BIB_ID
415409
Accession number
MA 1851.13
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1827 June 2.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (13 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.
Coleridge dates the letter "Saturday Night / June 1827." Day of writing from published letter cited below.
The first time Coleridge writes the second line of the couplet he has drawn it in the form of an arch, with the words "The pretty pleasing playful" on the left rising to the top of the arch, and "Proley-prowly Pricket" descending on the right.
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.
Coleridge dates the letter "Saturday Night / June 1827." Day of writing from published letter cited below.
The first time Coleridge writes the second line of the couplet he has drawn it in the form of an arch, with the words "The pretty pleasing playful" on the left rising to the top of the arch, and "Proley-prowly Pricket" descending on the right.
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
Dating the first part of the letter Saturday Night; composing a couplet which he says has haunted him all day and which he has been "repeating every two or three minutes" which describes neighbors in Highgate; saying "And there I saw beside of yonder Thicket / The pretty pleasing playful proley-prowly Pricket;" explaining, "...there happens to be a family of Prickets in Highgate - the one a fine, tall slim, swimmy, slidy Lass whose smiles curtsy to you as she bends and floats by - another a sullen black, surly, burly, bum-bayly Lawyer, that is in league with the Spirit of Irony to recall the same Distich - and one or the other I am sure to meet in my walk - while a third is a Patient of Mr. Gillman's, whose impatient Messages - Mrs. Pricket would be very glad, Sir! if you would call as soon as possible - She is so very low & all over pain - are sure to start and make out-leap again / The pretty, pleasing playful, proley prowley Pricket. It is a perfect Plague, a Jack o'lanthorn persecution - and I write this to you to try if I can get it out of my head, just as they send the Vaccine Virus in a twopenny post letter! I forward it, to wit, with the charitable hope of getting rid of the morbid matter by transferring it to another, according to a not yet wholly obsolete fancy & more than once acted on by the Devil's Vulgar, when inoculated with a worse Venom than Cow ever gave name or birth to;" continuing the letter and dating the following "Monday Night;" discussing, at length and in detail the 137th Psalm and what appears to have been a misunderstanding by Cary of Coleridge's earlier discussion on the meanings of the word Prophesy and his interpretation of Prophesy in the first Chapter of Genesis (see MA 1851.12); adding, "My dear Friend! we are so near each other in our convictions on this point, that with a little modification on both sides we should soon accomplish a total Coincidence;" concluding that his daughter is with him and he hopes that they and Mrs. Gillman can visit him soon.
Catalog link
Department