BIB_ID
415383
Accession number
MA 1848.48
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1802 September 2.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 23.8 x 19.4 cm
Notes
Coleridge does not give a place of writing, but the letter is postmarked "Keswick." See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Signed with initials.
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: "Robert Southey Esq. / St James's Place / Kings Down / Bristol / Single Sheet."
Signed with initials.
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: "Robert Southey Esq. / St James's Place / Kings Down / Bristol / Single Sheet."
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
Answering objections in Southey's letter and discussing in great detail the living arrangements at Greta Hall and who would have which rooms if Southey, his family, and Mary Lovell and her son shared the house with them; arguing that there must be a guest room available for the Wordsworths and that he also needs a bedroom for when he is ill; describing various sleeping arrangements, an outbuilding that he hopes to have for his study, and the work currently underway at the house; saying that Sara will write soon with an exact account of the furniture that they have and what would be needed: "So much for Business. Sara will write to Mary or Edith / & when you have the whole before you, you must then settle it"; turning to biblical criticism and describing points (the authorship of parts of the Old and New Testaments, the truth of the Ascension and Resurrection) on which he differs from John Prior Estlin and William Taylor; describing the accepted thinking on these matters in Germany and referring to the work of Eichhorn and Herder; writing "Before the time of Grotius's de Veritate Christianâ no stress was lay'd on the judicial, law-cant kind of evidence for Christianity which has been since so much in Fashion / & Lessing very sensibly considers Grotius as the greatest Enemy that Xtianity ever had"; refuting Taylor's claim to a discovery and quoting from Herder; mentioning that Planck has written "a very large & most fact-full History of the Reformation"; adding in a postscript a clarification about the building of a new house and the destruction of the old house at Greta Hall and concluding "an excellent Story that Eagle of Brass!"
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