BIB_ID
415511
Accession number
MA 1848.57
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1803 August 1.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 24.9 x 20.4 cm
Notes
Coleridge does not list a place of writing, but the letter has a "Keswick" postmark.
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 Parade / Kingsdown / Bristol."
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 Parade / 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
Declaring himself willing to follow Southey's lead on a plan for a Bibliotheca Britannica; writing of his sense of his own intellectual powers ("the sense of responsibility to my own mind is growing deeper & deeper with me from many causes -- chiefly, from the knowledge that I am not of no significance, relatively to, comparatively with, other men, my contemporaries"); describing himself: "it was in me the heat, the bustle, and overflowing of a mind, too vehemently pushed on from within to be regardful of the object, upon which it was moving"; describing his weaknesses ("a faulty delight in the being beloved, without having examined my heart, whether, if beloved, I had any thing to give in return beyond general kindness & general Sympathy") and his insecurities ("that I had power not strength -- an involuntary Imposter -- that I had no real Genius, no real Depth"); adding "This on my honor is as fair a statement of my habitual Haunting, as I could give before the Tribunal of Heaven / How it arose in me, I have but lately discovered / -- Still it works within me / but only as a Disease, the cause & meaning of which I know"; discussing different aspects of the proposed Bibliotheca Britannica: "Good heavens! if you & I, [John] Rickman & [Charles] Lamb, were to put our Shoulders to one volume / a compleat History of the Dark Ages [...] what might not be done"; mentioning what he thinks he can ask of Longman for "a great Book of Criticism respecting Poetry & Prose"; saying that he will leave soon for Scotland and that letters can be addressed to him in Glasgow or Edinburgh; sending news of his children Sara, Derwent and Hartley; mentioning that William Hazlitt has made portraits of himself and Wordsworth, "very much in the manner of Titian's Portraits -- he wishes to take Lamb -- & you."
Catalog link
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