BIB_ID
417234
Accession number
MA 77.4
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Bristol, England?, 1796 November 13.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1904.
Description
1 item (3 pages, with address) ; 26.8 x 21 cm
Notes
No place of writing is given and there are no postmarks. Based on biographical information and other letters from this period, the letter was most likely written in Bristol. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Coleridge gives the date of writing at the end of the letter. The date has also been added at the start of the letter in red ink in an unknown hand.
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: "J. Thelwall / Beaufort Buildings / The Strand / London."
Coleridge gives the date of writing at the end of the letter. The date has also been added at the start of the letter in red ink in an unknown hand.
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: "J. Thelwall / Beaufort Buildings / The Strand / London."
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer J. Pearson & Co., 1904. Removed from a bound volume in June 1967.
Summary
Apologizing for not having written; saying that he likes Thelwall's plan: "The origin of Property & the mode of removing it's evils - form the last Chapter of my Answer to [William] Godwin, which will appear now in a few weeks - We run on the same ground, but we drive different Horses. I am daily more and more a religionist - you, of course, more & more otherwise. I am sorry for the difference, simply because it impoverishes our sympathies : for indeed it does not lessen my esteem & friendship;" promising to help Thelwall and asking him to send details about the size and price of his proposed work immediately; saying that Dr. Thomas Beddoes mentioned Thelwall's letter to him and has been meaning to write back, but "he has been immersed in business & he could write nothing cheering. He respects you;" adding his thoughts about publishing in pamphlet format; saying that Dr. Edward Fox is a good man and he will call on him with Thelwall's proposal just as soon as he has it; saying that there are many other people he thinks might support the publication, but they would be more influenced by an appeal from him than from Thelwall ("the world is not yet virtuous enough, to suppose that the nakedness of a good cause is sufficient"); promising to write to them once he has Thelwall's proposal; asking after Thelwall's health, family, and future plans: "I should like to know all things about you - for you, I am confident, I know already;" asking about what he has read and saying he hopes that Thelwall undertakes "some great works - & for these various & profound study is assuredly a thing needful;" saying that his wife and son (Hartley) are well and sending his love to Thelwall's family; adding in a postscript that he was glad to hear from John Colson that Thelwall "abhor[s] the morality of my Sonnet to Mercy - it is indeed detestable & the poetry is not above mediocrity. What a foul song [John] Horne Tooke has committed! - It has done harm - the aristocrats glory in it, the worthy among us shudder, the ignorant whet their knives."
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