BIB_ID
415402
Accession number
MA 1851.12
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1827 May 26.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (8 pages) ; 22.7 x 18.6 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.
Copy in the hand of Ernest Hartley Coleridge.
The letter is dated "Friday night or Saturday morning / Grove, Highgate - May 1827." Friday was the 25th and Saturday the 26th in May 1827.
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.
Copy in the hand of Ernest Hartley Coleridge.
The letter is dated "Friday night or Saturday morning / Grove, Highgate - May 1827." Friday was the 25th and Saturday the 26th in May 1827.
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
Commenting, at length and in detail, on the theology put forth by George Croly in "The Apocalypse of St. John;" saying "Verily, verily, Mr dear Friend! I feel it impossible to think of this shallow fiddle-faddle Trumpery, and how it is [and] has been trumpeted and patronized by our Bishops and Dignitaries, and not exact either Heraclitus or Democritus. I laugh that I may not weep. You know me too well to suppose me capable to treating even an error of faith with levity. But these are not errors of faith; but blunders from the utter want of Faith, a Vertigo from spiritual inanition, from the lack of all internal strength; even as a man giddy-drunk throws his arms about, and clasps hold of a Barber's Block for support - and mistakes seeing double for 'additional evidences;" asking if he would look in the theological part of his Catalogue [Printed Books at the British Museum] "...to see whether you have any number of Commentators on the Apocalypse...a fancy has struck me, that if one could select some one Interpreter & Prognosticator from each Century from the tenth to the 16th Century - from A.D. 1000 to 1600 - and one for every half century from 1600 to 1827 - and give the various fulfilments asserted or expected of any two or three famous passages in the Apocalypse, Trumpets or Vials, in a sort of tabular form or synoptic map - it would be one way of opening men's eyes;" discussing, at length and in detail, three ways to interpret the word prophesy; concluding by saying "...pray that if I am in error, you or some other good man will be commissioned to enlighten and recall me."
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