BIB_ID
415586
Accession number
MA 1848.68
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1804 February 20.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 23.7 x 18.8 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives the place of writing as "Rickman's office, H. of Commons," a reference to John Rickman.
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 intact seal: "Mr Southey / Greta Hall / Keswick."
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 intact seal: "Mr Southey / Greta Hall / Keswick."
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
Concerning a disagreement with William Godwin about reviews and the importance of the format in which they appear: "I replyed by laughing in the first place at the capricious nature of his nicety -- that what was gross in folio, should become double-refined in octavo fool's cap, or pick-pocket Quartos -- blind slavish Egotism in small pica, manly discriminating Self-respect in double primer -- / modest, as Maiden's blushes, between boards, or in Calf's skin / & only not obscene in naked Sheets"; describing a longer-than-expected evening with Godwin, his wife and others, and his outburst at the end of it; saying that the next morning, he felt terrible and remorseful about having insulted Godwin in the presence of his wife, and wrote him an apologetic letter; adding that he has since learned, from a conversation between Godwin and Charles Lamb, that Godwin would never have egged him on if it hadn't been for his wife who "twitted him for his prostration before me"; writing that Godwin also said that he felt that something was wrong with Coleridge ("something unusual ailed me [...] I had not been my natural Self the whole evening"); reproaching himself for having attacked Godwin; vowing to spend his time in the future only with close friends; urging Southey to continue to work on his poem "Madoc"; saying that he will call on Longman as soon as he receives an answer to a note; writing that the damp weather has affected him badly and "last night I had two or three hours of horrible Dreams with screaming-fits"; adding in a postscript that he doesn't know why Sara has not received his letters and that he has written three or four times; describing an encounter with George Burnett: "I met G. Burnet the day before yesterday in Linc. Inn fields -- so nervous, so helpless -- with such opium-stupidly-wild eyes -- O it made the place, one calls the Heart, feel as if it was going to [break]."
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