Biographia Epistolaris, vol 1 | Page 3

"Essays on his Own Times", consisting of his magazine and newspaper articles, contained in the Preface (p. 91), a fragment of a letter to Poole .......................................1
Making ..............................................................252
published up to 1850 by Coleridge himself and his three early biographers; and these continued to be quoted and alluded to by writers on Coleridge until 1895, when Mr. E. H. Coleridge gave to the world a collection of 260 letters.
Meantime, numerous biographies, memoirs, and magazines continued to throw in a contribution now and then. The following, as far as I have been able to ascertain, is the number of letters or fragments of letters contributed by the various works enumerated:
1836-8, Lockhart's "Life of Sir Walter Scott" 1 1841, "Life of Charles Mathews" 1 " "The Mirror", Letter to George Dyer 1 1844, Southey's "Life of Dr. Andrew Bell" 5 1847, "Memoir of Carey" (Translator of Dante) 1 1848, "Memoir of William Collins, R.A." 1 1849, "Life and Correspondence of R. Southey" 7 1851, "Memoirs of W. Wordsworth" 8 1858, "Fragmentary Remains of Sir H. Davy" 15 1860, "Autobiography of C. R. Leslie" 1 1864, "Macmillan's Magazine" (Letters to Win. Godwin) 9 1869, "H. Crabb Robinson's Diary" 5 1870, "Westminster Review" (Letters to Dr. Brabant) 11 1871, Meteyard's "Group of Englishmen" 2 1873, Sara Coleridge's "Memoirs" 1 1874, "Lippincott's Magazine" 10 1876, "Life of William Godwin", by C. Regan Paul (16, less 7 of those which appeared in "Macmillan's Magazine", 1864) 9 1878, "Fraser's Magazine" (letters to Matilda Betham) 5 1880, Macmillan's Edition of "Coleridge's Poems" 1 1882, "Journals of Caroline Fox" 1 1884, "Life of Alaric Watts" 5 1886, Brandl's "Life of Coleridge" 10 1887, "Memorials of Coleorton" 20 1888, "Thomas Poole and his Friends" (Mrs. Sandford) 75 1889, Professor Knight's "Life of Wordsworth" 12 1889, "Rogers and his Contemporaries" 1 1890, "Memoir of John Murray" 4 1891, "De Quincey Memorials" 4 1893, "Life of Washington Allston" (Flagg) 4 " "Friends' Quarterly Magazine" 1 " "Illustrated London News" 19 1893, J. Dykes Campbell's Edition of "Coleridge's Poems" 8 1894, " " " Life of Coleridge" (fragments) 36 1894, "The Athenaeum" (3 letters to Wrangham) 3 1895, "Letters" of S. T. Coleridge (edited by E. H. Coleridge) 174 " "Anima Poetae" (E. H. C.), Letter to J. Tobin. 1 " "The Gillmans of Highgate" (A. W. Gillman) 3 " "Athenaeum" of 18 May, 1895 1 1897, "William Blackwood and his Sons", by Mrs. Oliphant 6 1898, "Charles Lamb and the Lloyds" (E. V. Lucas) 3 1899, "J. H. Frere and his Friends" 7 1903, "Tom Wedgwood", by R. B. Litchfield 1 1907, "Christabel", edited by E. H. Coleridge 1 1910, "The Bookman", May 1
Total 747
Besides these there are privately printed letters and letters not yet published to be taken account of. The chief collection of these is "Letters from the Lake Poets" (edited by E. H. Coleridge), containing 87 letters to Daniel Stuart, some of which are republished in the "Letters", 1895. The remainder of letters not published, from the information given by Mr. E. H. Coleridge in his Preface, I make out to be about 300.
Nor does this exhaust the list of letters written by Coleridge. In Ainger's Collection of the Letters of Charles Lamb are 62 letters by Lamb to Coleridge, most of which are in answer to letters received. We may therefore estimate the letters of Coleridge to Lamb at not less than 62. In Dorothy Wordsworth's "Grasmere Journal" there are no less than 32 letters to the Wordsworths[1] mentioned as having been received during the period 1800-1803, not represented among the letters in Professor Knight's "Life of Wordsworth". The total number of letters known to have been written by Coleridge is therefore between 1,100 and 1,200. Other correspondents of Coleridge not appearing among the recipients of letters in publications are probably as follows:
V. Le Grice.
Sam. Le Grice.
T. F. Middleton.
Robert Allen.
Robert Lovell.
Ch. Lloyd, Jr.
John Cruickshank.
Dr. Beddoes.
Edmund Irving.
Mr. Clarkson.
Mrs. Clarkson (except one small fragment in "Diary of H. C. Robinson").
[Footnote 1: The letters to Lamb and Miss Wordsworth do not now exist.]
The letters of Coleridge, taken as a whole, are one of the most important contributions to English Letter-writing. They are gradually coming to light, and with every letter or group of letters put forth, the character and intellectual development of Coleridge is becoming clearer. His poems and prose works, great as these are, are not comprehensible without a study of his letters, which join together the "insulated fragments" of that grand scheme of truth which he called his "System" ("Table Talk", 12th Sept. 1831, and 26th June 1834). Coleridge, in his letters, has written his own life, for his life, after all, was a life of thought, and his finest thoughts and his most ambitious aspirations are given expression to in his letters to his numerous friends; and the true biography