Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert SoutheyCottle, Joseph
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Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey
Cottle, Joseph
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834; Southey, Robert, 1774-1843
A young friend, in the Colonial office, is to be one of my companions,
and I expect that Neville White will be the other. It is a great effort
to go from home at any time, and a great inconvenience, considering the
interruption which my pursuits must suffer; still it is a master of duty
and of economy to use every means for averting illness. If I can send
home one or two chests of books, the pleasure of receiving them on my
return is worth some cost.
How you would like to see my library, and to recognize among them some
volumes as having been the gift of Joseph Cottle, seven or eight and
twenty years ago. I have a great many thousand volumes, of all sorts,
sizes, languages, and kinds, upon all subjects, and in all sorts of
trims; from those which are displayed in 'Peacock Place,' to the ragged
inhabitants of 'Duck Row.' The room in which I am now writing contains
two thousand four hundred volumes, all in good apparel; many of them of
singular rarity and value. I have another room full, and a passage full;
book-cases in both landing places, and from six to seven hundred volumes
in my bed-room. You have never seen a more cheerful room than my study;
this workshop, from which so many works have proceeded, and in which
among other things, I have written all those papers of mine, in the
Quarterly Review, whereof you have a list below.[69]
The next month will have a paper of mine on the 'Chuch Missionary
Society,' and the one after, upon the 'Memoir of the Chevalier Bayard,'
which Sarah Coleridge, daughter of S. T. Coleridge, has translated.
Write to me oftener, as your letters will always have a reply, let whose
may go unanswered. God bless you, my dear old friend.
Yours most affectionately,
Robert Southey."
"Keswick, Feb. 26, 1826.
My dear Cottle,
I have sent you my Vindication of the 'Book of the Church,' in which
though scarcely half of what was intended to be comprised, enough is done
to prove the charge of superstition, impostures, and wickedness, upon the
Romish Church. Whether I shall pursue the subject, in that form, depends
on circumstances. I have employment enough in other ways, and would
rather present my historical recollections in any form than that of
controversy.... The revelations of sister Nativity are mentioned in my
'Vindiciae.' You will see an account of this impious Romish imposture in
the next Quarterly. Such an exposure ought to open the eyes of those who
are duped with the belief that the Roman Catholic religion is become
innocent and harmless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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