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J. C./__________\ S. T. C.]
God bless you,
S. T. C."
Miss Cruikshanks has favored me with a letter of Mr. Coleridge to herself, explanatory of his political principles, when he had receded in a good measure from the sentiments pervading his "Conciones ad Populum." This letter was written at a later period, but is made to follow the preceding, to preserve a continuity of subject.
Miss C. it appears, had lent the first edition of Mr. Coleridge's poems to Lady Elizabeth Perceval,[25] in some parts of which volume the sentiments of an earlier day were rather too prominently displayed. To counteract the effect such parts were calculated to produce, Mr. Coleridge wrote the following letter, in the hope that by being shown to her ladyship, it might efface from her mind any unfavorable impression she might have received. In this letter he also rather tenderly refers to his American scheme.
(No date, supposed to be 1803.)
"My dear Miss Cruikshanks,
With the kindest intentions, I fear you have done me some little disservice, in borowing the first edition of my poems from Miss B—. I never held any principles indeed, of which, considering my age, I have reason to be ashamed. The whole of my public life may be comprised in eight or nine months of my 22nd year; and the whole of my political sins during that time, consisted in forming a plan of taking a large farm in common, in America, with other young men of my age. A wild notion indeed, but very harmless.
As to my principles, they were, at all times, decidedly anti-jacobin and anti-revolutionary, and my American scheme is a proof of this. Indeed at that time, I seriously held the doctrine of passive obedience, though a violent enemy of the first war. Afterwards, and for the last ten years of my life, I have been fighting incessantly in the good cause, against French ambition, and Trench principles; and I had Mr. Addington's suffrage, as to the good produced by my Essays, written in the Morning Post, in the interval of the peace of Amiens, and the second war, together with my two letters to Mr. Fox.[26]