![COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834). LONG EARLY AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ('S.T. Coleridge') TO GEORGE DYER, [n.p., ? January 1795], describing his emotions at receiving Dyer's letter which had placed him 'under particular difficulties', Dyer, having expected consistency, had been disappointed, and, 'Ignorent of the peculiarities of my Character', had attributed his conduct to 'motives totally foreign to my Heart', and continuing](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/1995/CKS/1995_CKS_05424_0324_000(103236).jpg?w=1)
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COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834). LONG EARLY AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ('S.T. Coleridge') TO GEORGE DYER, [n.p., ? January 1795], describing his emotions at receiving Dyer's letter which had placed him 'under particular difficulties', Dyer, having expected consistency, had been disappointed, and, 'Ignorent of the peculiarities of my Character', had attributed his conduct to 'motives totally foreign to my Heart', and continuing
'The Vice, which has spread its' poison through my whole mind, is Indolence -- a vice, not natural to me -- but brought on by bitter disappointment -- My delirious imagination had early concentrated all hopes of Happiness in one point -- an unattainable point! The circumstance has produced a Dreaminess of mind, which too often makes me forgetful of others' feelings, while I am absorbed in the contemplation of my own mismanaged sensibilities'.
Coleridge assures Dyer that he is incapable of anger or resentment, 'but could I suppose it possible for me to be affronted by the Trifle, to which you allude, and which had totally escaped my memory, I should sink still lower in my own estimation', referring to his 'scribbling' in the Morning Chronicle, 'The hours of Youth I give to song, that haply I may sooth The pang of vain Regret', and gives his opinion that his sonnets on Burke and Priestley are not as bad as the others, thanking Dyer for his kindness in helping to procure 'a very flattering Review of a very indifferent composition of mine', adding that 'I have pledged myself to the Public for another work of more consequence' and, when he had finished this, 'bid farewell for ever to the Press, with which I repent, that I ever formed an acquaintance', then proposing to 'retire into obscure inactivity where my feelings may stagnate with Peace -- How infinitely more to be valued is energy of the Heart than Effulgence of Intellect', 2¼ pages, folio, integral address leaf 'George Dyer N. 45 Carey Street Lincoln's Inn Fields', (seal tears repaired, folds of outer address panel weak, recto of address leaf stained, traces of two postmarks 'J[anuary]'?; together with three portrait engravings.
AN EXCEPTIONAL LETTER, ADDRESSED TO THE POET, GEORGE DYER, WRITTEN JUST AFTER COLERIDGE HAD LEFT CAMBRIDGE, APPARENTLY UNPUBLISHED.
The recipient, George Dyer (1755-1841) was a poet and essayist, and 'English Jacobin' who was educated at the same school as Coleridge and Lamb - Christ's Hospital - and immortalised in the Essays of Elia. On vacations from Cambridge Coleridge lodged at a tavern near his old school where Dyer, Lamb and others would meet. Coleridge himself had returned to his studies at Jesus College, Cambridge (after his escapade in the Army) in April 1794. In the summer of that year, passing through Oxford in the course of a walking tour, he met Robert Southey then an undergraduate at Balliol. At this meeting and later in the tour at Bristol, Coleridge and Southey evolved their 'Pantisocratic' scheme - an experimental society of friends living in harmony with the natural world, sharing property and labouring for the common good - which they planned to create on the banks of the Sasquehanna in Pennsylvania.
Coleridge returned to Cambridge for the autumn term of 1794, intent on raising money by his pen for the 'Pantisocracy'. In a letter of 19 September 1794, Coleridge tells Southey that he had scrawled 'a two guineas' Worth of Nonsense' for the booksellers which Dyer had disposed of for him. But the principal source of revenue was verse-drama written by Coleridge and Southey, The Fall of Robespierre which appeared in an edition of 500 copies in October. In late November 1794 Coleridge submitted from Jesus College a sequence of sonnets to the Editor of the Morning Chronicle published between 1 December 1794 and 29 January 1795. His subjects were Thomas Erskine, Edmund Burke (9 December 1794), Joseph Priestley (11 December 1794), Lafayette, Kosciusko, William Pitt, Revd. W.L. Bowles, Mrs. Siddons, William Godwin, Robert Southey and R.B. Sheridan.
Coleridge returned to London from Cambridge for the Christmas vacation (he did not go back). In the letter offered for sale, he writes with bitter disappointment, the concentration of all hopes of happiness on one unattainable point - almost certainly an illusion to his love for May Evans, his first love, from whom he received a letter on 24 December confirming her engagement to another and thus bringing to an end their close relationship. By the end of January 1795 Coleridge had abandoned his chance of a university degree, a career at the Bar, a job on the Morning Chronicle, and left for Bristol to further the Pantisocratic ideals in the company of Southey.
The first letter from Coleridge to Dyer recorded by Griggs is dated 11 September 1794, a four-line note announcing his departure for Cambridge, making arrangements about the delivery of some books and making excuses for not having seen Dyer. The second, dated from Bristol in late February 1795, is markedly more friendly in tone, reflecting no doubt long alcoholic evenings over the Christmas vacation in London. This letter indicates that Dyer had attempted to secure a position for Coleridge as tutor to the family of the Earl of Buchan perhaps with the idea of preventing Coleridge from leaving for America. Certainly Coleridge makes no mention of 'Pantisocracy' in the letter to Dyer offered for sale. A third letter is postmarked 10 March 1795 in which Coleridge refers to Dyer's warning not to be too sanguine in his expectation of profits from his projected edition of Latin poets, which he was publishing by subscription - presumably the work of 'more consequence' mentioned in the letter.
It is possible that Dyer helped to obtain one of the favourable reviews of the Fall of Robespierre.
Literature: E.L. Griggs ed. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I, 1956, pp.131, 151-6; VI, 1971, p.746.
Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, 1990, pp.59-88.
J.R. de J. Jackson ed. Coleridge: the Critical Heritage, 1970. (4)
'The Vice, which has spread its' poison through my whole mind, is Indolence -- a vice, not natural to me -- but brought on by bitter disappointment -- My delirious imagination had early concentrated all hopes of Happiness in one point -- an unattainable point! The circumstance has produced a Dreaminess of mind, which too often makes me forgetful of others' feelings, while I am absorbed in the contemplation of my own mismanaged sensibilities'.
Coleridge assures Dyer that he is incapable of anger or resentment, 'but could I suppose it possible for me to be affronted by the Trifle, to which you allude, and which had totally escaped my memory, I should sink still lower in my own estimation', referring to his 'scribbling' in the Morning Chronicle, 'The hours of Youth I give to song, that haply I may sooth The pang of vain Regret', and gives his opinion that his sonnets on Burke and Priestley are not as bad as the others, thanking Dyer for his kindness in helping to procure 'a very flattering Review of a very indifferent composition of mine', adding that 'I have pledged myself to the Public for another work of more consequence' and, when he had finished this, 'bid farewell for ever to the Press, with which I repent, that I ever formed an acquaintance', then proposing to 'retire into obscure inactivity where my feelings may stagnate with Peace -- How infinitely more to be valued is energy of the Heart than Effulgence of Intellect', 2¼ pages, folio, integral address leaf 'George Dyer N. 45 Carey Street Lincoln's Inn Fields', (seal tears repaired, folds of outer address panel weak, recto of address leaf stained, traces of two postmarks 'J[anuary]'?; together with three portrait engravings.
AN EXCEPTIONAL LETTER, ADDRESSED TO THE POET, GEORGE DYER, WRITTEN JUST AFTER COLERIDGE HAD LEFT CAMBRIDGE, APPARENTLY UNPUBLISHED.
The recipient, George Dyer (1755-1841) was a poet and essayist, and 'English Jacobin' who was educated at the same school as Coleridge and Lamb - Christ's Hospital - and immortalised in the Essays of Elia. On vacations from Cambridge Coleridge lodged at a tavern near his old school where Dyer, Lamb and others would meet. Coleridge himself had returned to his studies at Jesus College, Cambridge (after his escapade in the Army) in April 1794. In the summer of that year, passing through Oxford in the course of a walking tour, he met Robert Southey then an undergraduate at Balliol. At this meeting and later in the tour at Bristol, Coleridge and Southey evolved their 'Pantisocratic' scheme - an experimental society of friends living in harmony with the natural world, sharing property and labouring for the common good - which they planned to create on the banks of the Sasquehanna in Pennsylvania.
Coleridge returned to Cambridge for the autumn term of 1794, intent on raising money by his pen for the 'Pantisocracy'. In a letter of 19 September 1794, Coleridge tells Southey that he had scrawled 'a two guineas' Worth of Nonsense' for the booksellers which Dyer had disposed of for him. But the principal source of revenue was verse-drama written by Coleridge and Southey, The Fall of Robespierre which appeared in an edition of 500 copies in October. In late November 1794 Coleridge submitted from Jesus College a sequence of sonnets to the Editor of the Morning Chronicle published between 1 December 1794 and 29 January 1795. His subjects were Thomas Erskine, Edmund Burke (9 December 1794), Joseph Priestley (11 December 1794), Lafayette, Kosciusko, William Pitt, Revd. W.L. Bowles, Mrs. Siddons, William Godwin, Robert Southey and R.B. Sheridan.
Coleridge returned to London from Cambridge for the Christmas vacation (he did not go back). In the letter offered for sale, he writes with bitter disappointment, the concentration of all hopes of happiness on one unattainable point - almost certainly an illusion to his love for May Evans, his first love, from whom he received a letter on 24 December confirming her engagement to another and thus bringing to an end their close relationship. By the end of January 1795 Coleridge had abandoned his chance of a university degree, a career at the Bar, a job on the Morning Chronicle, and left for Bristol to further the Pantisocratic ideals in the company of Southey.
The first letter from Coleridge to Dyer recorded by Griggs is dated 11 September 1794, a four-line note announcing his departure for Cambridge, making arrangements about the delivery of some books and making excuses for not having seen Dyer. The second, dated from Bristol in late February 1795, is markedly more friendly in tone, reflecting no doubt long alcoholic evenings over the Christmas vacation in London. This letter indicates that Dyer had attempted to secure a position for Coleridge as tutor to the family of the Earl of Buchan perhaps with the idea of preventing Coleridge from leaving for America. Certainly Coleridge makes no mention of 'Pantisocracy' in the letter to Dyer offered for sale. A third letter is postmarked 10 March 1795 in which Coleridge refers to Dyer's warning not to be too sanguine in his expectation of profits from his projected edition of Latin poets, which he was publishing by subscription - presumably the work of 'more consequence' mentioned in the letter.
It is possible that Dyer helped to obtain one of the favourable reviews of the Fall of Robespierre.
Literature: E.L. Griggs ed. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I, 1956, pp.131, 151-6; VI, 1971, p.746.
Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, 1990, pp.59-88.
J.R. de J. Jackson ed. Coleridge: the Critical Heritage, 1970. (4)