BIB_ID
415863
Accession number
MA 1854.6
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Calne, England, 1815 December.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 22.3 x 18.2 cm
Notes
Dr. Brabant was an English physician in Devizes who also had an interest in German Higher Criticism. Coleridge was a patient of Dr. Brabant during the years he lived in Calne.
This collection, MA 1854, is comprised of ten autograph letters signed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to R.H. Brabant, written from March 10, 1815 through December 5, 1816. It also includes 4 pages of autograph notes and one fragment of an autograph letter signed to Brabant. The fragment is written from Calne but is undated.
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 to R. Brabant, Esq're / Surgeon . Devizes."
The date of writing is from the published letter cited below which dates it to "Late December" with a footnote saying "The reference not only to improved health under Brabant's regimen, but also to anxiety concerning a 'place of residence for the ensuing year' suggest that this letter was written in December after Coleridge had recovered from his six weeks' illness."
This collection, MA 1854, is comprised of ten autograph letters signed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to R.H. Brabant, written from March 10, 1815 through December 5, 1816. It also includes 4 pages of autograph notes and one fragment of an autograph letter signed to Brabant. The fragment is written from Calne but is undated.
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 to R. Brabant, Esq're / Surgeon . Devizes."
The date of writing is from the published letter cited below which dates it to "Late December" with a footnote saying "The reference not only to improved health under Brabant's regimen, but also to anxiety concerning a 'place of residence for the ensuing year' suggest that this letter was written in December after Coleridge had recovered from his six weeks' illness."
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
Relating details of his improved health; saying "Should I have such success in my dramatic enterprizes as to be able to say - 'for six months to come I am not under the necessity of doing any thing!' I have strong hopes that I should emancipate myself altogether from this most pitiable Slavery, the fetters of which do indeed eat into the Soul. In my present circumstances, and under the disquieting uncertainty, in which I am, concerning my place of residence for the ensuing year, all I can do is to be quite regular, and never to exceed the smallest dose of Poison that will suffice to keep me tranquil and capable of literary labor. What I refer to in this last sentence I would rather say than write to you - Therefore be so good as to take no notice of it. It will be a sore heart-wasting to me to part from Mr. Morgan : for never was there a man of stricter integrity or high honor, nor have I or can I have a more faithful, zealous, & disinterested Friend;" defending himself against a charge of sending "...out a Gentleman's Servant in his own house to a public House for a Bottle of Brandy;" offering, at length and in detail, his comments on anatomy books he has been reading and issues related to germs, metastasis and cysts; asking "Why should not nature have made vermin to live within other Animals as well as on their skin? I doubt not, that if any new arrangement of edible or calorific matter were to take place, Germs pre-exist, who would be the Adams & Eves of the new Paradise. - And as to the Cysts, it is not a Case in point - for the question is not, what metamorphosis Life may be capable of effecting in the Compounds subject to it's action, but the possibility of an organized living Whole by the single deranged energy of a component part of an Animal utterly...[followed by two Greek words];" concluding with a postscript, "Ultra solitum modum usque in taedium hanc epistolam porrexi, sed non apud te, cui nulla est pagina gratior, quam quae me loquaciorem apportat tibi. Augustini Epist. 72. Whatever this Quotation wants in Self-flattery I attribute to your kindness."
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