The Date of Two Letters from Coleridge to George Dyer, 1795

Letters 18 and 19 in Professor E. L. Grigg’s Unpublished Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2 vols., New Haven and London, 1932) are dated “[1795]” and “[January, 1795]” respectively.  Since these two letters to George Dyer contain valuable information about Coleridge’s early collaboration with Southey, it is worth observing that they can be more accurately dated “[late February, 1795]” and “[about 10 March, 1795].”

Letter No. 18 clearly precedes No. 19: yet it is difficult to see how the events recounted in No. 18 could possibly have occurred as early as the third or fourth week of January.  Professor Grigg’s reason for placing No. 19 in January arises, as his note shows, from his interpretation of these words:

A Friend of our’s…will convey to you a little Pacquet from me – I shall soon transmit to the Morning Chronicle 5 more Sonnets to Eminent Characters – among the rest, one to Lord Stanhope! –

Coleridge published twelve sonnets on eminent characters in the Morning Chronicle, beginning on 1 December 1794, and ending – with the sonnet to Stanhope – on 31 January 1795.  But we misread Coleridge’s words as if we find a terminus ad quem for Letter No. 19 in the date 31 January.  What he means by “among the rest” is: “among the poems in the Pacquet [? newspaper cuttings] – but not among the ‘5 more’ [as yet unwritten] Sonnets – is one to Lord Stanhope.”  Letter No. 19 may as well have been written after 31 January as before that date.

No. 19.

This letter can be dated with considerable accuracy.  (a) “– Southey is now about to give a course of Historical Lectures –” The first lecture was delivered on 14 March.  (b)  “Poor Brothers!  They’ll make him know the Law as well as the Prophets!”  This refers, as Griggs notices, to Richard Brothers, a religious eccentric.  Coleridge must refer to Brother’s arrest in London for “treasonable practices” on 4 March 1795: he had not been charged before that date, and 27 March, the date on which he was found criminally insane by the court, is too late for this letter.  Dyer may have mentioned Brother’s arrest in his second letter: if not, Coleridge could easily have learned about it from the papers.  That Brothers was neither an obscure nor colourless figure we may judge from a full-column article in The Times of 4 March (not referring to his arrest) under the startling headline: “The GREAT PROPHET of Paddington-Street; / NEPHEW of GOD.”  The Oracle of 5 March ran half a column on Brother’s arrest; and between 6 and 8 March the Morning Chronicle, Morning Post, True Briton, and Sun (at least) all refer either to his arrest or to his examination before the privy council.  The report might reach Coleridge in Bristol as early as 5 March, but probably not earlier than 6 March.

Letter No. 19 was, then, written between 6 and 14 March.  The tone of the reference to Southey’s lectures suggests a date about 10 March 1795.

No. 18.

Here the evidence is less clear-cut.  (a) Coleridge says that he has delivered three political lectures, the first of which has been published.  Coleridge states that the first two lectures were delivered in February; Cottle states that the first lecture was published in February.  (b) Between No. 18 and No. 19 we can assume an interval of about a fortnight.  Dyer had written at least twice between Coleridge’s two letters, and in No. 19 Coleridge apologizes for the delay in answering because he has been “very ill with rheumatic fever.”  (c) Between Southey’s letters of 8 February 1795 and of “Monday morning” on the other hand, and the letter of 21 March on the other, we see a distinct shift of emphasis from the Telegraph to the Citizen in his search for journalistic work (L.C.S. I. 321-3; the relevant portion of the letter of 21 March is unpublished).  Coleridge in this letter speaks of writing to the Telegraph. 

In the absence of a precise date for the publication of either Coleridge’s pamphlet or of Dyer’s Theory and Practice of Benevolence, we cannot date No. 18 more closely than late February or early March.  The reference to his engagement to Sarah Fricker suggests the earlier date.