BIB_ID
415358
Accession number
MA 1851.1
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Littlehampton, England, 1817 October 29.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (1 page, with address) ; 22.3 x 18.0 cm
Notes
This collection, MA 1851, is comprised of 12 autograph letters signed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Henry Francis Cary, written from October 1817 through September 1829 and 4 copies of autograph letters from Coleridge to H.F. Cary, in the hand of Ernest Hartley Coleridge, and dated May 25 or 26, 1827, June 2, 1827, November 29, 1830 and April 22,1832.
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 individually as MA 1848- MA 1857.
Address panel with postmark to "Reverend Mr. Cary."
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 individually as MA 1848- MA 1857.
Address panel with postmark to "Reverend Mr. Cary."
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
Praising his translation of Dante; saying he has "...not been able to read more than two books and passages here and there of the other, of your Translation of Dante. You will not suspect me of the worthlessness of exceeding my real opinion, but like a good Christian will make even modesty give way to charity, tho' I say, that in the severity and learned Simplicity of the diction, and in the peculiar character of the Blank verse, it has transcended what I should have thought possible without the Terza Rima. In itself the Metre is, compared with any English Poem of one quarter the length, the most varied and harmonious to my ear of any since Milton - and yet the effect is so Dantesque that to those, who should compare it only with other English Poems, it would, I doubt not, have the same effect as the Terza Rima has compared with other Italian metres. I would, that my literary Influence were enough to secure the knowledge of the work for the true Lovers of Poetry in general. - But how came it that you had it published in so too unostentatious a form - For a second or third Edition the form has it's conveniences; but for the first, in the present state of English society, quod non arrogas tibi, non habes. - If you have any other works, Poems, or Poematia, by you, printed or MSS, you would gratify me by reading them to me - in the mean time accept in the spirit, in which it is offered, this trifling testimonial of my respect."
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