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Bodleian Library, MS Don. d. 86. 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 had not the most distant intention of applying the term miscreantgenus,
& made up the description from different individuals, – the features which justify that word were belong to Anthony
Pasquin,
In writing upon the French Revolutionists I concluded the article by promising that upon the Poor, – or rather upon
the predisposing causes of revolution in England, saying that we also had our Heberts & our Marats.xxx as a Volume, some year & half after its completion, among other materials for the
Register;x one volume that for 1811 is all that I have yet had of it. It convinced me that the Editor was a man of good feelings, who was led astray by them, & who was taking a
course which would lead him irretrievably wrong, because pride & shame & vindictive feelings & party spirit would
chain down his soul <mind> to its errors, – & that which began in a love of general liberty would end in
hatred of the government under which he lived. His talents were manifest, – his presumption not less so; this I readily pardoned,
– & when I exposed (as I have done in the forth-coming Annals of the year) his blundering predictions respecting the war in
Portugal, & the unwise, unjust & unfeeling manner in which he spoke of the Spaniards, I wrote without asperity, or the
slightest personal allusion.
But in the same volume there is an unprovoked personal attack upon Coleridge.Friend, lament over the shocking increase of humanity and public
spirit, so fatal to selfishness and public corruption’, habits
which To C’s family those habits have are a far heavier
calamity than any which has yet befallen Mrs Hunt & her children.I trust
than any, I sincerely hope, that ever may befall them: – to me, & to those who like me know the heights & depths of Coleridges intellect, & his virtues as well as his vices, – they are the
heaviest affliction, – & will occasion a life-long regret <sorrow>. Mr Hunt may judge how I felt towards him when that number of the Examiner cames into the
hands of Coleridges wife, & of Coleridges son, – a youth at that time under sixteen whose feelings are as strong as his talents are
extraordinary.
Soon after my article on the French Revolutionists had appeared, a paragraph from the Examiner was copied into one
of my newspapers; – the accuracy of the extract I took for granted, Mr
Hunt had taken what was said of our Heberts & Marats to himself, & challenged the reviewer, – whom he called
hireling or slave or some such name, to specify whom he had alluded to.him I should have found it in Camille Desmoulins: – an enthusiast for
liberty, a man of talents, of good feelings & domestic virtues, – who was led on step by step to concur in the executions of
the Royalists first – then of the Brissotines, – & of course took his own turn at last.
The sentence which so pointedly applies to Mr Hunt
derives its point from circumstances which occurring after it was written, – the arti paper was written for
the number anterior to that in which it appeared, before his trial, – & before I knew that he was about to be tried.men spoke of the progress
of those writers who proceed upon a system of insulting & injuring the feelings of individuals, & I remembered that the
prospectus of the Examiner took credit for to itself for the manner <spirit> in which its theatrical
criticism was to be conducted written,r Huntmust <may> be acquitted of indulging any personal resentments in this branch of his vocation. My dear Gooch of all the cruel employments to which a man in this country can devote himself,
that of dramatic – or rather of histrionic criticism is infinitely the worst. If I can have <given> Mr Hunt ‘severe pain’
You may if you think fit show him what I have written. It may tend to make him pause before he again touches upon
the private xxxxxxxxx failings of a private man; – & I readily assure him that nothing shall again proceed from me
which may wound him as an individual. In an evil hour did he forsake the happier paths of literature to make politics his
profession – in an evil hour for his country & himself: – instead of shedding his errors like xxxx before xxx their
xxxxxx <xx xxx xxxxxxx as his intellect was matured by knowledge>, – he has sown them like the dragons
teeth. I too, like him, set sail for the in the ship Presumption from the port of Good Intent, – but I have escaped
from the shoals upon which he is in danger of foundering. The difference between his opinions & mine <(it is a difference,
rather as to the means than the end.)> would may be explained by the
difference <the alteration> which ten years of xxxxxxxx xxx xxx xxxx to a man <necessarily
occasion cause in one> whose whole life is devoted to the acquisition of knowledge. But it is to be feared that
time will not do for him what it has done for me. His opinions will become dead to him because he has suffered from
<for> them; nor & he cannot can never become wiser without discovering that the certain tendency
of his journal has been to hurry on a revolution, which God knows is approaching too fast, – xxx in This car of
Jaganautxx
xxxx will be in my while endeavouring to impede its course, – not in xx dragging it on.
I have left myself no room to say anything concerning Roderick.s to xx me to
display situations of the deep passion. – As for patriotism you would soon have learnt what it is had you been in
Zaragoza, or were you at this time in the North of Germany.