Three lives at least of John Wesley were published in the two years following his death in 1791. Coleridge later studied Wesley closely, for he added valuable notes to Southey's life (see the 1846 edition).
"A Berkleyan," i.e., a follower of Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753), who in his New Theory of Vision and later works maintained that "what we call matter has no actual existence, and that the impressions which we believe ourselves to receive from it are not, in fact, derived from anything external to ourselves, but are produced within us by a certain disposition of the mind, the immediate operation of God" (Benham's Dictionary of Religion).
Coleridge when sending Southey one version of his poem to Charles Lamb, entitled "This Lime-tree Bower my Prison" (to which we shall come later), in July, 1797, appended to the following passage the note, "You remember I am a Berkleian":—
Struck with joy's deepest calm, and gazing round
On the wide view, may gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; a living thing
That acts upon the mind, and with such hues
As clothe the Almighty Spirit, when He makes
Spirits perceive His presence!
"A Necessarian." We should now say a fatalist.
Coleridge's work on the "Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion," which has before been mentioned, was, if ever begun, never completed.]
LETTER 21
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Dated at end: January 18, 1797.]
Dear Col,—You have learnd by this time, with surprise, no doubt, that Lloyd is with me in town. The emotions I felt on his coming so unlooked for are not ill expressed in what follows, & what, if you do not object to them as too personal, & to the world obscure, or otherwise wanting in worth, I should wish to make a part of our little volume.