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Boston Public Library, MS C.1.22.4. Not previously published.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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I was about to write when your letter arrived
– the newspapers had told me your marriage.
the debility left by my nervous fever I have
recovered, & the pain at heart has abated. I have
<had> the advice of five medical men <practitioners> –
do not suspect me of hypochondriacal extravagance – my
friendships here are among scientific men – they agree in
not thinking it a topical affection. Beddoes has
known five or six persons similarly affected – some of whom
have desired in their wills to be opened – but – he added –
they have none of them died yet. At night I have my old
symptoms in a very distressing degree – feelings which I
believe no one in health could well conceive.
I am advised to change climate, &
seriously think of so doing. it is only indisposition that
has hitherto prevented me from giving myself up to
professional labour. compelled as I am, almost to pass my
days in idleness, & abstain from pursuits the most
intensely gratifying, how is it possible that I could endure
the confinement of a lawyers office, & the tedium of
studies which only duty could make endurable? my health once
established I will make every effort. of success I am not
sanguine in expectation. it
I never believed myself qualified for the profession. my
powers are only vigorous in solitude or in the society that
imposes no restraint. I am easily confounded – you may
recollect the similar temporary want of talent in Rousseau.
I resemble him in nothing else. – to reestablish my health
is the great immediate object – without that I am paralysed
for every effort. Abroad then I think of going. Of course
Lisbon offered itself as the most accessible place – but on
reconsideration I am inclined to think of some other abode.
If my health compels me to go abroad, the expence of time
& money which it will occasion, it must be my business
to defray as far as I can by the journey itself, this
therefore is a motive for a new route. another is that I
will not go alone – to leave Edith would be
saving very little at the expence of much lonely anxiety on
her part, & some on my own – besides she herself is of
delicate health & likely to be benefitted. now this
would not be convenient to my Uncle
certainly, & perhaps not agreable. therefore I have
lookd farther south & thought of Trieste. there I could judge of the security of
Italy, in safety myself – & the sea would always be open
– or a retreat into Germany. as yet these are flying
thoughts – but the advice of my medical advisers & of my
friends induces me to it – & the recollection of what I
was at Lisbon & what I am now in animal strength.
My brothers Harry
& Edward
are both at in Bristol for
their holydays. Harry is
now at the table busy in adjusting a dissected map. I find
him grown much & much improved, & receive a good
account of him. some faults he has
to correct. he is very quick – but both in him
& Edward
is the sad want of diffidence; in my judgement the great
feature of genius. Harry is
now approaching to the important period of life. in my own
case, early habits of solitude, & feelings that shrink
from observation counterbalanced the dangers of an
overactive imagination – & I had early acquired a deep
love of morals – perhaps the habit induced by poetry of
looking every where for the beautiful produced or certainly
strengthened this. my brothers seems to possess the same
imagination without the preserving qualities. Of Edward our
account is good – far better than I expected – & his
master is a good man, whose praise deserves belief. so far
is well with both. in the event of my death it is something
consolatory that Tom is already able to afford assistance, &
the the younger ones
growing up.
Should I execute this plan of going abroad I
look to Thalabaxxxxxxx
expecting to reach London as my home, & have in you a
neighbour.
Coleridge is in London working for the
booksellers, & by his own account profitably employed.
he is about to prosecute the Anti-Jacobine publisher
“Ex uno disce”
direct Kingsdown Parade. Bristol.