BIB_ID
415670
Accession number
MA 1852.31
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Bristol, England, 1814 June 1.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 20.7 x 12.5 cm
Notes
This collection, MA 1852, is comprised of 40 autograph letters signed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Mr. and Mrs. John James Morgan, written from November 1807 through October 1826. Coleridge lived with the Morgans from 1810-1816.
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.
Address panel with postmarks to "J. J. Morgan, Esq're / Mrs. Smith's / Ashley Box / near Bath."
Coleridge dates the letter "2 June, 1814 / 2 Queen's Square" however according to published letter cited below Coleridge wrote this letter on June 1st, the date of the postmark.
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.
Address panel with postmarks to "J. J. Morgan, Esq're / Mrs. Smith's / Ashley Box / near Bath."
Coleridge dates the letter "2 June, 1814 / 2 Queen's Square" however according to published letter cited below Coleridge wrote this letter on June 1st, the date of the postmark.
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
Explaining that he had not been to visit them because Lady Beaumont's sister, Mrs. Fermor, has come "...to have the comfort of my religious openings & consolations. The Lord has deserted her, she says;" discussing Joseph Cottle's new work, Messiah, and his convalescence from a burst vessel in his chest; relating Cottle's theory that it is not opium "...that has injured me; but (what think you? -) the Devil. Yes, says he, the Devil, depend upon it, has got possession of you. It is the Devil, that is even now within you...Now is not Jo. a rare Comforter to a poor fellow in dreadful Low Spirits? - I verily believe, that Wade would have gone & setting fire to all his Mss. have suffocated him in his own poetry, if I had [not] prevented it - & poor Jo. had not burst a Blood Vessel.- God bless him! he is a well-meaning Creature; but a great Fool;" saying he has not heard from Allston whom he had asked to get for him the edition of The Friend; adding that he ordered it from Bulgin [William Bulgin, Bristol bookseller] who replied that his London correspondent told him "Out of Print, & the Publishers, Gale & Curtis &c, have long given over the hope of inducing the Author to prepare a second Edition' - How my good qualities diffuse themselves! - Bul[gin] did not know me, which was lucky." adding, in a postscript, "Quere. As I could not have swallowed the Devil with his antlers dispreading, whether it does not follow, that he must have pocketed his horns : consequently, that the Devil is a poor cowardly Wittold? Indeed, I never had a good opinion of him."
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