BIB_ID
415868
Accession number
MA 1854.10
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1816 December 5.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 22.4 x 18.3 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] / De[vizes]."
The top half of page 3 has been cut away which has also cut away a portion of the address panel.
Coleridge dates the letter "Thursday, 5 Dec'r 1816" and "J. Gillman's Esqre / Highgate."
According to a footnote to the published letter cited below, "Coleridge wrongly attributes the review of "Christabel" in the Edinburgh Review of Sept. 1816 to Hazlitt. Actually...Tom Moore was the author."
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] / De[vizes]."
The top half of page 3 has been cut away which has also cut away a portion of the address panel.
Coleridge dates the letter "Thursday, 5 Dec'r 1816" and "J. Gillman's Esqre / Highgate."
According to a footnote to the published letter cited below, "Coleridge wrongly attributes the review of "Christabel" in the Edinburgh Review of Sept. 1816 to Hazlitt. Actually...Tom Moore was the author."
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
Concerning his work and his health; saying "I work hard, not only for myself, but (as it has happened, tho' at an unfortunate period) for others - and day after day I am at it from between 9 and 10 to 4 before dinner - and from 7 to 12, nay 1 - afterwards - ever since I returned from the sea side - And yet every year I compose more slowly and with great effort, not from any decrease in the stream of my Thoughts - for the contrary is the case; but from the increasing difficulty of satisfying myself, and the increasing Self-teizing when I let a sentence go off that I know to be faulty. - One of the Evoluta I hereby intreat your acceptance of - in point of style I believe it to be greatly superior to any of my former Compositions;" describing his methods for editing and the catalogue he has created of "Breaches" and adding that for all his work "Lord Nelson might, I fear, have counted on his remaining fingers all the readers that would thank me for my toil or be aware of it;" discussing his anger with Hazlitt saying "The man who has so grossly calumniated me in the Examiner and the Ed. Review is a Wm. Hazlitt, one who owes to me more than to his own parents - for at my own risk I saved perhaps his Life from the Gallows, most certainly his character from blasting Infamy. - His reason I give in his own words - 'Damn him! I hate him : For I am under obligations to him.' - When he was reproached for writing against his own convictions, and reminded that he had repeatedly declared the Christabel the finest poem in the language of it's size - he replied -'I grumbled part to myself while I was writing - but nothing stings a man so much, as making people believe Lies of him.' You would scarcely think it possible, that a monster could exist who boasted of guilt and avowed his predilection for it. - All good I had done him of every kind, and never ceased to do so, till he had done his best to bring down infamy on three families, in which he had been sheltered as a Brother, by vices too disgusting to be named - & since then the only Wrong, I have done him, has been to decline his acquaintance. - Thank God! I feel these things more philosophically than Catullus did...Next week I expect two other Lay-sermons to come out - to the middle & the laboring Classes - My Biographical Sketches so long printed will then be published - & I proceed to re-publish the Friend, but as a complete Rifacciamento;" the concluding portion of this letter and the signature has been cut away; adding, in a postscript, "It would amuse me to learn what Mr. T. Methuen thinks of my Sermon - What Bowles will think & say, I know before hand - tho' I have not, thank God!~ quite so clear an insight into what his feelings were when he read the first chapter of my Biographical Sketches - if indeed he collated the passages concerning himself with his own speeches &c concerning me. Alas! I injured myself irreparably with him by devoting a fortnight to the correction of his Poem - he took the corrections and never forgave the Corrector - nihil fecisse benigne est : / Imo etiam taedet, taedet obestque magis!"
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