# - Coleridge, S.T.

written when an undergraduate at Cambridge and incorporating two Latin poems, discussing his university life including strain and worry over exams and his hopes for an exhibition, in one letter asking for assistance from George over the Latin letter he had to write to the exhibition examiners (with the text of that letter included), also his expectations for the future ("...God forbid that I should perish without effort and without renown..." [translation]), and discussing his ambition to write a prize poem ("...the subject given us for an Ode is the Praise of Astronomy - unless I am hindered by indisposition of body of mind, I shall again launch into poetry..." [translation]) with a grandiloquent invocation of the muses in 16 lines of Latin verse (beginning "Ite mordaces, procul ite, Curae!"), also passing on news from revolutionary France and of Thomas Paine, as well as family news including a jocular 19 line Latin poem on Ottery St Mary (beginning "Ast Hunc Otteriae Juvenes flerunt abeuntem") and an amusing anecdote about a pompous man who claimed he would recommend their brother Francis to the Governor-General of India, with many warm thanks for the material and emotional comfort provided by his brother, 12 pages, 4to, two with integral address leaves and two with address panels, postal marks, Ottery St Mary and Jesus College, Cambridge, 24 August 1792 to 18 February 1793, browning, nicks and tears, seal tears to two letters

Published, with English translations, in The Collected Letters, ed. Griggs, I, pp.38-5 and 55-57 (nos 20-22 and 28)

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, where appropriate. If you require additional information we would recommend viewing the item during the exhibition or contacting one of the specialists for this sale.
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"...So, my dear Brother, whet the knife of criticism upon the sole of affection, and sit down at it with anticipative grin, like a monthly reviewer preparing to cut up a limb of Orthodoxy..."

In this group of letters to his elder brother Rev. George Coleridge (1765-1828), Samuel Taylor Coleridge provides many insights into his life in his second year at Cambridge. It was a period of impending crisis, and he did not win the studentship (the Craven exhibition) or the Browne medal for a Greek Ode (which he had won the previous year) for his Ode to Astronomy. Meanwhile his debts were mounting rapidly, leading to his decision towards the end of the year to skip Cambridge and join the army.