BIB_ID
415728
Accession number
MA 1848.79
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England?, 1807 December 14.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 22.8 x 18.5 cm
Notes
Coleridge does not list a date of writing. It has been taken from the postmark.
No place of writing is given, but, based on Coleridge's movements at this time and the contents of the letter, it was most likely written in London. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Signed with initials.
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: "R. Southey, Esqre / Greta Hall / Keswick / Cumberland / Single."
No place of writing is given, but, based on Coleridge's movements at this time and the contents of the letter, it was most likely written in London. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Signed with initials.
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: "R. Southey, Esqre / Greta Hall / Keswick / Cumberland / Single."
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
Saying that he has been ill and confined to his bedroom with a "low bilious fever" for about a week; writing that he had a fever the whole time he was with Humphry Davy ("[w]hether contagion or sympathy, I know not"), that it went away during a short trip to Bristol and came back on his return to London; saying that he has learned that Davy's life is in danger and lamenting the prospect; asking Southey to pass on various messages to Sara Coleridge and the children, including the message that he has paid a bill; describing how much he admired Southey's letter to Walter Scott, in which he declined Scott's help in interceding with the editor of the Edinburgh Review and declared himself uninterested in writing for the Review; calling it "an unusual specimen of honorable feeling supporting itself by sound Sense and conveyed with simplicity, dignity, and a warmth evidently under the complete control of the Understanding"; declaring his own indifference to the Review and its opinions; discussing the lectures he will be giving, the delay that has been caused by Davy's illness and the timing of a possible essay on Wordsworth's poems in the Annual Review so as not to anticipate the lectures; describing how even-handed he plans to be: "I shall express my convictions of the faults & defect[s] of the Poems & Systems, as plainly as of the excellencies"; listing the poetry he plans to lecture on; mentioning that he did not particularly admire Scott's poem "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" but he did not see any resemblance in it to "Christabel"; saying that he wrote Dr. Stoddart a letter remonstrating with him for having detained his books and manuscripts; claiming that they would show that he had predicted the course of recent political events; adding that he has since received an abusive letter from Stoddart which confirms what he had suspected, that Stoddart himself is writing a book; saying that Stoddart also refuses to release his books and manuscripts until the repayment of a debt; explaining that he is about to make this payment and it will mean that he cannot send money to Sara for several weeks; writing in a postscript that a tragedy by William Godwin is about to be performed and that Godwin "is going to the Dogs"; saying that he is willing to write any review at all after he delivers his lectures and sending his love to Southey's family; adding that he has thought of showing Dr. Stoddart's letter to Sir Alexander Ball, to take revenge on him: "O the folly of sinning against our first & pure Impressions! -- It is the Sin against our own Ghost, at least."
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