Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, London?, to Robert Southey, 1819 January 31 : autograph manuscript signed.

Describing John Kenyon and his kindness to him in the past; mentioning that Kenyon is a friend of Thomas Poole's; saying that Kenyon has asked if he would write a letter of introduction for George Ticknor to Southey and Wordworth, which is the current letter; saying that he was taken with a severe "ague-fit" on Wednesday night and describing the experience in detail; saying that he got through a lecture on Lear on Thursday, but, on his doctors' recommendation, is taking a week off; mentioning several relapses that followed; listing the medicines he is taking; saying that he is going to spend the rest of the day writing letters to Sara and Derwent Coleridge, along with sending some books for Derwent, and that "Hartley, who leaves me tomorrow for Oxford, will inclose a letter"; writing of how delighted he was by William Collins's painting of his daughter Sara and saying that Hartley assures him it is a faithful portrait; discussing Terrick Hamilton's "Antar, a Bedoueen Romance" and saying that he has barely dipped into it, only have read ten pages aloud to Lady Erroll (the wife of John Hookham Frere); referring to the criticisms of it and saying that he is anxious to read the whole, especially for what it might indicate about the origin of the Arabian Nights; referring to a Brahmin who is attempting to become "the Luther of Brahmanism"; mentioning that he has learned that John Hookham Frere is paying to have his lectures taken down in shorthand; describing how he would like to use these records to compile a history of philosophy, which could also serve as a introduction to his magnum opus, on which he had been making progress until he began to lecture; saying that Joseph Henry Green has also been taking notes on his lectures, "and hitherto we have neither of us been able to detect any unfaithfulness to the four Postulates, with which I commenced -- 1. That the System should be grounded. 2. That it should not be grounded in an abstraction, nor in a Thing. 3. That there should be no chasm or saltus in the deduction or rather production. 4. That is should be bonâ fide progressive, not in a circulo -- productive not barren"; mentioning an anonymous pamphlet in which "Christabel" is described as "the most obscene Poem in the English Lange."; adding that he heard that Hazlitt "from pure malignity had spread about the Report that Geraldine was a man in disguise"; commenting drily "I saw an old book at Coleorton in which the Paradise Lost was described as 'an obscene Poem' -- so I am in good company."