Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1
Jonathan Ingram, Clytie Siddall
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
comprising 33 letters
and being
the Biographical Supplement of Coleridge's BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA
with additional letters etc., edited by
Vol. 1.
On the whole this was surely the mightiest genius since Milton. In poetry there is not his like, when he rose to his full power; he was a philosopher, the immensity of whose mind cannot be gauged by anything he has left behind; a critic, the subtlest and most profound of his time. Yet these vast and varied powers flowed away in the shifting sands of talk; and what remains is but what the few land-locked pools are to the receding ocean which has left them casually behind without sensible diminution of its waters.
Academy, 3d October, 1903.
The work known as the Biographical Supplement of the Biographia Literaria of S. T. Coleridge, and published with the latter in 1847, was begun by Henry Nelson Coleridge, and finished after his death by his widow, Sara Coleridge. The first part, concluding with a letter dated 5th November 1796, is the more valuable portion of the Biographical Supplement. What follows, written by Sara Coleridge, is more controversial than biographical and does not continue, like the first part, to make Coleridge tell his own life by inserting letters in the narrative. Of 33 letters quoted in the whole work, 30 are contained in the section written by Henry Nelson Coleridge. Of these 11 were drawn from Cottle's Early Recollections, seven being letters to Josiah Wade, four to Joseph Cottle, and the remainder are sixteen letters to Poole, one to Benjamin Flower, one to Charles E Heath, and one to Henry Martin.
From this I think it is evident that Henry Nelson Coleridge intended what was published as a Supplement to the Biographia Literaria to be a Life of Coleridge, either supplementary to the Biographia Literaria or as an independent narrative, in which most of the letters published by Cottle in 1837 and unpublished letters to Poole and other correspondents were to form the chief material. Sara Coleridge, in finishing the fragment, did not attempt to carry out the original intention of her husband. A few letters in Cottle were perhaps not acceptable to her taste, and in rejecting them she perhaps resolved to reject all remaining letters in Cottle. She thus finished the fragmentary Life of Coleridge left by her husband in her own way.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI. THE LYRICAL BALLADS AND GERMANY
CHAPTER VII. THE RELIGION OF THE PINEWOODS
CHAPTER IX KESWICK
PART II.—THE PERMANENT
PART I
CHAPTER I
LETTER 5. TO MR. POOLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER II
CAMBRIDGE AND PANTISOCRACY
LETTER 10. TO SOUTHEY
CHAPTER III
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 23
LETTER 26
LETTER 27
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 29. TO MR. POOLE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 30.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 32. TO MR. COTTLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 33. TO MR. POOLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 34. TO MR. POOLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 37. TO MR. POOLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 38
LETTER 40. TO CHARLES LAMB[1]
LETTER 41. TO COTTLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER V
LETTER 48
LETTER 49
LETTER 50. TO COTTLE
LETTER 51. TO COTTLE
LETTER 52. TO COTTLE
LETTER 53. TO COTTLE
LETTER 54. TO COTTLE
LETTER 55. TO COTTLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 57. TO COTTLE
LETTER 58. TO WADE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 59. TO COTTLE
LETTER 64. TO WADE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 65. TO COTTLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 72. TO COTTLE
LETTER 73. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "MONTHLY MAGAZINE"
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER VI
LETTER 74. TO COTTLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 75. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "MORNING POST", WITH THE "RAVEN", A POEM.
LETTER 76. TO COTTLE
LETTER 77. TO WADE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 79. TO COTTLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 80. TO COTTLE
LETTER 81. TO COTTLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 82. TO MRS. COLERIDGE
CHAPTER VII
LETTER 84. TO MRS. COLERIDGE
CHAPTER VIII
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 86. TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'MORNING POST' WITH THE POEM 'LOVE', FIRST PUBLISHED AS 'INTRODUCTION TO THE TALE OF THE DARK LADIE'.
LETTER 87. TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'MORNING POST'. WITH 'TALLEYRAND TO LORD GRENVILLE', A METRICAL EPISTLE.
LETTER 88. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 90. TO POOLE
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 92. TO HUMPHRY DAVY
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 94. TO DAVY
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 95. TO GODWIN
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 97. TO GODWIN
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 98. TO DAVY
LETTER 99. TO JOSIAH WEDGWOOD
LETTER 100. TO JOSIAH WEDGWOOD
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 101. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "MONTHLY REVIEW".
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 102. TO DAVY
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 103. TO DAVY
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
PART II
LETTER 106. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ.
SOUTHEY TO COLERIDGE
SOUTHEY TO COLERIDGE
LETTER 107. TO DAVY
LETTER 108. TO DAVY
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 112. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 114. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 115. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 116. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 117. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 120. TO GODWIN
SOUTHEY TO S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 125. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 127. TO SARAH HUTCHINSON
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 128. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 129. TO DAVY