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COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. The Friend: A Series of Essays . London: Rest Fenner 1818.
COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. The Friend: A Series of Essays . London: Rest Fenner 1818. Vol III only (of 3), 8° (194 x 118 mm). Half-title. (Some occasional minor spotting.) 19th-century diapered cloth, morocco lettering-piece, untrimmed (spine slightly sunned); calf-faced slipcase. Provenance : Thomas Middleton (1769-1822), Bishop of Calcutta (presentation copy from the author). AN IMPORTANT ANNOTATED COPY, WITH CORRECTIONS INCORPORATED INTO THE THIRD EDITION Second edition, A FINE ASSOCIATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on the half-title: "To the Right Reverend the Bishop of Calcutta from the Author.” Middleton, a schoolfellow of Coleridge and Charles Lamb at Christ’s Hospital, is well remembered for his involvement in the controversy on the Greek article, a subject that also involved Wordsworth and Granville Sharp. Coleridge described himself as "the Junior School-fellow… the Protege, and the Friend of the late venerated Dr. Middleton” in a letter to the Court of Assistants of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers ( Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge , volume VI, page 983, Oxford, 1971), Coleridge has annotated this copy extensively in several passages, providing deletions, corrections and additions. The most substantial addition concerns refraction, adding thirty-two words and one much longer paragraph: “...Let us thoughtfully review the 3 preceding [paragraphs], and we shall find the conclusion to be, that the dialectic (or dianoetic) Intellect may, by the exertion of its own powers exclusively and from Data of its own, lead us to a general affirmation of a One Absolute Being. But here it stops. It is utterly (turn over) incapable of communicating either insight or conviction concerning the existence or the possibility of the World as different from Deity. It finds itself constrained to identify, say rather to confound, the Creator with the aggregate of his creatures. But it remains dissatisfied…From Zeno the Eleatic to Spinoza, and from Spinoza to the Physiosophists (- Natur- philosophen…) the result has been the same---viz. Pantheism under one or other of its modes, the least repulsive of which differs from the rest not in its consequences. . .but as it may express the moral striving of the Philosopher himself to hide these consequences from his own mind… All speculative Disquisition must begin with Postulates which die Conscience alone can both authorize and substantiate: and from whatever point the Reason may start, whether from "the Things that are seen" to the Invisible, or from the Idea of the Absolute One to the Things that are seen, it will find a Chasm which the Moral Being only, which the Spirit and Religion of Man can alone fill up…” (pp.262-3) The annotations appear on pages 255-257 and 262-266 (and are found on pages 207-208 and 212-213 in the third edition). "This Edition of The Friend, although the second, differs so greatly from the First, and contains moreover so large a quantity of entirely new matter, that it may fairly lay claim to rank as a Coleridge Princeps" (Wise, Coleridge , p.76). This copy is noted as “Not located or described” in the Collected Works (vol. 4, pt. 2, p.391). “This copy is known only from the transcript recorded in Blackwell Catalogue 570 , lot 751: ‘The notes in ink at end of vol. III were transcribed from S.T.C.’s own MS notes in a copy presented by him to Bp. Middleton, his old school friend.” The census of annotated copies totals 13, of which 7 are in institutions and 4 (including the present) are unlocated.