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
[Coleridge had now become a recognized public lecturer on Poetry, and it
was his last resource to keep out of political writing, which he saw was
a rather barren business on which to waste his powers. Two courses of
lectures were given between the spring of 1812 and that of 1813. His
third course was delivered at Willis's Rooms from 12th May to 5th June.
Henry Crabb Robinson attended the second, third and fourth of the course
on 23rd, 26th, and 29th May, and has left some short accounts. His
fourth course began on 3rd November 1812 and closed on 29th January
1813. H. C. R. attended the closing lecture. "He was received," says H.
C. R., "with three rounds of applause on entering the lecture room, and
very loudly applauded during the lecture and at its close." (H. C. R.
_Diary_.)
The letter to Poole of 13th February 1813 quoted in the last chapter is
only a fragment; the full text is given by Mr. E. H. Coleridge in
_Letters_, 609-612. It ends as follows: "You perhaps may likewise have
heard (in the Whispering Gallery of the World) of the year-long
difference between me and Wordsworth (compared with the sufferings of
which all the former afflictions of my life were less than flea-bites),
occasioned (in great part) by the wicked folly of the arch-fool Montagu.
"A reconciliation has taken place, but the _feeling_, which I had
previous to that moment, when the (three-fourth) calamity burst, like a
thunderstorm from a blue sky, on my soul, after fifteen years of such
religious, almost superstitious idolatry and self-sacrifice. Oh no!
that, I fear, can never return. All outward actions, all inward wishes,
all thoughts and admirations will be the same--_are_ the same, but--aye,
there remains an immedicable _But_."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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