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Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Tarrant Gunville, to Robert Southey, 1803 March 12 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
415457
Accession number
MA 1848.54
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Tarrant Gunville, England, 1803 March 12.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 23.3 x 18.8 cm
Notes
Coleridge does not give a year of writing, but it is clear from the contents of the letter that it was written during his stay with the Wedgwoods in 1803. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
No place of writing is given, but the letter is postmarked "Blandford." From this and references in the letter to Gunville, it was clearly written at Josiah Wedgwood's house in Tarrant Gunville.
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 Esqre / St James's Parade / Kingsdown / 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
Arguing a point about the invention of printing and its relation (or lack thereof) to the history of seals, coinage and other items that have images impressed upon them; suggesting some explanations for the course of this historical development; agreeing with Southey that the second number of the Edinburgh Review is "altogether despicable"; describing an article on Kant in the issue as "impudent & senseless Babble"; asking whether Southey reads Italian and recommending that he read "the historical & political Works of Machiavel. I prefer him greatly to Tacitus"; describing Thomas Wedgwood's indecision about whether or not to take Coleridge as his companion on a trip to Europe ("for his objections to me were, my health, & my ignorance of French & Italian, & the absolute necessity of his having some one to take the whole business of the road off his hands") and saying that, after much back and forth, events were finally decided in his favor, when war intervened; saying that they are nevertheless going ahead to London; begging Southey to "mention to no soul alive that I am in London, & communicate no part of this Letter to [James Webbe] Tobin"; asking if Southey could find out from "Mr [John] King or Dr [Thomas] Beddoes" where in London he could procure gout medicine; praising Beddoes and, with reservations, his work Hygeia: or Essays Moral and Medical; referring to a maxim of Tobin's about keeping on good terms with acquaintances; saying that he wishes that Southey were in Keswick and that Mary Lovell had found a position elsewhere; writing of how pleasant and gracious the Wedgwoods are, and how unsuitable she would have been as their governess, in terms of temper and personality; saying that Wordsworth intends to live a half mile from Keswick and that he feels he and Southey would get along better now than they might have in the past: "he is now fonder of conversation & more open"; sending kisses to Southey's daughter Margaret and saying "I have a Father's Heart for all of her age -- how much more for a child of your's, linked together as we have been, by good & evil, ple[asure] & pain"; adding that he wishes they were alike in one other aspect (possibly a reference to Southey's domestic happiness), "[b]ut the Time is past."