ABSTRACT
Among the poems Thelwall included was 'The Cell', written, apparently, on 24 October 1794, while in Newgate, originally published the day after in the Morning Post: within the Dungeon's noxious gloomThe Patriot still, with dauntless breast. 'The Dungeon' is made up of two simple stanzas. The first complaining at the idea of imprisonment as any kind of 'cure' for the criminal, the second appealing to the ministrations of nature. 'This Lime Tree Bower' may covertly bind itself to Thelwall's experiences in prison, but only to seek release by substituting the sufficiency of the imaginative transformation of the self in nature. By quoting from 'This Lime Tree Bower' in his letter to Thelwall, Coleridge does not confess the guilty deed of his denial of Thelwall's prison poetry as such, but he does seem to want to give himself away by returning to the scene of the crime.
