Six Letters to Judge Fletcher on Catholic Emancipation, which appeared at irregular intervals in the Courier, September-December, 1814, are reprinted in Essays on His Own Times, iii. 677-733.
The Essay on Taxation forms the seventh Essay of Section the First, on the Principles of Political Knowledge. The Friend; Coleridge’s Works, Harper & Brothers, 1853, ii. 208-222.
[118] Neither the original nor the transcript of this letter has, to my knowledge, been preserved.
[119] He reverts to this “turning of the worm” in a letter to Morgan dated January 5, 1818. He threatened to attack publishers and printers in “a vigorous and harmonious satire” to be called “Puff and Slander.” I am inclined to think that the remarkable verses entitled “A Character,” which were first printed in 1834, were an accomplished instalment of “these two long satires.” Letter in British Museum. MSS. Addit. 25612. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative by J. Dykes Campbell, p. 234, note; Poetical Works, pp. 195, 642.
[120] A work which should contain all knowledge and proclaim all philosophy had been Coleridge’s dream from the beginning, and, as no such work was ever produced, it may be said to have been his dream to the end. And yet it was something more than a dream. Besides innumerable fragments of metaphysical and theological speculation which have passed into my hands, he actually did compose and dictate two large quarto volumes on formal logic, which are extant. “Something more than a volume,” a portentous introduction to his magnum opus, was dictated to his amanuensis and disciple, J. H. Green, and is now in my possession. A commentary on the Gospels and some of the Epistles, of which the original MS. is extant, and of which I possess a transcription, was an accomplished fact. I say nothing of the actual or relative value of this unpublished matter, but it should be put on record that it exists, that much labour, ill-judged perhaps, and ineffectual labour, was expended on the outworks of the fortresses, and that the walls and bastions are standing to the present day.
[121] The appearance of these “Essays on the Fine Arts” was announced in the Bristol Journal of August 6, 1814. They were reprinted in 1837 by Cottle, in his Early Recollections, ii. 201-240, and by Thomas Ashe in 1885, in his Miscellanies, Æsthetic and Literary, pp. 5-35. Coleridge himself “set a high value” on these essays. See Table Talk of January 1, 1834.
[122] The working editor of the Courier.
[123] The third letter to Judge Fletcher on Ireland was published in the Courier, October 21, 1814. It is reprinted in Essays on His Own Times, iii. 690-697.
[124] John Cartwright, 1740-1824, known as Major Cartwright, was an ardent parliamentary reformer and an advocate of universal suffrage. He refused to fight against the United States and wrote Letters on American Independence (1774).
[125] Lord Erskine’s Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was brought forward in the House of Lords May 15, 1809, and was passed without a division. The Bill was read a second time in the House of Commons but was rejected on going into committee, the opposition being led by Windham in a speech of considerable ability.