unhappiness," and that following this, he will try again to live with her: "I will go believing that it will end happily"; saying that if it does not, "why then, it is better for her & my children, that I should live apart, than that she should be a Widow & they Orphans"; laying out his thoughts on a possible separation from her and what it would entail; adding "When I least love her, then m[ost] do I feel anxiety for her peace, comfort, & welfare. Is s[he] not the mother of my children? And am I the man not to know & feel this?"; describing his feelings about telling this to Southey and saying that it was hard to enjoy the time he spent with him because he was afraid that Southey would not sympathize with him; adding "Now my heart is a little easy"; commenting on Humphry Davy's moral character and writing that he does not know of one "deep metaphysician who was not led by his speculations to an austere system of morals"; referring to Aristotle, Zeno, St. Paul, Spinoza, Hartley, Kant, Fichte and Hume; writing "It is not thinking that will disturb a man's morals, or confound the distinctions, which to think makes. But it is talking -- talking -- talking -- that is the curse & the poison. I defy Davy to think half of what he talks"; making a reference to Schiller's Wallenstein; commenting further on chemistry; discussing the nature of love ("We all have obscure feelings that must be connected with some thing or other -- the Miser with a guinea -- Lord Nelson with a blue Ribbon -- Wordsworth's old Molly with her washing Tub -- Wordsworth with the Hills, Lakes, & Trees") and saying he believes the study of chemistry tends to prevent young men from falling in love, though he knows this opinion would be ridiculed by John Rickman; including some "Sapphic Verses translated in my way from [Friedrich] Stolberg"; saying that his translation is "more poetical than the original" and giving a literal translation of the lines.
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