COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. Autograph letter signed (“S.T. Coleridge”) to Charles Lamb, [Highgate, 1 July 1825], with a 19-word unpublished postscript. 2 pages, 4to with integral address leaf, postmarked, seal tear, several small marginal tears, quarter blue morocco slipcase. Provenance: Arthur H. Houghton (bookplate; his sale Christie’s London, 13 June 1979, lot 127).
COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. Autograph letter signed (“S.T. Coleridge”) to Charles Lamb, [Highgate, 1 July 1825], with a 19-word unpublished postscript. 2 pages, 4to with integral address leaf, postmarked, seal tear, several small marginal tears, quarter blue morocco slipcase. Provenance: Arthur H. Houghton (bookplate; his sale Christie’s London, 13 June 1979, lot 127). Coleridge writes to Lamb, speculating about the authorship of “a little, thin, mean-looking sort of foolscap sub-octavo of poems, printed on very dingy outsides… so very Grub Streetish in all its appearance” which he erroneously believes to have been written by Lamb. He reasons that “The puns are nine in ten good--many excellent--the “ Newgatery ” transcendent. And then the exemplum sine exemplo of a colume of Personalities of contemporaries without a single like that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses… Then, moreover, and besides--to speak with becoming modestly, excepting my own self--who is there but you could write the musical lines & stanzas that are intermixed?” Coleridge rejects his friend Gillman’s suggestion that the book is an the work of Reynolds and Hood, but in fact, as Lamb revealed in his answer to the letter, Gillman was correct in his supposition that John Hamilton Reynolds and Thomas Hood were the authors of the Odes and Addresses and Lamb had no hand in them. Nevertheless, Lamb claimed to be flattered by Coleridge’s mistake-- "I would put my name to ‘em chearfully, if I could as honestly” (See Letters of Charles & Mary Lamb , ed. E.V. Lucas, III, letter 569 of 2 July 1825). Lamb and Coleridge were fellow pupils at Christ's Hospital in London's Newgate Street. Despite an early quarrel over Coleridge's satire on his poems, Lamb, the younger man by two years, remained a faithful friend and poetic associate. The “best criticism” of Coleridge's Poems of 1796 came from Lamb in “long affectionate letters .... going minutely through the text, discussing individual lines in detail, and suggesting changes to make the style ‘more compress'd & I think energetic’” (Holmes, Coleridge Early Visions pp. 114-115). Lamb edited the third edition of the Poems (1797), and dedicated volume I of his Works (1818) to Coleridge, “his old, unreliable, brilliant friend.” Griggs, who only had access to a transcript in the Coleridge family, dates the letter June 30 but the postmark reveals it to have been posted a day later. Published in Collected Letters , ed. E.L. Griggs, V, letter 1472.
COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. Autograph letter signed (“S.T. Coleridge”) to Charles Lamb, [Highgate, 1 July 1825], with a 19-word unpublished postscript. 2 pages, 4to with integral address leaf, postmarked, seal tear, several small marginal tears, quarter blue morocco slipcase. Provenance: Arthur H. Houghton (bookplate; his sale Christie’s London, 13 June 1979, lot 127).
COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. Autograph letter signed (“S.T. Coleridge”) to Charles Lamb, [Highgate, 1 July 1825], with a 19-word unpublished postscript. 2 pages, 4to with integral address leaf, postmarked, seal tear, several small marginal tears, quarter blue morocco slipcase. Provenance: Arthur H. Houghton (bookplate; his sale Christie’s London, 13 June 1979, lot 127). Coleridge writes to Lamb, speculating about the authorship of “a little, thin, mean-looking sort of foolscap sub-octavo of poems, printed on very dingy outsides… so very Grub Streetish in all its appearance” which he erroneously believes to have been written by Lamb. He reasons that “The puns are nine in ten good--many excellent--the “ Newgatery ” transcendent. And then the exemplum sine exemplo of a colume of Personalities of contemporaries without a single like that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses… Then, moreover, and besides--to speak with becoming modestly, excepting my own self--who is there but you could write the musical lines & stanzas that are intermixed?” Coleridge rejects his friend Gillman’s suggestion that the book is an the work of Reynolds and Hood, but in fact, as Lamb revealed in his answer to the letter, Gillman was correct in his supposition that John Hamilton Reynolds and Thomas Hood were the authors of the Odes and Addresses and Lamb had no hand in them. Nevertheless, Lamb claimed to be flattered by Coleridge’s mistake-- "I would put my name to ‘em chearfully, if I could as honestly” (See Letters of Charles & Mary Lamb , ed. E.V. Lucas, III, letter 569 of 2 July 1825). Lamb and Coleridge were fellow pupils at Christ's Hospital in London's Newgate Street. Despite an early quarrel over Coleridge's satire on his poems, Lamb, the younger man by two years, remained a faithful friend and poetic associate. The “best criticism” of Coleridge's Poems of 1796 came from Lamb in “long affectionate letters .... going minutely through the text, discussing individual lines in detail, and suggesting changes to make the style ‘more compress'd & I think energetic’” (Holmes, Coleridge Early Visions pp. 114-115). Lamb edited the third edition of the Poems (1797), and dedicated volume I of his Works (1818) to Coleridge, “his old, unreliable, brilliant friend.” Griggs, who only had access to a transcript in the Coleridge family, dates the letter June 30 but the postmark reveals it to have been posted a day later. Published in Collected Letters , ed. E.L. Griggs, V, letter 1472.
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