455. To Robert Southey

[Addressed by Mrs. S. T. Coleridge] Mrs Southey | St James's-place | Kingsdown | Bristol.

MS. Lord Latymer. Hitherto unpublished. Coleridge's letter was written on the address sheet of a letter from Mrs. Coleridge to her sister, Mrs. Southey. Postmark: <1> 4 August< 1802>. Stamped: Keswick.

[Circa 12 August 1802] 2

My dear Southey

Do let me hear from you / what of the Cow Pox & Loyola? -Marius, an Ecclesiastic of noble birth, a Swiss, who died Anno Domini 601 -- wrote a Latin Chronicle of his own Time, to be met with in Du Cheyne 3 -- in the year 570 he speaks of the Small Pox,
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1 	This letter must have been written shortly after 10 Aug. 1802, because of the reference to Grasmere and to Wordsworth. In Letter 458 Coleridge speaks of the probable arrival of the Wordsworths at Gallow Hill by 'Monday next'.
2 	In the summer of 1802 the Southeys took a furnished house in the same row as the Danvers's home, where they had had lodgings the year before. The fact that Mrs. Coleridge did not use the name Danvers in the address, as well as references in her letter, indicates a date in Aug. 1802.
3 	Marii Aventicensis Episcopi Chronicon appeared in the first volume of André Du Chesne Historiae Francorum Scriptores. . . , 5 vols., 1636-49.

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which was first introduced by the Abyssinians into Arabia when they conquered the Province of Hamyen [ Yemen?]; & they called it the Locust-plague, believing it to have originated in the huge heaps of putrefying Locusts in the Desart. -- From Arabia it was carried by Greek merchants to Constantinople -- & from thence by the armies of Justinian in his Gothic War to Italy, Switzerland, & France. Marius expressly says of it; [']animalia bubula maxime interierunt -- the Oxen & Cows chiefly died of it /' tho' he had before stated it's devastations among men as quite frightful. The Cattle plague in 1769 was pronounced by the Physicians in Denmark to be the genuine Small Pox -- it was eradicated in England, Flanders, & the South of France by burying all the diseased Cattle with the Carcases entire, & with their Litter; but in Denmark it became naturalized -- & they prevented it's ill effects by inoculating the Calves, which answered in all cases exactly as inoculation in the human species. -- These facts seem to place the identity of the Small & cow pox out of all doubt -- be so good as to mention them to Mr King & Dr Beddoes -- & learn from them, whether the Facts have been adduced in any of the pamphlets of Jenner, Woodville,  1  & the rest of the Cow po[x men]. God bless you, dear Friend! &

S. T. Coleridge.