A Husband's Elegy on a departed Wife, Highgate, 1831 December : autograph manuscript signed.

Record ID: 
212058
Accession number: 
MA 1882
Author: 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Credit: 
Gift of Homer D. Crotty, 1957.
Description: 
1 item (1 pages) ; 24.2 x 18.1 cm
Notes: 

According to the published work cited below, this copy of the Elegy is a "revised version" of an annotation by Coleridge in his copy of Robinson Crusoe, Vol. II, p. 8, to which Coleridge makes reference in the title.

Summary: 

Being an elegy in two stanzas as follows: "The Stay of his affairs, the Center of his interests, the Regulator of his feelings and movements! his gentler Second Thought! in complying with whose wishes the genial sensation of a prevenient and conspiring Free Will in himself hid the coercion, while it enlivened the impulse, of Duty; and submission to whom, like the Bending down of the head to a Kiss, fed and flattered the pride, it overcame! The meek Dependent yet strong Supporter! her Husband's Comfort, Comforter, and living Home! / Here behold the true Portrait of the Wife : and to the honor of Womanhood be it spoken, there are few Neighborhoods, in Gr. Britain at least, in which the likeness ought not be justly claimed for more than one Original. Would to Heaven that the correspondent Husband were no rarer Character. / S.T. Coleridge, Grove, Highgate / December / 1831."

Provenance: 
Gift of Homer D. Crotty, 1957.