Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 2: being The Biographical Supplement of Coleridge's Biographia LiterariaColeridge, Samuel Taylor
General
Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 2: being The Biographical Supplement of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 -- Correspondence
[John James Morgan, the joint friend of Coleridge and Southey in their
Pantisocratic days, was the son of a Bristol merchant, and as early as
1795 was acquainted with Coleridge (see Letter 16). It was to the house
of Morgan that Coleridge repaired after his return from Malta, at the
close of 1807, when he felt himself "ill, penniless, and worse than
homeless" (Meteyard's _Group of Englishmen_, p. 325); and in the
_Courier_ of 10th December 1807 appeared a poem, entitled the
_Wanderer's Farewell_, addressed to Mrs. Morgan and Charlotte Brent, her
sister. Morgan was at one time possessed of a fortune of £10,000 to
£15,000 (Southey's _Life and Cor._, iv. 361); but adverse circumstances
had come against him, and he and his family had removed to Hammersmith,
London. After the quarrel with Wordsworth, Coleridge, as we have already
seen, went to the Morgans, and remained off and on with them in the
various places of their abode for the six years between 1810 and 1816.
Not only were the Morgans kind hosts to Coleridge; Mrs. Morgan exercised
a considerable command for good over him, and put compulsory measures in
force when he was indulging in opium.
Although the Morgans were not exactly literary people, they were
discerners and appreciators of the genius of Coleridge; and it was while
staying with them that he produced his greatest contributions to
thinking. The Morgans changed about a good deal. In November 1810 they
were living at 7, Portland Place, Hammersmith; in April 1812 they had
removed to 71, Berners Street: in April 1814 they were at 2, Queen's
Square, Bristol; in September Coleridge and they had taken up quarters
at Ashley, Box, near Bath; on 3rd November they were at Bath; and on
10th November they had removed to Calne, in Wiltshire.
It would make an interesting study to detail in full all the changes of
Coleridge's political creed from the time when he was an ardent
enthusiast for the French Revolution to his gradual evolution into a
conservative whose creed was
The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain.
As men advance in years they generally believe less in the power of
politics to accomplish what can be achieved only by Religion, Poetry,
Art and Culture. The contemplation of Coleridge's change of view from
Radicalism to temperate Conservatism, registering the natural swing of
the pendulum from Youth to Age, is a most inviting study for the
statesman. Southey and Wordsworth underwent the same change, but their
evolution is not so instructive as that of Coleridge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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