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Bodleian Library, MS Don. d. 86. Not previously published.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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I had not the most distant intention of applying the term miscreantgenus, & made up the
description from different individuals, – the features which justify that word were belong to Anthony Pasquin,
In writing upon the French Revolutionists I concluded the article by promising that upon the Poor, – or rather upon the
predisposing causes of revolution in England, saying that we also had our Heberts & our Marats.xxx as a Volume, some year & half after its completion, among other materials for the Register;x one volume that for 1811 is all that I have yet
had of it. It convinced me that the Editor was a man of good feelings, who was led
astray by them, & who was taking a course which would lead him irretrievably wrong, because pride & shame & vindictive
feelings & party spirit would chain down his soul <mind> to its errors, – & that which began in a love of
general liberty would end in hatred of the government under which he lived. His talents were manifest, – his presumption not less so;
this I readily pardoned, – & when I exposed (as I have done in the forth-coming Annals of the year) his blundering predictions
respecting the war in Portugal, & the unwise, unjust & unfeeling manner in which he spoke of the Spaniards, I wrote without
asperity, or the slightest personal allusion.
But in the same volume there is an unprovoked personal attack upon Coleridge.Friend, lament over the shocking increase of humanity and public spirit, so fatal to selfishness and public
corruption’, habits which To C’s family those habits
have are a far heavier calamity than any which has yet befallen Mrs Hunt & her children.I trust than any, I sincerely hope, that ever may befall them: – to me, & to those who like me
know the heights & depths of Coleridges intellect, & his virtues
as well as his vices, – they are the heaviest affliction, – & will occasion a life-long regret <sorrow>. Mr Hunt may judge how I felt towards him when that number of the Examiner
cames into the hands of Coleridges wife, & of Coleridges son, – a youth at that time under sixteen whose feelings are
as strong as his talents are extraordinary.
Soon after my article on the French Revolutionists had appeared, a paragraph from the Examiner was copied into one of
my newspapers; – the accuracy of the extract I took for granted, Mr Hunt had taken
what was said of our Heberts & Marats to himself, & challenged the reviewer, – whom he called hireling or slave or some such
name, to specify whom he had alluded to.him I should have found it in Camille Desmoulins: – an enthusiast for liberty, a man of
talents, of good feelings & domestic virtues, – who was led on step by step to concur in the executions of the Royalists first –
then of the Brissotines, – & of course took his own turn at last.
The sentence which so pointedly applies to Mr Hunt derives its point
from circumstances which occurring after it was written, – the arti paper was written for the number anterior to
that in which it appeared, before his trial, – & before I knew that he was about to be tried.men spoke of the progress of those writers who proceed upon a
system of insulting & injuring the feelings of individuals, & I remembered that the prospectus of the Examiner took credit
for to itself for the manner <spirit> in which its theatrical criticism was to be conducted
written,must <may> be acquitted of indulging any personal resentments in this branch of his vocation. My dear Gooch of all the cruel employments to which a man in this country can devote himself, that
of dramatic – or rather of histrionic criticism is infinitely the worst. If I can have <given> Mr Hunt ‘severe pain’
You may if you think fit show him what I have written. It may tend to make him pause before he again touches upon the
private xxxxxxxxx failings of a private man; – & I readily assure him that nothing shall again proceed from me which may
wound him as an individual. In an evil hour did he forsake the happier paths of literature to make politics his profession – in an evil
hour for his country & himself: – instead of shedding his errors like xxxx before xxx their xxxxxx <xx xxx
xxxxxxx as his intellect was matured by knowledge>, – he has sown them like the dragons teeth. I too, like him, set sail
for the in the ship Presumption from the port of Good Intent, – but I have escaped from the shoals upon which he is in
danger of foundering. The difference between his opinions & mine <(it is a difference, rather as to the means than the end.)> would may be explained by the difference <the
alteration> which ten years of xxxxxxxx xxx xxx xxxx to a man <necessarily occasion cause in one> whose
whole life is devoted to the acquisition of knowledge. But it is to be feared that time will not do for him what it has done for me.
His opinions will become dead to him because he has suffered from <for> them; nor & he
cannot can never become wiser without discovering that the certain tendency of his journal has been to hurry on a
revolution, which God knows is approaching too fast, – xxx in This car of Jaganautxx xxxx
will be in my while endeavouring to impede its course, – not in xx dragging it on.
I have left myself no room to say anything concerning Roderick.s to xx me to display
situations of the deep passion. – As for patriotism you would soon have learnt what it is had you been in Zaragoza, or were
you at this time in the North of Germany.