BIB_ID
416107
Accession number
MA 1856.23
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1828 May 2.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (2 pages, with address) ; 22.8 x 18.7 cm
Notes
Place and date of writing taken from the postmark. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
This collection, MA 1856, is comprised of 48 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Joseph Henry Green and 2 autograph manuscripts, written between 1817 and 1834. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1856.1-50).
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 seal and postmarks: "J.H. Green, Esqre / &c &c / Lincoln's Inn Fields."
This collection, MA 1856, is comprised of 48 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Joseph Henry Green and 2 autograph manuscripts, written between 1817 and 1834. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1856.1-50).
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 seal and postmarks: "J.H. Green, Esqre / &c &c / Lincoln's Inn Fields."
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
Discussing a recent article in the London Medical Gazette and saying that he has found in it a striking illustration of "'how small a part of what we mean by the Body and the bodily functions are really the immediate object of the outward Sense, or can be termed material, as the contrary of immaterial or spiritual'"; describing the development of the foot and wing muscles of the "Scarabaeus Nasicornis" as outlined in the article and drawing conclusions from this; adding "And no less certain is it, that this is neither visible, audible, smellable, gustable, tangible, ponderable, nor any other ble but intelligible. Now I should like to hear first, what other definition of a spiritual Agent can be given but a presence that is intelligible but not sensible; and secondly, on what grounds the epithet, spiritual, can be denied to the bodily power aforesaid"; including a line from a neoplatonist in Greek and the translation ("Even the Body is spiritual as far as it lives"); saying that if Green comes to Highgate on Sunday, he would appreciate him bringing "the Letters on the true and false veneration of the Canonical Scriptures."
Catalog link
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