What follows, written by Sara Coleridge, is more
controversial than biographical and does not continue, like the first
part, to make Coleridge tell his own life by inserting letters in the
narrative. Of 33 letters quoted in the whole work, 30 are contained in
the section written by Henry Nelson Coleridge. Of these 11 were drawn
from Cottle's Early Recollections, seven being letters to Josiah Wade,
four to Joseph Cottle, and the remainder are sixteen letters to Poole,
one to Benjamin Flower, one to Charles E Heath, and one to Henry Martin.
From this I think it is evident that Henry Nelson Coleridge intended
what was published as a Supplement to the Biographia Literaria to be a
Life of Coleridge, either supplementary to the Biographia Literaria or
as an independent narrative, in which most of the letters published by
Cottle in 1837 and unpublished letters to Poole and other correspondents
were to form the chief material. Sara Coleridge, in finishing the
fragment, did not attempt to carry out the original intention of her
husband. A few letters in Cottle were perhaps not acceptable to her
taste, and in rejecting them she perhaps resolved to reject all
remaining letters in Cottle. She thus finished the fragmentary Life of
Coleridge left by her husband in her own way.
But Henry Nelson Coleridge had begun to build on another plan.
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