BIB_ID
417352
Accession number
MA 77.13
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Keswick, England, 1801 January 23.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1904.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 19.8 x 15.9 cm
Notes
Written on blue paper.
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: "Mr John Thelwall / Hereford / Herefordshire."
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: "Mr John Thelwall / Hereford / Herefordshire."
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer J. Pearson & Co., 1904. Removed from a bound volume in June 1967.
Summary
Saying that just after he wrote to Thelwall, he came down with rheumatic fever, followed by a hydrocele, and he has been confined to bed for five weeks; adding that he can now write only to enclose a note, as his right eye is severely inflamed: "But I am weary of writing of this I - I - I - I - so bepatched & bescented with Sal Ammoniac & Diaculum, Pain & Infirmity. My own Moans are grown stupid to my own ears;" writing that he is glad to hear that Thelwall has left an unsuitable situation and he is sure that "by your Talents you will always be able to earn sufficient for the Day at least. I wish for your sake that so many foolish Epic Poems had not been published lately, or on the eve of Publication;" saying "You entirely misunderstood me as to religious matters. - You love your wife, children, & friends, you worship nature, and you dare hope, nay, have faith in, the future improvement of the human Race - this is true Religion;" adding "your notions about the historical credibility or non-credibility of a sacred Book, your assent to or dissent from the existence of a supramundane Deity, or personal God, are absolutely indifferent to me / mere figures of a magic Lantern. I hold my faith - you keep your's;" asking Thelwall to confirm that he has received the enclosed note; sending his love to Mrs. Thelwall and news of his wife and sons Derwent ("the abstract idea of a Baby - a fit representative of Babe-borough") and Hartley ("a fairy elf - all life, all motion - indefatigable in joy - a spirit of Joy dancing on an Aspen Leaf"); saying in a postscript that he has not seen Thelwall's novel and did not in fact know that he had written one; adding that packages left for him at "Mr. Longman's, Paternoster Row" reach him eventually; urging Thelwall to get a copy of the "2nd Volume of the Lyrical Ballads, and of the second Edition of the first Volume - the Preface is invaluable."
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