BIB_ID
415842
Accession number
MA 1848.90
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1817 August 12.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 22.2 x 18.2 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives only "Tuesday Morning, 1/2 past 6" for the date of writing. Based on a letter from Southey to his wife dated August 13, 1817 in which he discusses this visit, Griggs proposes that Coleridge wrote this letter on the 12th. 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.
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.
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 waiting for Southey's return with "painful anxiety" and heard news of it on Sunday night from Hartley; writing that he would have tried to see him yesterday, but he had taken certain medicines ("which I cannot omit taking once in three weeks or a month without nervous hebetude") and they had a stronger effect than usual; saying from the time John Hookham Frere left him on Sunday night until that morning he has had trouble sleeping and experienced "Gripes" and "Interludes of Cramp, the Howler"; adding that Frere is coming tomorrow to read over a political article for the Quarterly Review and he still has a great deal of work to do on it; entreating Southey to give him a few hours at Highgate; mentioning that Thomas Poole has visited and sent him a letter containing advice that agrees with other advice Coleridge has received from friends; asking Southey to write and tell him which day it would be convenient for Coleridge to call on him and when; writing of Hartley: "He seems to me much improved -- all, I have to complain of, is a want of system in his studies, and a fixed Object in the employment of his Time. He ought within the next 12 months to make himself a respectable acquaintance with Hebrew and with German / and to devote himself to Theology. It would be his duty were it only that he might give a practical result to his Father's long-continued and arduous theological Reading & Reflection"; concluding "I trust, that your Tour has been according to your best wishes" and "May God bless you."
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