A handwritten manuscript containing a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge railing against the slave trade has been temporarily barred from leaving the UK in the hope that a British buyer can be found.
The poem, written in Greek by Coleridge across six mottled pages, attacks the horrors of slavery and condemns those who overlooked the conditions of enslaved people on the Middle Passage transportation route in the late 18th century.
Because of what it reveals about Coleridge, considered to have been one of Britain’s greatest poets, and of the slavery debate of his time, it should be considered a national treasure and too important to leave the UK, the Department of Media, Culture and Sport has been advised.
As a result, a decision on granting an export licence has been deferred until at least 16 May, which the government hopes will allow time for a British buyer or institution to raise the recommended £20,400 sale price.
Coleridge wrote the poem, a Greek Sapphic ode in 24 quatrains, in June 1792 as a 19-year-old undergraduate at Cambridge, winning the university’s Browne medal for classical composition.
He wrote: “I grieve deeply / with the race of slaves suffering dire ills / just as they groan with unspeakable grief.” To those who “revel in the evils of slavery [and] feed on the persecutions of the wretched,” he wrote: “Do you hear? Or do you not hear?”
Although the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade had been formed in London five years earlier, the slave trade was not abolished in the British empire until 1807, and enslaved people in the colonies were not freed until 1838, when Britain compensated enslavers rather than their victims.
Peter Barber, a member of the Arts Council committee that advises the government on exporting cultural objects, said: “This insignificant-seeming, annotated draft of a poem in Greek is an emotive relic of one of this country’s greatest poets and sages. It dates back to the time when … Coleridge was hoping, by winning a university prize for the verse, to prove to his sceptical parents that he had the makings of a scholar.
“Its content reflects his heartfelt – and lifelong – commitment to one of the burning national issues of the time, the abolition of slavery, and he continued to refer to the poem throughout his life … I fervently hope that a way can be found to keep the draft poem in this country.”
• This article was amended on 20 March 2023 because an earlier version incorrectly referred to 1807 as the year when slavery was abolished. 1807 was the year of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. It was in 1833 that the Slavery Abolition Act was enacted.
