BIB_ID
415501
Accession number
MA 1848.56
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1803 June 29.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 23.7 x 19 cm
Notes
On the first page of the item, Sara Coleridge has added a short letter addressed to her sister Edith and written between the lines of her husband's letter; her letter discusses a sum of money and her daughter Sara.
Coleridge gives only "Wednesday" for the date of writing. However, the letter is postmarked July 2, 1803 (a Saturday), and the Wednesday of that week fell on June 29th. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
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: "Mr Southey / St James's Place / Kingsdown / Bristol."
Coleridge gives only "Wednesday" for the date of writing. However, the letter is postmarked July 2, 1803 (a Saturday), and the Wednesday of that week fell on June 29th. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
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: "Mr Southey / St James's Place / Kingsdown / Bristol."
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 on the phenomenon of a lack of willpower in himself and others; mentioning "the doctrines of Materialism, & mechanical necessity"; discussing his health and the weather; enclosing £10 for Mrs. Fricker; discussing the Edinburgh Review and Edinburgh as a site of much literary gossip ("even I have had my portion of Puff there"); mentioning a "very interesting piece of Casuistry [...] respecting a double Infant" that Southey brought to his attention and that he would like to use in a book he is writing; advising Southey on his History of Portugal and praising his style; telling him to expect "certain Explosions in the Morning Post -- Coleridge versus Fox -- in about a week," relaying Wordsworth's and Richard Sharp's reactions to Coleridge's letters to Fox and objecting to the idea that he should not attack Fox because "he is an amiable man": "O Christ! this is a pretty age in the article, Morality! -- When I cease to love Truth best of all things; & Liberty, the next best; may I cease to live -- nay, it is my creed, that I should thereby cease to live / for as far as any thing can be called probable in a subject so dark, it seems most probable to me, that our Immortality is to be a work of our own Hands"; sending news of the children and love to Edith and Mary; writing in a postscript about the "great delight & instruction" he has received from reading Erigena; comparing the "dark Ages" and the present time; asking if Southey has read William Paley's most recent book and saying that he could make "a dashing Review of it."
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