BIB_ID
417213
Accession number
MA 77.3
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Bristol, England, 1796 June 22.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1904.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 22.8 x 18.9 cm
Notes
Place of writing taken from the postmark.
This collection, MA 77, is comprised of fifteen letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to John Thelwall, one letter from Coleridge to Susannah (called "Stella") Thelwall, two letters from John Thelwall to Susannah Thelwall, one letter from Peter Crompton to John Thelwall, and one incomplete draft of an article on the death of Queen Charlotte. The letters were written from 1796 to 1803, and the draft may have been written in 1818.
Address panel with postmarks: "John Thelwall / Beaufort Buildings / Strand / London."
This collection, MA 77, is comprised of fifteen letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to John Thelwall, one letter from Coleridge to Susannah (called "Stella") Thelwall, two letters from John Thelwall to Susannah Thelwall, one letter from Peter Crompton to John Thelwall, and one incomplete draft of an article on the death of Queen Charlotte. The letters were written from 1796 to 1803, and the draft may have been written in 1818.
Address panel with postmarks: "John Thelwall / Beaufort Buildings / Strand / London."
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer J. Pearson & Co., 1904. Removed from a bound volume in June 1967.
Summary
Writing of how much he would like to see Thelwall and encouraging him to come to Bristol; suggesting that Thelwall could, while writing on Edmund Burke, lecture once or twice a week on the subject in Bristol and saying that he would be sure to have an audience; adding that they have "a large & every way excellent Library" and he could get Thelwall a temporary subscription; giving his thoughts and opinions about two works by Thelwall, his response to Burke (The Rights of Nature against the Usurpation of Establishments...) and his volume The Peripatetic, or, Sketches of the Heart, of Nature, and of Society; defending himself against the imputation that he "industriously collected anecdotes unfavorable to the characters of great men;" saying that his real problem is "a precipitance in praise" and pointing out instances where he had praised Joseph Gerrald, Maurice Margarot, and William Godwin; arguing that while there are many of the Christian faith who commit sins, "those very men would allow, they were acting contrary to Christianity - but, I am afraid, an atheistic bad Man manufactures his system of principles with an eye to his peculiar propensities : - and makes his actions the criterion of what is virtuous, not virtue the criterion of his actions;" discussing the roots of virtue; writing "Believe me, Thelwall! it is not his Atheism that has prejudiced me against Godwin ; but Godwin who has perhaps prejudiced me against Atheism;" adding "Let me see you - I already know a Deist, & Calvinists, & Moravians whom I love & reverence - & I shall leap forwards to realize my principles by feeling love & honor for an Atheist. - By the by, are you an Atheist? For I was told, that [James] Hutton was an atheist - & procured his three massy Quartos on the principles of Knowledge in the hopes of finding some arguments in favor of atheism - but lo! I discovered him to be a profoundly pious Deist;" signing off with "high esteem and anticipated tenderness;" writing in a postscript that "[w]e have an hundred lovely scenes about Bristol, which would make you exclaim - O admirable Nature! & me, O Gracious God!"
Catalog link
Department