BIB_ID
416416
Accession number
MA 2204.2
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1800 March 3.
Credit line
Purchased from James Richard Scarlett, 8th Baron Abinger, 1962.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 19.5 x 15.9 cm
Notes
At the top of the letter, Coleridge notes that it was written at "8, Monday Morning." The date "Mar. 3. 1800" appears below this, probably as an endorsement in Godwin's hand.
Coleridge gives the place of writing as "Mr Lamb's / No 36 Chapel Street / Pentonville." This was the home of Charles and Mary Lamb.
This collection, MA 2204, is comprised of 41 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Godwin, written between 1800 and 1823. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 2204.1-41).
Address panel with postmarks: "Mr Godwin / Polygon / Sommers Town."
Coleridge gives the place of writing as "Mr Lamb's / No 36 Chapel Street / Pentonville." This was the home of Charles and Mary Lamb.
This collection, MA 2204, is comprised of 41 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Godwin, written between 1800 and 1823. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 2204.1-41).
Address panel with postmarks: "Mr Godwin / Polygon / Sommers Town."
Provenance
Purchased, via the London dealer Constance A. Kyrle Fletcher, from James Richard Scarlett, 8th Baron Abinger, in 1962 as a gift of the Fellows.
Summary
Saying that drinking punch after drinking wine the previous night made him tipsy: "this I mention, not that my head aches, or that I felt after I quitted you, any unpleasantness, or titubancy - ; but because tipsiness has, and has always, one unpleasant effect - that of making me talk very extravagantly / & as when sober, I talk extravagantly enough for any common Tipsiness, it becomes a matter of nicety in discrimination to know when I am or am not affected. - An idea starts up in my hand [head?] - away I follow it thro' thick & thin, Wood & Marsh, Brake and Briar - with all the apparent Interest of a man who was defending one of his old and long-established Principles;" explaining "Exactly of this kind was the Conversation, with which I quitted you / I do not believe it possible for a human Being to have a greater horror of the Feelings that usually accompany such principles as I then supported, or a deeper Conviction of their irrationality than myself - but the whole Thinking of my Life will not bear me up against the accidental Press & Crowd of my mind, when it is elevated beyond it's natural Pitch;" saying that they will "talk wiselier with the Ladies on Tuesday" and asking Godwin to "give your dear little ones a kiss a piece for me;" concluding "The Agnus Dei & the Virgin Mary desire their kind respects to you, you sad Atheist - !"
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