  Abergavenny, 410. 181, 752 and note; a proposed visit to, 512, 513; To R. B. Sheridan, Esq., 116 n., 118. Footnotes: [1] Pickering, 1838. [2] The Journal of John Woolman, the Quaker abolitionist, was published in Philadelphia in 1774, and in London in 1775. From a letter of Charles Lamb, dated January 5, 1797, we may conclude that Charles Lloyd had, in the first instance, drawn Coleridge’s attention to the writings of John Woolman. Compare, too, Essays of Elia, “A Quakers’ Meeting.” “Get the writings of John Woolman by heart; and love the early Quakers.” Letters of Charles Lamb, 1888, i. 61; Prose Works, 1836, ii. 106. [3] I have been unable to trace any connection between the family of Coleridge and the Parish or Hundred of Coleridge in North Devon. Coldridges or Coleridges have been settled for more than two hundred years in Doddiscombsleigh, Ashton, and other villages of the Upper Teign, and to the southwest of Exeter the name is not uncommon. It is probable that at some period before the days of parish registers, strangers from Coleridge who had settled farther south were named after their birthplace. [4] Probably a mistake for Crediton. It was at Crediton that John Coleridge, the poet’s father, was born (Feb. 21, 1718) and educated; and here, if anywhere, it must have been that the elder John Coleridge “became a respectable woollen-draper.” [5] John Coleridge, the younger, was in his thirty-first year when he was matriculated as sizar at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, March 18, 1748. He is entered in the college books as filius Johannis textoris. On the 13th of June, 1749, he was appointed to the mastership of Squire’s Endowed Grammar School at South Molton. It is strange that Coleridge forgot or failed to record this incident in his father’s life. His mother came from the neighbourhood, and several of his father’s scholars, among them Francis Buller, afterwards the well-known judge, followed him from South Molton to Ottery St. Mary. [6] George Coleridge was Chaplain Priest, and Master of the King’s School, but never Vicar of Ottery St. Mary. [7] Anne (“Nancy”) Coleridge died in her twenty-fifth year. Her illness and early death form the subject of two of Coleridge’s early sonnets. Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Macmillan, 1893, p. 13. See, also, “Lines to a Friend,” p. 37, and “Frost at Midnight,” p. 127. [8] A mistake for October 21st. [9] Compare some doggerel verses “On Mrs. Monday’s Beard” which Coleridge wrote on a copy of Southey’s Omniana, under the heading of “Beards” (Omniana, 1812, ii. 54). Southey records the legend of a female saint, St. Vuilgefortis, who in answer to her prayers was rewarded with a beard as a mark of divine favour. The story is told in some Latin elegiacs from the Annus Sacer Poeticus of the Jesuit Sautel which Southey quotes at length. Coleridge comments thus, “Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixere! What! can nothing be one’s own? This is the more vexatious, for at the age of eighteen I lost a legacy of Fifty pounds for the following Epigram on my Godmother’s Beard, which she had the barbarity to revenge by striking me out of her Will.” The epigram is not worth quoting, but it is curious to observe that, even when scribbling for his own amusement, and without any view to publication, Coleridge could not resist the temptation of devising an “apologetic preface.” The verses, etc., are printed in Table Talk and Omniana, Bell, 1888, p. 391. The editor, the late Thomas Ashe, transcribed them from Gillman’s copy of the Omniana, now in the British Museum. I have followed a transcript of the marginal note made by Mrs. H. N. Coleridge before the volume was cut in binding. Her version supplies one or two omissions. [10] The meaning is that the events which had taken place between March and October, 1797, the composition, for instance, of his tragedy, Osorio, the visit of Charles Lamb to the cottage at Nether Stowey, the settling of Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy at Alfoxden, would hereafter be recorded in his autobiography. He had failed to complete the record of the past, only because he had been too much occupied with the present. [11] He records his timorous passion for fairy stories in a note to The Friend (ed. 1850, i. 192). Another version of the same story is to be found in some MS. notes (taken by J. Tomalin) of the Lectures of 1811, the only record of this and other lectures:— Lecture 5th, 1811. “Give me,” cried Coleridge, with enthusiasm, “the works which delighted my youth! Give me the History of St. George, and the Seven Champions of Christendom, which at every leisure moment I used to hide myself in a corner to read! Give me the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, which I used to watch, till the sun shining on the bookcase approached, and, glowing full upon it, gave me the courage to take it from the shelf. I heard of no little Billies, and sought no praise for giving to beggars, and I trust that my heart is not the worse, or the less inclined to feel sympathy for all men, because I first learnt the powers of my nature, and to reverence that nature—for who can feel and reverence the nature of man and not feel deeply for the affliction of others possessing like powers and like nature?” Tomalin’s Shorthand Report of Lecture V. [12] Compare a MS. note dated July 19, 1803. “Intensely hot day, left off a waistcoat, and for yarn wore silk stockings. Before nine o’clock had unpleasant chillness, heard a noise which I thought Derwent’s in sleep; listened and found it was a calf bellowing. Instantly came on my mind that night I slept out at Ottery, and the calf in the field across the river whose lowing so deeply impressed me. Chill and child and calf lowing.” [13] Sir Stafford, the seventh baronet, grandfather of the first Lord Iddesleigh, was at that time a youth of eighteen. His name occurs among the list of scholars who were subscribers to the second edition of the Critical Latin Grammar. [14] Compare a MS. note dated March 5, 1818. “Memory counterfeited by present impressions. One great cause of the coincidence of dreams with the event—? ?t?? ??.” [15] The date of admission to Hertford was July 18, 1782. Eight weeks later, September 12, he was sent up to London to the great school. [16] Compare the autobiographical note of 1832. “I was in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner and read, read, read; fixing myself on Robinson Crusoe’s Island, finding a mountain of plumb cake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating it into the shapes of tables and chairs—hunger and fancy.” Lamb in his Christ’s Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago, and Leigh Hunt in his Autobiography, are in the same tale as to the insufficient and ill-cooked meals of their Bluecoat days. Life of Coleridge, by James Gillman, 1838, p. 20; Lamb’s Prose Works, 1836, ii. 27; Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, 1860, p. 60. [17] Coleridge’s “letters home” were almost invariably addressed to his brother George. It may be gathered from his correspondence that at rare intervals he wrote to his mother as well, but, contrary to her usual practice, she did not, with this one exception, preserve his letters. It was, indeed, a sorrowful consequence of his “long exile” at Christ’s Hospital, that he seems to have passed out of his mother’s ken, that absence led to something like indifference on both sides. [18] Compare the autobiographical note of 1832 as quoted by Gillman. About this time he became acquainted with a widow lady, “whose son,” says he, “I, as upper boy, had protected, and who therefore looked up to me, and taught me what it was to have a mother. I loved her as such. She had three daughters, and of course I fell in love with the eldest.” Life of Coleridge, p. 28. [19] Scholarship of Jesus College, Cambridge, for sons of clergymen. [20] At this time Frend was still a Fellow of Jesus College. Five years had elapsed since he had resigned from conscientious motives the living of Madingley in Cambridgeshire, but it was not until after the publication of his pamphlet Peace and Union, in 1793, that the authorities took alarm. He was deprived of his Fellowship, April 17, and banished from the University, May 30, 1793. Coleridge’s demeanour in the Senate House on the occasion of Frend’s trial before the Vice-Chancellor forms the subject of various contradictory anecdotes. See Life of Coleridge, 1838, p. 55; Reminiscences of Cambridge, Henry Gunning, 1855, i. 272-275. [21] The Rev. George Caldwell was afterwards Fellow and Tutor of Jesus College. His name occurs among the list of subscribers to the original issue of The Friend. Letters of the Lake Poets, 1889, p. 452. [22] “First Grecian of my time was Launcelot Pepys Stevens [Stephens], kindest of boys and men, since the Co-Grammar Master, and inseparable companion of Dr. T[rollop]e.” Lamb’s Prose Works, 1835, ii. 45. He was at this time Senior-Assistant Master at Newcome’s Academy at Clapton near Hackney, and a colleague of George Coleridge. The school, which belonged to three generations of Newcomes, was of high repute as a private academy, and commanded the services of clever young schoolmasters as assistants or ushers. Mr. Sparrow, whose name is mentioned in the letter, was headmaster. [23] A Latin essay on Posthumous Fame, described as a declamation and stated to have been composed by S. T. Coleridge, March, 1792, is preserved at Jesus College, Cambridge. Some extracts were printed in the College magazine, The Chanticleer, Lent Term, 1886. [24] Poetical Works, p. 19. [25] Ibid. p. 19. [26] Poetical Works, p. 20. [27] Robert Allen, Coleridge’s earliest friend, and almost his exact contemporary (born October 18, 1772), was admitted to University College, Oxford, as an exhibitioner, in the spring of 1792. He entertained Coleridge and his compagnon de voyage, Joseph Hucks, on the occasion of the memorable visit to Oxford in June, 1794, and introduced them to his friend, Robert Southey of Balliol. He is mentioned in letters of Lamb to Coleridge, June 10, 1796, and October 11, 1802. In both instances his name is connected with that of Stoddart, and it is probable that it was through Allen that Coleridge and Stoddart became acquainted. For anecdotes concerning Allen, see Lamb’s Essay, “Christ’s Hospital,” etc., Prose Works, 1836, ii. 47, and Leigh Hunt’s Autobiography, 1860, p. 74. See, also, Letters to Allsop, 1864, p. 170. [28] George Richards, a contemporary of Stephens, and, though somewhat senior, of Middleton, was a University prize-man and Fellow of Oriel. He was “author,” says Lamb, “of the ‘Aboriginal Britons,’ the most spirited of Oxford prize poems.” In after life he made his mark as a clergyman, as Bampton Lecturer (in 1800), and as Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. He was appointed Governor of Christ’s Hospital in 1822, and founded an annual prize, the “Richards’ Gold Medal,” for the best copy of Latin hexameters. Christ’s Hospital. List of Exhibitioners, from 1566-1885, compiled by A. M. Lockhart. [29] Robert Percy (Bobus) Smith, 1770-1845, the younger brother of Sydney Smith, was Browne Medalist in 1791. His Eton and Cambridge prize poems, in Lucretian metre, are among the most finished specimens of modern Latinity. The principal contributors to the Microcosm were George Canning, John and Robert Smith, Hookham Frere, and Charles Ellis. Gentleman’s Magazine, N. S., xxiii. 440. [30] For complete text of the Greek Sapphic Ode, “On the Slave Trade,” which obtained the Browne gold medal for 1792, see Appendix B, p. 476, to Coleridge’s Poetical Works, Macmillan, 1893. See, also, Mr. Dykes Campbell’s note on the style and composition of the ode, p. 653. I possess a transcript of the Ode, taken, I believe, by Sara Coleridge in 1823, on the occasion of her visit to Ottery St. Mary. The following note is appended:— “Upon the receipt of the above poem, Mr. George Coleridge, being vastly pleased by the composition, thinking it would be a sort of compliment to the superior genius of his brother the author, composed the following lines:— IBI HÆC INCONDITA SOLUS. Say Holy Genius—Heaven-descended Beam, [31] He was matriculated as pensioner March 31, 1792. He had been in residence since September, 1791. [32] For the Craven Scholarship. In an article contributed to the Gentleman’s Magazine of December, 1834, portions of which are printed in Gillman’s Life of Coleridge, C. V. Le Grice, a co-Grecian with Coleridge and Allen, gives the names of the four competitors. The successful candidate was Samuel Butler, afterwards Head Master of Shrewsbury and Bishop of Lichfield. Life of Coleridge, 1838, p. 50. [33] Musical glee composer, 1769-1821. Biographical Dictionary. [34] Poetical Works, p. 20. [35] Francis Syndercombe Coleridge, who died shortly after the fall of Seringapatam, February 6, 1792. [36] Edward Coleridge, the Vicar of Ottery’s fourth son, was then assistant master in Dr. Skinner’s school at Salisbury. His marriage with an elderly widow who was supposed to have a large income was a source of perennial amusement to his family. Some years after her death he married his first cousin, Anne Bowdon. [37] The husband of Coleridge’s half sister Elizabeth, the youngest of the vicar’s first family, “who alone was bred up with us after my birth, and who alone of the three I was wont to think of as a sister.” See Autobiographical Notes of 1832. Life of Coleridge, 1838, p. 9. [38] The brother of Mrs. Luke and of Mrs. George Coleridge. [39] A note to the Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Moxon, 1852, gives a somewhat different version of the origin of this poem, first printed in the edition of 1796 as Effusion 27, and of the lines included in Letter XX., there headed “Cupid turned Chymist,” but afterwards known as “Kisses.” [40] G. L. Tuckett, to whom this letter was addressed, was the first to disclose to Coleridge’s family the unwelcome fact that he had enlisted in the army. He seems to have guessed that the runaway would take his old schoolfellows into his confidence, and that they might be induced to reveal the secret. He was, I presume, a college acquaintance,—possibly an old Blue, who had left the University and was reading for the bar. In an unpublished letter from Robert Allen to Coleridge, dated February, 1796, there is an amusing reference to this kindly Deus ex Machina. “I called upon Tuckett, who thus prophesied: ‘You know how subject Coleridge is to fits of idleness. Now, I’ll lay any wager, Allen, that after three or four numbers (of the Watchman) the sheets will contain nothing but parliamentary debates, and Coleridge will add a note at the bottom of the page: “I should think myself deficient in my duty to the Public if I did not give these interesting debates at full length.”’” [41] It would seem that there were alleviations to the misery and discomfort of this direful experience. In a MS. note dated January, 1805, he recalls as a suitable incident for a projected work, The Soother in Absence, the “Domus quadrata hortensis, at Henley-on-Thames,” and “the beautiful girl” who, it would seem, soothed the captivity of the forlorn trooper. [42] In the various and varying reminiscences of his soldier days, which fell “from Coleridge’s own mouth,” and were repeated by his delighted and credulous hearers, this officer plays an important part. Whatever foundation of fact there may be for the touching anecdote that the Latin sentence, “Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem,” scribbled on the walls of the stable at Reading, caught the attention of Captain Ogle, “himself a scholar,” and led to Comberbacke’s detection, he was not, as the poet Bowles and Miss Mitford maintained, the sole instrument in procuring the discharge. He may have exerted himself privately, but his name does not occur in the formal correspondence which passed between Coleridge’s brothers and the military authorities. [43] The Compasses, now The Chequers, High Wycombe, where Coleridge was billeted just a hundred years ago, appears to have preserved its original aspect. [44] See Notes to Poetical Works of Coleridge (1893), p. 568. The “intended translation” was advertised in the Cambridge Intelligencer for June 14 and June 16, 1794: “Proposals for publishing by subscription Imitations from the Modern Latin Poets, with a Critical and Biographical Essay on the Restoration of Literature. By S. T. Coleridge, of Jesus College, Cambridge.... “In the course of the Work will be introduced a copious selection from the Lyrics of Casimir, and a new Translation of the Basia of Secundus.” One ode, “Ad Lyram,” was printed in The Watchman, No. 11, March 9, 1796, p. 49. [45] The Barbou Casimir, published at Paris in 1759. [46] Compare the note to chapter xii. of the Biographia Literaria: “In the Biographical Sketch of my Literary Life I may be excused if I mention here that I had translated the eight Hymns of Synesius from the Greek into English Anacreontics before my fifteenth year.” The edition referred to may be that published at Basle in 1567. Interprete G. Cantero. Bentley’s Quarto Edition was probably the Quarto Edition of Horace, published in 1711. [47] Charles Clagget, a musical composer and inventor of musical instruments, flourished towards the close of the eighteenth century. I have been unable to ascertain whether the songs in question were ever published. Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by George Grove, D. C. L., 1879, article “Clagget,” i. 359. [48] The entry in the College Register of Jesus College is brief and to the point: “1794 Apr.: Coleridge admonitus est per magistrum in prÆsenti sociorum.” [49] A letter to George Coleridge dated April 16, 1794, and signed J. Plampin, has been preserved. The pains and penalties to which Coleridge had subjected himself are stated in full, but the kindly nature of the writer is shown in the concluding sentence: “I am happy in adding that I thought your brother’s conduct on his return extremely proper; and I beg to assure you that it will give me much pleasure to see him take such an advantage of his experience as his own good sense will dictate.” [50] A week later, July 22, in a letter addressed to H. Martin, of Jesus College, to whom, in the following September, he dedicated “The Fall of Robespierre,” Coleridge repeated almost verbatim large portions of this lettre de voyage. The incident of the sentiment and the Welsh clergyman takes a somewhat different shape, and both versions differ from the report of the same occurrence contained in Hucks’ account of the tour, which was published in the following year. Coleridge’s letters from foreign parts were written with a view to literary effect, and often with the half-formed intention of sending them to the “booksellers.” They are to be compared with “letters from our own correspondent,” and in respect of picturesque adventure, dramatic dialogue, and so forth, must be judged solely by a literary standard. Biographia Literaria, 1847, ii. 338-343; J. Hucks’ Tour in North Wales, 1795, p. 25. [51] The lines are from “Happiness,” an early poem first published in 1834. See Poetical Works, p. 17. See, too, Editor’s Note, p. 564. [52] Quoted from a poem by Bowles entitled, “Verses inscribed to His Grace the Duke of Leeds, and other Promoters of the Philanthropic Society.” Southey adopted the last two lines of the quotation as a motto for his “Botany Bay Eclogues.” Poetical Works of Milman, Bowles, etc., Paris, 1829, p. 117; Southey’s Poetical Works, 1837, ii. 71. [53] Southey, we may suppose, had contrasted Hucks with Coleridge. “H. is on my level, not yours.” [54] Poetical Works, p. 33. See, too, Editor’s Note, p. 570. [55] Hucks records the incident in much the same words, but gives the name of the tune as “Corporal Casey.” [56] The letter to Martin gives further particulars of the tour, including the ascent of Penmaen Mawr in company with Brookes and Berdmore. Compare Table Talk for May 31, 1830: “I took the thought of grinning for joy in that poem (The Ancient Mariner) from my companion’s remark to me, when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the constriction till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to me, ‘You grinned like an idiot.’ He had done the same.” The parching thirst of the pedestrians, and their excessive joy at the discovery of a spring of water, are recorded by Hucks. Tour in North Wales, 1795, p. 62. [57] Southey’s Poetical Works, 1837, ii. 93. [58] Southey’s Poetical Works, 1837, ii. 94. [59] See Letter XLI. p. 110, note 1. [60] “A tragedy, of which the first act was written by S. T. Coleridge.” See footnote to quotation from “The Fall of Robespierre,” which occurs in the text of “An Address on the Present War.” Conciones ad Populum, 1795, p. 66. [61] One of six sisters, daughters of John Brunton of Norwich. Elizabeth, the eldest of the family, was married in 1791 to Robert Merry the dramatist, the founder of the so-called Della Cruscan school of poetry. Louisa Brunton, the youngest sister, afterwards Countess of Craven, made her first appearance at Covent Garden Theatre on October 5, 1803, and at most could not have been more than twelve or thirteen years of age in the autumn of 1794. Coleridge’s Miss Brunton, to whom he sent a poem on the French Revolution, that is, “The Fall of Robespierre,” must have been an intermediate sister less known to fame. It is curious to note that “The Right Hon. Lady Craven” was a subscriber to the original issue of The Friend in 1809. National Dictionary of Biography, articles “Craven” and “Merry.” Letters of the Lake Poets, 1885, p. 455. [62] This sonnet, afterwards headed, “On a Discovery made too late,” was “first printed in Poems, 1796, as Effusion XIX., but in the Contents it was called, ‘To my own Heart.’” Poetical Works, p. 34. See, too, Editor’s Note, p. 571. [63] “The Race of Banquo.” Southey’s Poetical Works, 1837, ii. 155. [64] The Editor of the Cambridge Intelligencer. [65] “To a Young Lady, with a Poem on the French Revolution.” Poetical Works, p. 6. [66] Compare “Sonnet to the Author of The Robbers.” Poetical Works, p. 34. [67] The date of this letter is fixed by that of Thursday, November 6, to George Coleridge. Both letters speak of a journey to town with Potter of Emanuel, but in writing to his brother he says nothing of a projected visit to Bath. There is no hint in either letter that he had made up his mind to leave the University for good and all. In a letter to Southey dated December 17, he says that “they are making a row about him at Jesus,” and in a letter to Mary Evans, which must have been written a day or two later, he says, “I return to Cambridge to-morrow.” From the date of the letter to George Coleridge of November 6 to December 11 there is a break in the correspondence with Southey, but from a statement in Letter XLIII. it appears plain that a visit was paid to the West in December, 1794. But whether he returned to Cambridge November 8, and for how long, is uncertain. [68] “Lines on a Friend who died of a Frenzy Fever,” etc. Poetical Works, p. 35. A copy of the same poem was sent on November 6 to George Coleridge. [69] “The Sigh.” Poetical Works, p. 29. [70] Probably Thomas Edwards, LL. D., a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, editor of Plutarch, De Educatione Liberorum, with notes, 1791, and author of “A Discourse on the Limits and Importance of Free Inquiry in Matters of Religion,” 1792. Natural Dictionary of Biography, xvii. 130. [71] Compare “Lines on a Friend,” etc., which accompanied this letter. To me hath Heaven with liberal hand assigned Poetical Works, p. 35. [72] The lines occur in BarrÈre’s speech, which concludes the third act of the “Fall of Robespierre.” Poetical Works, p. 225. [73] “Fall of Robespierre,” Act I. l. 198. O this new freedom! at how dear a price Poetical Works, p. 215. [74] See “Fall of Robespierre,” Act I. l. 40. Poetical Works, p. 212. [75] For full text of the “Lines on a Friend who died of a Frenzy Fever,” see Letter XXXVIII. See, too, Poetical Works, p. 35. [76] Southey’s Poetical Works, 1837, ii. 263. [77] See Poems by Robert Lovell, and Robert Southey of Balliol College. Bath. Printed by A. Cruttwell, 1795, p. 17. “Ode to Lycon,” p. 77. The last stanza runs thus:— Wilt thou float careless down the stream of time, Compare the following unpublished letter from Southey to Miss Sarah Fricker:— October 18, 1794. “Amid the pelting of the pitiless storm” did I, Robert Southey, the Apostle of Pantisocracy, depart from the city of Bristol, my natal place—at the hour of five in a wet windy evening on the 17th of October, 1794, wrapped up in my father’s old great coat and my own cogitations. Like old Lear I did not call the elements unkind,—and on I passed, musing on the lamentable effects of pride and prejudice—retracing all the events of my past life—and looking forward to the days to come with pleasure. Three miles from Bristol, an old man of sixty, most royally drunk, laid hold of my arm, and begged we might join company, as he was going to Bath. I consented, for he wanted assistance, and dragged this foul animal through the dirt, wind, and rain!... Think of me, with a mind so fully occupied, leading this man nine miles, and had I not led him he would have lain down under a hedge and probably perished. I reached not Bath till nine o’clock, when the rain pelted me most unmercifully in the face. I rejoiced that my friends at Bath knew not where I was, and was once vexed at thinking that you would hear it drive against the window and be sorry for the way-worn traveller. Here I am, well, and satisfied with my own conduct.... My clothes are arrived. “I will never see his face again [writes Miss Tyler], and, if he writes, will return his letters unopened;” to comment on this would be useless. I feel that strong conviction of rectitude which would make me smile on the rack.... The crisis is over—things are as they should be; my mother vexes herself much, yet feels she is right. Hostilities are commenced with America! so we must go to some neutral fort—Hambro’ or Venice. Your sister is well, and sends her love to all; on Wednesday I hope to see you. Till then farewell, Robert Southey. Bath, Sunday morning. Compare, also, letter to Thomas Southey, dated October 19, 1794. Southey’s Life and Correspondence, i. 222. [78] Poems, 1795, p. 123. [79] See Southey’s Poetical Works, 1837, ii. 91:— “If heavily creep on one little day, [80] Poems, 1795, p. 67. [81] Poetical Works, 1837, ii. 92. [82] “Rosamund to Henry; written after she had taken the veil.” Poems, 1795, p. 85. [83] Poetical Works, 1837, ii. 216. Southey appears to have accepted Coleridge’s emendations. The variations between the text of the “Pauper’s Funeral” and the editio purgata of the letter are slight and unimportant. [84] In a letter from Southey to his brother Thomas, dated October 21, 1794, this sonnet “on the subject of our emigration” is attributed to Favell, a convert to pantisocracy who was still at Christ’s Hospital. The first eight lines are included in the “Monody on Chatterton.” See Poetical Works, p. 63, and Editor’s Note, p. 563. [85] Printed as Effusion XVI. in Poems, 1796. It was afterwards headed “Charity.” In the preface he acknowledges that he was “indebted to Mr. Favell for the rough sketch.” See Poetical Works, p. 45, and Editor’s Note, p. 576. [86] Southey’s Poetical Works, ii. 143. In this instance Coleridge’s corrections were not adopted. [87] Published in 1794. [88] First version, printed in Morning Chronicle, December 26, 1794. See Poetical Works, p. 40. [89] First printed as Effusion XIV. in Poems, 1796. Of the four lines said to have been written by Lamb, Coleridge discarded lines 13 and 14, and substituted a favourite couplet, which occurs in more than one of his early poems. See Poetical Works, p. 23, and Editor’s Note, p. 566. [90] Imitated from the Welsh. See Poetical Works, p. 33. [91] A parody of “Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, MÆvi.” Virgil, Ecl. iii. 90. Gratio and Avaro were signatures adopted by Southey and Lovell in their joint volume of poems published at Bristol in 1795. [92] Implied in the second line. [93] Of the six sonnets included in this letter, those to Burke, Priestley, and Kosciusko had already appeared in the Morning Chronicle on the 9th, 11th, and 16th of December, 1794. The sonnets to Godwin, Southey, and Sheridan were published on the 10th, 14th, and 29th of January, 1795. See Poetical Works, pp. 38, 39, 41, 42. [94] First published in the Morning Chronicle, December 30, 1794. An earlier draft, dated October 24, 1794, was headed “Monologue to a Young Jackass in Jesus Piece. Its Mother near it, chained to a Log.” See Poetical Works, Appendix C, p. 477, and Editor’s Note, p. 573. [95] Compare the last six lines of a sonnet, “On a Discovery made too late,” sent in a letter to Southey, dated October 21, 1794. (Letter XXXVII.) See Poetical Works, p. 34, and Editor’s Note, p. 571. [96] The first of six sonnets on the Slave Trade. Southey’s Poetical Works, 1837, ii. 55. [97] Prefixed as a dedication to Juvenile and Minor Poems. It is addressed to Edith Southey, and dated Bristol, 1796. Southey’s Poetical Works, 1837, vol. ii. The text of 1837 differs considerably from the earlier version. Possibly in transcribing Coleridge altered the original to suit his own taste. [98] To a Friend [Charles Lamb], together with an Unfinished Poem [“Religious Musings”]. Poetical Works, p. 37. [99] This farewell letter of apology and remonstrance was not sent by post, but must have reached Southey’s hand on the 13th of November, the eve of his wedding day. The original MS. is written on small foolscap. A first draft, or copy, of the letter was sent to Coleridge’s friend, Josiah Wade. [100] The Rev. David Jardine, Unitarian minister at Bath. Cottle lays the scene of the “inaugural sermons” on the corn laws and hair powder tax, which Coleridge delivered in a blue coat and white waistcoat, in Mr. Jardine’s chapel at Bath. Early Recollections, i. 179. [101] If we may believe Cottle, the dispute began by Southey attacking Coleridge for his non-appearance at a lecture which he had undertaken to deliver in his stead. The scene of the quarrel is laid at Chepstow, on the first day of the memorable excursion to Tintern Abbey, which Cottle had planned to “gratify his two young friends.” Southey had been “dragged,” much against the grain, into this “detestable party of pleasure,” and was, no doubt, rendered doubly sore by his partner’s delinquency. See Early Recollections, i. 40, 41. See, also, letter from Southey to Bedford, dated May 28, 1795. Life and Correspondence, i. 239. [102] At Chepstow. [103] A village three miles W. S. W. of Bristol. [104] During the course of his tour (January-February, 1796) to procure subscribers for the Watchman, Coleridge wrote seven times to Josiah Wade. Portions of these letters have been published in Cottle’s Early Recollections, i. 164-176, and in the “Biographical Supplement” to the Biographia Literaria, ii. 349-354. It is probable that Wade supplied funds for the journey, and that Coleridge felt himself bound to give an account of his progress and success. [105] Joseph Wright, A. R. A., known as Wright of Derby, 1736-1797. Two of his most celebrated pictures were The Head of Ulleswater, and The Dead Soldier. An excellent specimen of Wright’s work, An Experiment with the Air Pump, was presented to the National Gallery in 1863. [106] Compare Biographia Literaria, ch. i. “During my first Cambridge vacation I assisted a friend in a contribution for a literary society in Devonshire, and in that I remember to have compared Darwin’s works to the Russian palace of ice, glittering, cold, and transitory.” Coleridge’s Works, Harper & Bros., 1853, iii. 155. [107] Dr. James Hutton, the author of the Plutonian theory. His Theory of the Earth was published at Edinburgh in 1795. [108] The title of this pamphlet, which was published shortly after the Conciones ad Populum, was “The Plot Discovered; or, an Address to the People against Ministerial Treason. By S. T. Coleridge. Bristol, 1795.” It had an outer wrapper with this half-title: “A Protest against Certain Wills. Bristol: Printed for the Author, November 28, 1795.” It is reprinted in Essays on His Own Times, i. 56-98. [109] The review of “Burke’s Letter to a Noble Lord,” which appeared in the first number of The Watchman, is reprinted in Essays on His Own Times, i. 107-119. [110] Ibid. 120-126. [111] The occasion of this “burst of affectionate feeling” was a communication from Poole that seven or eight friends had undertaken to subscribe a sum of £35 or £40 to be paid annually to the “author of the monody on the death of Chatterton,” as “a trifling mark of their esteem, gratitude, and affection.” The subscriptions were paid in 1796-97, but afterwards discontinued on the receipt of the Wedgwood annuity. See Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 142. [112] Mrs. Robert Lovell, whose husband had been carried off by a fever about two years after his marriage with my aunt.—S. C. [113] Compare Conciones ad Populum, 1795, p. 22. “Such is Joseph Gerrald! Withering in the sickly and tainted gales of a prison, his healthful soul looks down from the citadel of his integrity on his impotent persecutors. I saw him in the foul and naked room of a jail; his cheek was sallow with confinement, his body was emaciated; yet his eye spake the invincible purpose of his soul, and he still sounded with rapture the successes of Freedom, forgetful of his own lingering martyrdom.” Together with four others, Gerrald was tried for sedition at Edinburgh in March, 1794. He delivered an eloquent speech in his own defence, but with the other prisoners was convicted and sentenced to be transported for fifteen years. “In April Gerrald was removed to London, and committed to Newgate, where Godwin and his other friends were allowed to visit him.... In May, 1795, he was suddenly taken from his prison and placed on board the hulks, and soon afterwards sailed. He survived his arrival in New South Wales only five months. A few hours before he died, he said to the friends around him, ‘I die in the best of causes, and, as you witness, without repining.’” Mrs. Shelley’s Notes, as quoted by Mr. C. Kegan Paul in his William Godwin, i. 125. See, too, “the very noble letter” (January 23, 1794) addressed by Godwin to Gerrald relative to his defence. Ibid. i. 125. Lords Cockburn and Jeffrey considered the conviction of these men a gross miscarriage of justice, and in 1844 a monument was erected at the foot of the Calton Hill, Edinburgh, to their memory. [114] Edward Williams (Iolo Morgangw), 1747-1826. His poems in two volumes were published by subscription in 1794. Coleridge possessed a copy presented to him “by the author,” and on the last page of the second volume he has scrawled a single but characteristic marginal note. It is affixed to a translation of one of the “Poetic Triades.” “The three principal considerations of poetical description: what is obvious, what instantly engages the affections, and what is strikingly characteristic.” The comment is as follows: “I suppose, rather what we recollect to have frequently seen in nature, though not in the description of it.” [115] The allusion must be to Wordsworth, but there is a difficulty as to dates. In a MS. note to the second edition of his poems (1797) Coleridge distinctly states that he had no personal acquaintance with Wordsworth as early as March, 1796. Again, in a letter (Letter LXXXI.) to Estlin dated “May [? 1797],” but certainly written in May, 1798, Coleridge says that he has known Wordsworth for a year and some months. On the other hand, there is Mrs. Wordsworth’s report of her husband’s “impression” that he first met Coleridge, Southey, Sara, and Edith Fricker “in a lodging in Bristol in 1795,”—an imperfect recollection very difficult to reconcile with other known facts. Secondly, there is Sara Coleridge’s statement that “Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Wordsworth first met in the house of Mr. Pinney,” in the spring or summer of 1795; and, thirdly, it would appear from a letter of Lamb to Coleridge, which belongs to the summer of 1796, that “the personal acquaintance” with Wordsworth had already begun. The probable conclusion is that there was a first meeting in 1795, and occasional intercourse in 1796, but that intimacy and friendship date from the visit to Racedown in June, 1797. Coleridge quotes Wordsworth in his “Lines from Shurton Bars,” dated September, 1795, but the first trace of Wordsworth’s influence on style and thought appears in “This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison,” July, 1797. In May, 1796, Wordsworth could only have been “his very dear friend” sensu poetico. Life of W. Wordsworth, i. 111; Biographical Supplement to Biographia Literaria, chapter ii.; Letters of Charles Lamb, Macmillan, 1888, i. 6. [116] On the side of the road, opposite to Poole’s house in Castle Street, Nether Stowey, is a straight gutter through which a stream passes. See Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 147. [117] The Peripatetic, or Sketches of the Heart, of Nature, and of Society, a miscellany of prose and verse issued by John Thelwall, in 1793. [118] January 10, 1795. See Poetical Works, p. 41, and Editor’s Note, p. 575. Margarot, a West Indian, was one of those tried and transported with Gerrald. [119] See Poetical Works, p. 66. [120] Early in the autumn of 1796, a proposal had been made to Coleridge that he should start a day school in Derby. Poole dissuaded him from accepting this offer, or rather, perhaps, Coleridge succeeded in procuring Poole’s disapproval of a plan which he himself dreaded and disliked. [121] Thomas Ward, at first the articled clerk, and afterwards partner in business and in good works, of Thomas Poole. He it was who transcribed in “Poole’s Copying Book” Coleridge’s letters from Germany, and much of his correspondence besides. See Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 159, 160, 304, 305, etc. [122] This letter, first printed in Gillman’s Life, pp. 338-340, and since reprinted in the notes to Canon Ainger’s edition of Lamb’s Letters (i. 314, 315), was written in response to a request of Charles Lamb in his letter of September 27, 1796, announcing the “terrible calamities” which had befallen his family. “Write me,” said Lamb, “as religious a letter as possible.” In his next letter, October 3, he says, “Your letter is an inestimable treasure.” But a few weeks later, October 24, he takes exception to the sentence, “You are a temporary sharer in human miseries that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine nature.” Lamb thought that the expression savoured too much of theological subtlety, and outstepped the modesty of weak and suffering humanity. Coleridge’s “religious letter” came from his heart, but he was a born preacher, and naturally clothes his thoughts in rhetorical language. I have seen a note written by him within a few hours of his death, when he could scarcely direct his pen. It breathes the tenderest loving-kindness, but the expressions are elaborate and formal. It was only in poetry that he attained to simplicity. [123] Coleridge must have resorted occasionally to opiates long before this. In an unpublished letter to his brother George, dated November 21, 1791, he says, “Opium never used to have any disagreeable effects on me.” Most likely it was given to him at Christ’s Hospital, when he was suffering from rheumatic fever. In the sonnet on “Pain,” which belongs to the summer of 1790, he speaks of “frequent pangs,” of “seas of pain,” and in the natural course of things opiates would have been prescribed by the doctors. Testimony of this nature appears at first sight to be inconsistent with statements made by Coleridge in later life to the effect that he began to take opium in the second year of his residence at Keswick, in consequence of rheumatic pains brought on by the damp climate. It was, however, the first commencement of the secret and habitual resort to narcotics which weighed on memory and conscience, and there is abundant evidence that it was not till the late spring of 1801 that he could be said to be under the dominion of opium. To these earlier indulgences in the “accursed drug,” which probably left no “disagreeable effects,” and of which, it is to be remarked, he speaks openly, he seems to have attached but little significance. Since the above note was written, Mr. W. Aldis Wright has printed in the Academy, February 24, 1894, an extract from an unpublished letter from Coleridge to the Rev. Mr. Edwards of Birmingham, recently found in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is dated Bristol, “12 March, 1795” (read “1796”), and runs as follows:— “Since I last wrote you, I have been tottering on the verge of madness—my mind overbalanced on the e contra side of happiness—the blunders of my associate [in the editing of the Watchman, G. Burnett], etc., etc., abroad, and, at home, Mrs. Coleridge dangerously ill.... Such has been my situation for the last fortnight—I have been obliged to take laudanum almost every night.” [124] The news of the evacuation of Corsica by the British troops, which took place on October 21, 1796, must have reached Coleridge a few days before the date of this letter. Corsica was ceded to the British, June 18, 1794. A declaration of war on the part of Spain (August 19, 1796) and a threatened invasion of Ireland compelled the home government to withdraw their troops from Corsica. In a footnote to chapter xxv. of his Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Sir Walter Scott quotes from Napoleon’s memoirs compiled at St. Helena the “odd observation” that “the crown of Corsica must, on the temporary annexation of the island to Great Britain, have been surprised at finding itself appertaining to the successor of Fingal.” Sir Walter’s patriotism constrained him to add the following comment: “Not more, we should think, than the diadem of France and the iron crown of Lombardy marvelled at meeting on the brow of a Corsican soldier of fortune.” In the Biographia Literaria, 1847, ii. 380, the word is misprinted Corrica, but there is no doubt as to the reading of the MS. letter, or to the allusion to contemporary history. [125] It was to this lady that the lines “On the Christening of a Friend’s Child” were addressed. Poetical Works, p. 83. [126] See Letter LXVIII., p. 206, note. [127] The preface to the quarto edition of Southey’s Joan of Arc is dated Bristol, November, 1795, but the volume did not appear till the following spring. Coleridge’s contribution to Book II. was omitted from the second (1797) and subsequent editions. It was afterwards republished, with additions, in Sibylline Leaves (1817) as “The Destiny of Nations.” [128] The lines “On a late Connubial Rupture” were printed in the Monthly Magazine for September, 1796. The well-known poem beginning “Low was our pretty Cot” appeared in the following number. It was headed, “Reflections on entering into active Life. A Poem which affects not to be Poetry.” [129] Compare the following lines from an early transcript of “Happiness” now in my possession:— “Ah! doubly blest if Love supply The transcriber adds in a footnote, “The author was at this time, at seventeen, remarkable for a plump face.” The “Reminiscences of an Octogenarian” (The Rev. Leapidge Smith), contributed to the Leisure Hour, convey a different impression: “In person he was a tall, dark, handsome young man, with long, black, flowing hair; eyes not merely dark, but black, and keenly penetrating; a fine forehead, a deep-toned, harmonious voice; a manner never to be forgotten, full of life, vivacity, and kindness; dignified in person and, added to all these, exhibiting the elements of his future greatness.”—Leisure Hour, 1870, p. 651. [130] Origine de tous les Cultes, ou Religion universelle. [131] Thelwall executed his commission. The Iamblichus and the Julian were afterwards presented by Coleridge to his son Derwent. They are still in the possession of the family. [132] The three letters to Poole, dated December 11, 12, and 13, relative to Coleridge’s residence at Stowey, were published for the first time in Thomas Poole and his Friends. The long letter of expostulation, dated December 13, which is in fact a continuation of that dated December 12, is endorsed by Poole: “An angry letter, but the breach was soon healed.” Either on Coleridge’s account or his own it was among the few papers retained by Poole when, to quote Mrs. Sandford, “in 1836 he placed the greater number of the letters which he had received from S. T. Coleridge at the disposal of his literary executors for biographical purposes.” Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 182-193. Mrs. Sandford has kindly permitted me to reprint it in extenso. [133] “Sonnet composed on a journey homeward, the author having received intelligence of the birth of a son. September 20, 1796.” The opening lines, as quoted in the letter, differ from those published in 1797, and again from a copy of the same sonnet sent in a letter to Poole, dated November 1, 1796. See Poetical Works, p. 66, and Editor’s Note, p. 582. [134] Coleridge’s Poetical Works, p. 66. [135] Compare Lamb’s letter to Coleridge, December 5, 1796. “I am glad you love Cowper. I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that man my friend who should be offended with the ‘divine chit-chat of Cowper.’” Compare, too, letter of December 10, 1796, in which the origin of the phrase is attributed to Coleridge. Letters of Charles Lamb, i. 52, 54. See, too, Canon Ainger’s note, i. 316. [136] “Southey misrepresented me. My maxim was and is that the name of God should not be introduced into Love Sonnets.” MS. Note by John Thelwall. [137] Revelation x. 1-6. Some words and sentences of the original are omitted, either for the sake of brevity, or to heighten the dramatic effect. [138] Hebrews xii. 18, 19, 22, 23. [139] “In reading over this after an interval of twenty-three years I was wondering what I could have said that looked like contempt of age. May not slobberers have referred not to age but to the drivelling of decayed intellect, which is surely an ill guide in matters of understanding and consequently of faith?” MS. Note by John Thelwall, 1819. [140] Patience—permit me as a definition of the word to quote one sentence from my first Address, p. 20. “Accustomed to regard all the affairs of man as a process, they never hurry and they never pause.” In his not possessing this virtue, all the horrible excesses of Robespierre did, I believe, originate.—MS. note to text of letter by S. T. Coleridge. [141] Godliness—the belief, the habitual and efficient belief, that we are always in the presence of our universal Parent. I will translate literally a passage [the passage is from Voss’s Luise. I am enabled by the courtesy of Dr. Garnett, of the British Museum, to give an exact reference: Luise, ein lÄndliches Gedicht in drei Idyllen, von Johann Heinrich Voss, KÖnigsberg, MDCCXCV. Erste Idylle, pp. 41-45, lines 303-339.—E. H. C.] from a German hexameter poem. It is the speech of a country clergyman on the birthday of his daughter. The latter part fully expresses the spirit of godliness, and its connection with brotherly-kindness. (Pardon the harshness of the language, for it is translated totidem verbis.) “Yes! my beloved daughter, I am cheerful, cheerful as the birds singing in the wood here, or the squirrel that hops among the airy branches around its young in their nest. To-day it is eighteen years since God gave me my beloved, now my only child, so intelligent, so pious, and so dutiful. How the time flies away! Eighteen years to come—how far the space extends itself before us! and how does it vanish when we look back upon it! It was but yesterday, it seems to me, that as I was plucking flowers here, and offering praise, on a sudden the joyful message came, ‘A daughter is born to us.’ Much since that time has the Almighty imparted to us of good and evil. But the evil itself was good; for his loving-kindness is infinite. Do you recollect [to his wife] as it once had rained after a long drought, and I (Louisa in my arms) was walking with thee in the freshness of the garden, how the child snatched at the rainbow, and kissed me, and said: ‘Papa! there it rains flowers from heaven! Does the blessed God strew these that we children may gather them up?’ ‘Yes!’ I answered, ‘full-blowing and heavenly blessings does the Father strew who stretched out the bow of his favour; flowers and fruits that we may gather them with thankfulness and joy. Whenever I think of that great Father then my heart lifts itself up and swells with active impulse towards all his children, our brothers who inhabit the earth around us; differing indeed from one another in powers and understanding, yet all dear children of the same parent, nourished by the same Spirit of animation, and ere long to fall asleep, and again to wake in the common morning of the Resurrection; all who have loved their fellow-creatures, all shall rejoice with Peter, and Moses, and Confucius, and Homer, and Zoroaster, with Socrates who died for truth, and also with the noble Mendelssohn who teaches that the divine one was never crucified.’” Mendelssohn is a German Jew by parentage, and deist by election. He has written some of the most acute books possible in favour of natural immortality, and Germany deems him her profoundest metaphysician, with the exception of the most unintelligible Immanuel Kant.—MS. note to text of letter by S. T. Coleridge. [142] 2 Peter i. 5-7. [143] They were criticised by Lamb in his letter to Coleridge Dec. 10, 1796 (xxxi. of Canon Ainger’s edition), but in a passage first printed in the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1891. The explanatory notes there printed were founded on a misconception, but the matter is cleared up in the AthenÆum for June 13, 1891, in the article, “A Letter of Charles Lamb.” [144] The reference is to a pamphlet of sixteen pages containing twenty-eight sonnets by Coleridge, Southey, Lloyd, Lamb, and others, which was printed for private circulation towards the close of 1796, and distributed among a few friends. Of this selection of sonnets, which was made “for the purpose of binding them up with the sonnets of the Rev. W. L. Bowles,” the sole surviving copy is now in the Dyce Collection of the South Kensington Museum. On the fly-leaf, in Coleridge’s handwriting, is a “presentation note” to Mrs. Thelwall. For a full account of this curious and interesting volume, see Coleridge’s Poetical and Dramatic Works, 4 vols., 1877-1880, ii. 377-379; also, Poetical Works (1893), 542-544. [145] A folio edition of “Poems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer, by her grandson Charles Lloyd,” was printed at Bristol in 1796. The volume was prefaced by Coleridge’s sonnet, “The piteous sobs which choke the virgin’s breast,” and contained Lamb’s “Grandame.” As Mr. Dykes Campbell has pointed out, it is to this “magnificent folio” that Charles Lamb alludes in his letter of December 10, 1796 (incorrectly dated 1797), when he speaks of “my granny so gaily decked,” and records “the odd coincidence of two young men in one age carolling their grandmothers.” Poetical Works, note 99, p. 583. [146] “To a friend (C. Lamb) who had declared his intention of writing no more poetry.” Poetical Works, p. 69. See, too, Editor’s Note, p. 583. [147] Printed in the Annual Anthology for 1799. [148] These lines, which were published with the enlarged title “To a Young Man of Fortune who had abandoned himself to an indolent and causeless melancholy,” may have been addressed to Charles Lloyd. The last line, “A prey to the throned murderess of mankind,” was afterwards changed to “A prey to tyrants, murderers of mankind.” The reference is, doubtless, to Catherine of Russia. Her death had taken place a month before the date of this letter, but possibly when Coleridge wrote the lines the news had not reached England. It is not a little strange that Coleridge should write and print so stern and uncompromising a rebuke to his intimate and disciple before there had been time for coolness and alienation on either side. Very possibly the reproof was aimed in the first instance against himself, and afterwards he permitted it to apply to Lloyd. [149] Compare the line, “From precipices of distressful sleep,” which occurs in the sonnet, “No more my visionary soul shall dwell,” which is attributed to Favell in a letter of Southey’s to his brother Thomas, dated October 24, 1795. Southey’s Life and Correspondence, i. 224. See, also, Editor’s Note to “Monody on the Death of Chatterton,” Poetical Works, p. 563. [150] The Ode on the Departing Year. [151] Œdipus. [152] Poetical Works, p. 459. [153] William and Joseph Strutt were the sons of Jedediah Strutt, of Derby. The eldest, William, was the father of Edward Strutt, created Lord Belper in 1856. Their sister, Elizabeth, who had married William Evans of Darley Hall, was at this time a widow. She had been struck by Coleridge’s writings, or perhaps had heard him preach when he visited Derby on his Watchman tour, and was anxious to engage him as tutor to her children. The offer was actually made, but the relations on both sides intervened, and she was reluctantly compelled to withdraw her proposal. By way of consolation, she entertained Coleridge and his wife at Darley Hall, and before he left presented him with a handsome sum of money and a store of baby-linen, worth, if one may accept Coleridge’s valuation, a matter of forty pounds. Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 152-154; Estlin Letters, p. 13. [154] Probably Jacob Bryant, 1715-1804, author of An Address to Dr. Priestley upon his Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity, 1780; Treatise on the Authenticity of the Scriptures, 1792; The Sentiments of Philo-JudÆus concerning the Logos or Word of God, 1797, etc. Allibone’s Dictionary, i. 270. [155] “Ode to the Departing-Year,” published in the Cambridge Intelligencer, December 24, 1796. The lines on the “Empress,” to which Thelwall objected, are in the first epode:— No more on Murder’s lurid face Poetical Works, p. 79. [156] Compare the well-known description of Dorothy Wordsworth, in a letter to Cottle of July, 1797: “W. and his exquisite sister are with me. She is a woman, indeed,—in mind I mean, and heart. Her information various. Her eye watchful in minutest observation of nature; and her taste a perfect electrometer. It bends, protrudes, and draws in, at subtlest beauties and most recondite faults.” Bennett’s, or the gold leaf electroscope, is an instrument for “detecting the presence, and determining the kind of electricity in any body.” Two narrow strips of gold leaf are attached to a metal rod, terminating in a small brass plate above, contained in a glass shade, and these under certain conditions of the application of positive and negative electricity diverge or collapse. The gold leaf electroscope was invented by Abraham Bennett in 1786. Cottle’s Early Recollections, i. 252; Ganot’s Physics, 1870, p. 631. [157] His tract On the Strength of the Existing Government (the Directory) of France, and the Necessity of supporting it, was published in 1796. The translator, James Losh, described by Southey as “a provincial counsel,” was at one time resident in Cumberland, and visited Coleridge at Greta Hall. At a later period he settled at Jesmond, Newcastle. His name occurs among the subscribers to The Friend. Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 453. [158] Compare stanzas eight and nine of “The Mad Ox:”— Old Lewis (’twas his evil day) Poetical Works, p. 134. [159] The probable date of this letter is Thursday, June 8, 1797. On Monday, June 5, Coleridge breakfasted with Dr. Toulmin, the Unitarian minister at Taunton, and on the evening of that or the next day he arrived on foot at Racedown, some forty miles distant. Mrs. Wordsworth, in a letter to Sara Coleridge, dated November 7, 1845, conveys her husband’s recollections of this first visit in the following words: “Your father,” she says, “came afterwards to visit us at Racedown, where I was living with my sister. We have both a distinct remembrance of his arrival. He did not keep to the high road, but leaped over a high gate and bounded down the pathless field, by which he cut off an angle. We both retain the liveliest possible image of his appearance at that moment. My poor sister has just been speaking of it to me with much feeling and tenderness.” A portion of this letter, of which I possess the original MS., was printed by Professor Knight in his Life of Wordsworth, i. 111. [160] This passage, which for some reason Cottle chose to omit, seems to imply that the second edition of the poems had not appeared by the beginning of June. ... Such, O my earliest friend! Poetical Works, p. 81, l. 9-14. ... and some most false, Poetical Works, p. 82, l. 25-30. Compare Lamb’s humorous reproach in a letter to Coleridge, September, 1797: “For myself I must spoil a little passage of Beaumont and Fletcher’s to adapt it to my feelings:— ... I am prouder “If you don’t write to me now, as I told Lloyd, I shall get angry, and call you hard names—Manchineel, and I don’t know what else.” Letters of Charles Lamb, i. 83. [163] Charles Lamb’s visit to the cottage of Nether Stowey lasted from Friday, July 7, to Friday, July 14, 1797. [164] According to local tradition, the lime-tree bower was at the back of the cottage, but according to this letter it was in Poole’s garden. From either spot the green ramparts of Stowey Castle and the “airy ridge” of Dowseborough are full in view. [165] “He [Le Grice] and Favell ... wrote to the Duke of York, when they were at college, for commissions in the army. The Duke good-naturedly sent them.” Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, p. 72. [166] Possibly he alludes to his appointment as deputy-surgeon to the Second Royals, then stationed in Portugal. His farewell letter to Coleridge (undated) has been preserved and will be read with interest. Portsmouth. My Beloved Friend,—Farewell! I shall never think of you but with tears of the tenderest affection. Our routes in life have been so opposite, that for a long time past there has not been that intercourse between us which our mutual affection would have otherwise occasioned. But at this serious moment, all your kindness and love for me press upon my memory with a weight of sensation I can scarcely endure. ········ You have heard of my destination, I suppose. I am going to Portugal to join the Second Royals, to which I have been appointed Deputy-Surgeon. What fate is in reserve for me I know not. I should be more indifferent to my future lot, if it were not for the hope of passing many pleasant hours, in times to come, in your society. Adieu! my dearest fellow. My love to Mrs. C. Health and fraternity to young David. Yours most affectionate, [167] A friend and fellow-collegian of Christopher Wordsworth at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a member of the “Literary Society” to which Coleridge, C. Wordsworth, Le Grice, and others belonged. He afterwards became a sergeant-at-law. He was an intimate friend of H. Crabb Robinson. See H. C. Robinson’s Diary, passim. See, too, Social Life at the English Universities, by Christopher Wordsworth, M. A., Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1874, Appendix. [168] Not, as has been supposed, Charles and Mary Lamb, but Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. Mary Lamb was not and could not have been at that time one of the party. The version sent to Southey differs both from that printed in the Annual Anthology of 1800, and from a copy in a contemporary letter sent to C. Lloyd. It is interesting to note that the words, “My sister, and my friends,” ll. 47 and 53, which gave place in the Anthology to the thrice-repeated, “My gentle-hearted Charles,” appear, in a copy sent to Lloyd, as “My Sara and my friend.” It was early days for him to address Dorothy Wordsworth as “My sister,” but in forming friendships Coleridge did not “keep to the high road, but leaped over a gate and bounded” from acquaintance to intimacy. Poetical Works, p. 92. For version of “This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison,” sent to C. Lloyd, see Ibid., Editor’s Note, p. 591. [169] “Elastic, I mean.”—S. T. C. [170] “The ferns that grow in moist places grow five or six together, and form a complete ‘Prince of Wales’s Feathers,’—that is, plumy.”—S. T. C. [171] “You remember I am a Berkleian.”—S. T. C. [172] “This Lime-Tree Bower,” l. 38. Poetical Works, p. 93. [173] “Osorio,” Act V., Sc. 1, l. 39. Poetical Works, p. 507. [174] Thelwall’s visit brought Coleridge and Wordsworth into trouble. At the instance of a “titled Dogberry,” Sir Philip Hale of Cannington, a government spy was sent to watch the movements of the supposed conspirators, and, a more serious matter, Mrs. St. Albyn, the owner of Alfoxden, severely censured her tenant for having sublet the house to Wordsworth. See letter of explanation and remonstrance from Poole to Mrs. St. Albyn, September 16, 1797. Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 240. See, too, Cottle’s Early Recollections, i. 319, and for apocryphal anecdotes about the spy, etc., Biographia Literaria, cap. x. [175] Their proposal was to settle on Coleridge “an annuity for life of £150, to be regularly paid by us, no condition whatever being annexed to it.” See letter of Josiah Wedgwood to Coleridge, dated January 10, 1798. Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 258. An unpublished letter from Thelwall to Dr. Crompton dated Llyswen, March 3, 1798, contains one of several announcements of “his good fortune,” made by Coleridge at the time to his numerous friends. To Dr. Crompton, Eton House, Nr. Liverpool. Llyswen, 3d March, 1798. I am surprised you have not heard the particulars of Coleridge’s good fortune. It is not a legacy, but a gift. The circumstances are thus expressed by himself in a letter of the 30th January: “I received an invitation from Shrewsbury to be the Unitarian minister, and at the same time an order for £100 from Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood. I accepted the former and returned the latter in a long letter explanatory of my motive, and went off to Shrewsbury, where they were on the point of electing me unanimously and with unusual marks of affection, where I received an offer from T. and J. Wedgwood of an annuity of £150 to be legally settled on me. Astonished, agitated, and feeling as I could not help feeling, I accepted the offer in the same worthy spirit, I hope, in which it was made, and this morning I have returned from Shrewsbury.” This letter was written in a great hurry in Cottle’s shop in Bristol, in answer to one which a friend of mine had left for him there, on his way from Llyswen to Gosport, and you will perceive that it has a dash of the obscure not uncommon to the rapid genius of C. Whether he did or did not accept the cure of Unitarian Souls, it is difficult from the account to make out. I suppose he did not, for I know his aversion to preachings God’s holy word for hire, which is seconded not a little, I expect, by his repugnance to all regular routine and application. I also hope he did not, for I know he cannot preach very often without travelling from the pulpit to the Tower. Mount him but upon his darling hobby-horse, “the republic of God’s own making,” and away he goes like hey-go-mad, spattering and splashing through thick and thin and scattering more levelling sedition and constructive treason than poor Gilly or myself ever dreamt of. He promised to write to me again in a few days; but, though I answered his letter directly, I have not heard from him since. [176] Count Benyowsky, or the Conspiracy of Kamtschatka, a Tragi-comedy. Translated from the German by the Rev. W. Render, teacher of the German Language in the University of Cambridge. Cambridge, 1798. [177] Coleridge’s copy of Monk Lewis’ play is dated January 20, 1798. [178] The following memoranda, presumably in Wordsworth’s handwriting, have been scribbled on the outside sheet of the letter: “Tea—Thread fine—needles Silks—Strainer for starch—Mustard—Basil’s shoes—Shoe horn. “The sun’s course is short, but clear and blue the sky.” [179] “Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitiÆ et similium junctarumque Camoenarum; quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas.” [180] The Task, Book V., “A Winter’s Morning Walk.” [181] A later version of these lines is to be found at the close of the fourth book of “The Excursion.” Works of Wordsworth, 1889, p. 467. [182] In the series of letters to Dr. Estlin, contributed to the privately printed volumes of the Philobiblon Society, the editor, Mr. Henry A. Bright, dates this letter May (? 1797). A comparison with a second letter to Estlin, dated May 14, 1798 (Letter LXXXII.), with a letter to Poole, dated May 28, 1798 (Letter LXXXIV.), with a letter to Charles Lamb belonging to the spring of 1798 (Letter LXXXV.), and with an entry in Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal for May 16, 1798, affords convincing proof that the date of the letter should be May, 1798. The MS. note of November 10, 1810, to which a previous reference has been made, connects a serious quarrel with Lloyd, and consequent distress of mind, with the retirement to “the lonely farm-house,” and a first recourse to opium. If, as the letters intimate, these events must be assigned to May, 1798, it follows that “Kubla Khan” was written at the same time, and not, as Coleridge maintained in the Preface of 1816, “in the summer of 1797.” It would, indeed, have been altogether miraculous if, before he had written a line of “Christabel,” or “The Ancient Mariner,” either in an actual dream, or a dreamlike reverie, it had been “given to him” to divine the enchanting images of “Kubla Khan,” or attune his mysterious vision to consummate melody. [183] Berkeley Coleridge, born May 14, 1798, died February 10, 1799. [184] The original MS. of this letter, which was preserved by Coleridge, is, doubtless, a copy of that sent by post. Besides this, only three of Coleridge’s letters to Lamb have been preserved,—the “religious letter” of 1796, a letter concerning the quarrel with Wordsworth, of May, 1812 [Letter CLXXXIV.], and one written in later life (undated, on the particulars of Hood’s Odes to Great People). [185] Charles Lloyd. [186] The three sonnets of “Nehemiah Higginbottom” were published in the Monthly Magazine for November, 1797. Compare his letter to Cottle (E. R. i. 289) which Mr. Dykes Campbell takes to have been written at the same time. “I sent to the Monthly Magazine, three mock sonnets in ridicule of my own Poems, and Charles Lloyd’s and Charles Lamb’s, etc., etc., exposing that affectation of unaffectedness, of jumping and misplaced accent, in commonplace epithets, flat lines forced into poetry by italics (signifying how well and mouthishly the author would read them), puny pathos, etc., etc. The instances were all taken from myself and Lloyd and Lamb. I signed them ‘Nehemiah Higginbottom.’ I hope they may do good to our young bards.” The publication of these sonnets in November, 1797, cannot, as Mr. Dykes Campbell points out (Poetical Works, p. 599), have been the immediate cause of the breach between Coleridge and Lamb which took place in the spring or early summer of 1798, but it seems that during the rise and progress of this quarrel the Sonnet on Simplicity was the occasion of bitter and angry words. As Lamb and Lloyd and Southey drew together, they drew away from Coleridge, and Southey, who had only been formally reconciled with his brother-in-law, seems to have regarded this sonnet as an ill-natured parody of his earlier poems. In a letter to Wynn, dated November 20, 1797, he says, “I am aware of the danger of studying simplicity of language,” and he proceeds to quote some lines of blank verse to prove that he could employ the “grand style” when he chose. A note from Coleridge to Southey, posted December 8, 1797, deals with the question, and would, if it had not been for Lloyd’s “tittle-tattle,” have convinced both Southey and Lamb that in the matter they were entirely mistaken. ········ I am sorry, Southey! very sorry that I wrote or published those sonnets—but ‘sorry’ would be a tame word to express my feelings, if I had written them with the motives which you have attributed to me. I have not been in the habit of treating our separation with levity—nor ever since the first moment thought of it without deep emotion—and how could you apply to yourself a sonnet written to ridicule infantine simplicity, vulgar colloquialisms, and lady-like friendships? I have no conception, neither I believe could a passage in your writings have suggested to me or any man the notion of your ‘plainting plaintively.’ I am sorry that I wrote thus, because I am sorry to perceive a disposition in you to believe evil of me, of which your remark to Charles Lloyd was a painful instance. I say this to you, because I shall say it to no other being. I feel myself wounded and hurt and write as such. I believe in my letter to Lloyd I forgot to mention that the Editor of the Morning Post is called Stuart, and that he is the brother-in-law of Mackintosh. Yours sincerely, S. T. Coleridge. Thursday morning. Mr. Southey, No. 23 East Street, Red Lion Square, London. [187] Charles Lloyd’s novel, Edmund Oliver, was published at Bristol in 1798. It is dedicated to “His friend Charles Lamb of the India House.” He says in the Preface: “The incidents relative to the army were given me by an intimate friend who was himself eye-witness of one of them.” The general resemblance between the events of Coleridge’s earlier history and the story of Edmund Oliver is not very striking, but apart from the description of “his person” in the first letter of the second volume, which is close enough, a single sentence from Edmund Oliver’s journal, i. 245, betrays the malignant nature of the attack. “I have at all times a strange dreaminess about me which makes me indifferent to the future, if I can by any means fill the present with sensations,—with that dreaminess I have gone on here from day to day; if at any time thought-troubled, I have swallowed some spirits, or had recourse to my laudanum.” In the same letter, the account which Edmund Oliver gives of his sensations as a recruit in a regiment of light horse, and the vivid but repulsive picture which he draws of his squalid surroundings in “a pot-house in the Borough,” leaves a like impression that Coleridge confided too much, and that Lloyd remembered “not wisely but too well.” How Coleridge regarded Lloyd’s malfeasance may be guessed from one of his so-called epigrams. TO ONE WHO PUBLISHED IN PRINT WHAT HAD BEEN INTRUSTED TO HIM BY MY FIRESIDE. Two things hast thou made known to half the nation, Poetical Works, p. 448. [188] In a letter dated November 1, 1798, Mrs. Coleridge acquaints her husband with the danger and the disfigurement from smallpox which had befallen her little Berkeley. “The dear child,” she writes, “is getting strength every hour; but ‘when you lost sight of land, and the faces of your children crossed you like a flash of lightning,’ you saw that face for the last time.” [189] “Fears in Solitude, written in 1798, during the alarm of an invasion. To which are added, France, an Ode; and Frost at Midnight. By S. T. Coleridge. London: Printed for J. Johnson, in St. Paul’s Churchyard. 1798.” [190] According to Burke’s Peerage, Emanuel Scoope, second Viscount Howe, and father of the Admiral, “Our Lord Howe,” married, in 1719, Mary Sophia, daughter of Baron Kielmansegge, Master of the Horse to George I. Coleridge’s countess must have been a great-granddaughter of the baron. In her reply to this letter, dated December 13, 1798, Mrs. Coleridge writes: “I am very proud to hear that you are so forward in the language, and that you are so gay with the ladies. You may give my respects to them, and say that I am not at all jealous, for I know my dear Samuel in her affliction will not forget entirely his most affectionate wife, Sara Coleridge.” [191] The “Rev. Mr. Roskilly” had been curate-in-charge of the parish of Nether Stowey, and the occasion of the letter was his promotion to the Rectory of Kempsford in Gloucestershire. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, in a late letter (probably 1843) to her sister, Mrs. Lovell, writes: “In March [1800] I and the child [Hartley] left him [S. T. C.] in London, and proceeded to Kempsford in Gloucestershire, the Rectory of Mr. Roskilly; remained there a month. Papa was to have joined us there, but did not.” See Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 25-27, and Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 6. [192] In his letter of January 20, 1799, Josiah Wedgwood acknowledges the receipt of a letter dated November 29, 1798, but adds that an earlier letter from Hamburg had not come to hand. A third letter, dated GÖttingen, May 21, 1799, was printed by Cottle in his Reminiscences, 1848, p. 425. [193] Miss Meteyard, in her Group of Englishmen, 1871, p. 99, gives extracts from the account-current of Messrs. P. and O. Von Axen, the Hamburg agents of the Wedgwoods. According to her figures, Coleridge drew £125 from October 20 to March 29, 1799, and, “conjointly with Wordsworth,” £106 10s. on July 8, 1799. Mr. Dykes Campbell, in a footnote to his Memoir, p. xliv., combats Miss Meteyard’s assertion that these sums were advanced by the Wedgwoods to Coleridge and Wordsworth, and argues that Wordsworth merely drew on the Von Axens for sums already paid in from his own resources. Coleridge, he thinks, had only his annuity to look to, but probably anticipated his income. In a MS. note-book of 1798-99, Coleridge inserted some concise but not very business-like entries as to expenditures and present resources, but says nothing as to receipts. “March 25th, being Easter Monday, Chester and S. T. C., in a damn’d dirty hole in the Burg Strasse at GÖttingen, possessed at that moment eleven Louis d’ors and two dollars. When the money is spent in common expenses S. T. Coleridge will owe Chester 5 pounds 12 shillings. “Note.—From September 8 to April 8 I shall have spent £90, of which £15 was in Books; and Cloathes, mending and making, £10. “May 10. We have 17 Louis d’or, of which, as far as I can at present calculate, 10 belong to Chester.” The most probable conclusion is that both Coleridge and Chester were fairly well supplied with money when they left England, and that the £178 10s. which Coleridge received from the Von Axens covered some portion of Chester’s expenses in addition to his own. I may add that a recent collation of the autograph letter of Coleridge to Josiah Wedgwood dated May 21, 1799, GÖttingen, with the published version in Cottle’s Reminiscences, pp. 425-429, fully bears out Mr. Campbell’s contention, that though Coleridge anticipated his annuity, he was not the recipient of large sums over and above what was guaranteed to him. [194] A portion of this description of Ratzeburg is included in No. III. of Satyrane’s Letters, originally published in No. 10 of The Friend, December 21, 1809. [195] The following description of the frozen lake was thrown into a literary shape and published in No. 19 of The Friend, December 28, 1809, as “Christmas Indoors in North Germany.” [196] A letter from Mrs. Coleridge to her husband, dated March 25, 1799, followed Poole’s letter of March 15. (Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 290.) She writes:— “My dearest Love,—I hope you will not attribute my long silence to want of affection. If you have received Mr. Poole’s letter you will know the reason and acquit me. My darling infant left his wretched mother on the 10th of February, and though the leisure that followed was intolerable to me, yet I could not employ myself in reading or writing, or in any way that prevented my thoughts from resting on him. This parting was the severest trial that I have ever yet undergone, and I pray to God that I may never live to behold the death of another child. For, O my dear Samuel, it is a suffering beyond your conception! You will feel and lament the death of your child, but you will only recollect him a baby of fourteen weeks, but I am his mother and have carried him in my arms and have fed him at my bosom, and have watched over him by day and by night for nine months. I have seen him twice at the brink of the grave, but he has returned and recovered and smiled upon me like an angel,—and now I am lamenting that he is gone!” In her old age, when her daughter was collecting materials for a life of her father, Mrs. Coleridge wrote on the back of the letter:— “No secrets herein. I will not burn it for the sake of my sweet Berkeley.” [197] From “Osorio,” Act V. Sc. 1. Poetical Works, p. 506. [198] The following description of the Christmas-tree, and of Knecht Rupert, was originally published, almost verbatim, in No. 19 of the original issue of The Friend, December 28, 1809. [199] First published in Annual Anthology of 1800, under the signature Cordomi. See Poetical Works, p. 146, and Editor’s Note, p. 621. [200] The men who rip the oak bark from the logs for tanning. My dear babe, —“The Nightingale, a Conversation Poem,” written in April, 1798. Poetical Works, p. 133. [202] Hutton Hall, near Penrith. [203] First published in the Annual Anthology of 1800. See Poetical Works, p. 146, and Editor’s Note, p. 621. According to Carlyon the lines were dictated by Coleridge and inscribed by one of the party in the “Stammbuch” of the Wernigerode Inn. Early Years, i. 66. [204] Olaus Tychsen, 1734-1815, was “Professor of Oriental Tongues” at Rostock, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin. [205] F. C. Achard, born in 1754, was author of an “Instruction for making sugar, molasses, and vinous spirit from Beet-root.” [206] The Coleridges were absent from Stowey for about a month. For the first fortnight they were guests of George Coleridge at Ottery. The latter part of the time was spent with the Southeys in their lodgings at Exeter. It was during this second visit that Coleridge accompanied Southey on a walking tour through part of Dartmoor and as far as Dartmouth. [207] Coleridge took but few notes during this tour. In 1803 he retranscribed his fragmentary jottings and regrets that he possessed no more, “though we were at the interesting Bovey waterfall [Becky Fall], through that wild dell of ashes which leads to Ashburton, most like the approach to upper Matterdale.” “I have,” he adds, “at this moment very distinct visual impressions of the tour, namely of Torbay, the village of Paignton with the Castle.” Southey was disappointed in South Devon, which he contrasts unfavourably with the North of Somersetshire, but for “the dell of ashes” he has a word of praise. Selections from Letters of Robert Southey, i. 84. [208] Suwarrow, at the head of the Austro-Russian troops, defeated the French under Joubert at Novi near Alessandria, in North Italy, August 15, 1799. [209] A temporary residence of Josiah Wedgwood, who had taken it on lease in order to be near his newly purchased property at Combe Florey, in Somersetshire. Meteyard’s Group of Englishmen, 1871, p. 107. [210] Southey’s brother, a midshipman on board the Sylph gun-brig. A report had reached England that the Sylph had been captured and brought to Ferrol. Southey’s Life and Correspondence, ii. 30. [211] Marshal Massena defeated the Russians under Prince Korsikov at Zurich, September 25, 1799. [212] William Jackson, organist of Exeter Cathedral, 1730-1803, a musical composer and artist. He published, among other works, The Four Ages with Essays, 1798. See letter of Southey to S. T. Coleridge, October 3, 1799, Southey’s Life and Correspondence, ii. 26. [213] John Codrington Warwick Bampfylde, second son of Richard Bampfylde, of Poltimore, was the author of Sixteen Sonnets, published in 1779. In the letter of October 3 (see above) Southey gives an interesting account of his eccentric habits and melancholy history. In a prefatory note to four of Bampfylde’s sonnets, included by Southey in his Specimens of the Later English Poets, he explains how he came to possess the copies of some hitherto unpublished poems. “Jackson of Exeter, a man whose various talents made all who knew him remember him with regret, designed to republish the little collection of Bampfylde’s Sonnets, with what few of his pieces were still unedited. “Those poems which are here first printed were transcribed from the originals in his possession.” “Bampfylde published his Sonnets at a very early age; they are some of the most original in our language. He died in a private mad-house, after twenty years’ confinement.” Specimens of the Later English Poets, 1808, iii. 434. [214] “A sister of General McKinnon, who was killed at Ciudad Rodrigo.” In the same letter to Coleridge (see above) Southey says that he looked up to her with more respect because the light of Buonaparte’s countenance had shone upon her. [215] Dr. Cookson, Canon of Windsor and Rector of Forncett, Norfolk. Dorothy Wordsworth passed much of her time under his roof before she finally threw in her lot with her brother William in 1795. [216] The journal, or notes for a journal, of this first tour in the Lake Country, leaves a doubt whether Coleridge and Wordsworth slept at Keswick on Sunday, November 10, 1799, or whether they returned to Cockermouth. It is certain that they passed through Keswick again on Friday, November 15, as the following entry testifies:— “1 mile and ½ from Keswick, a Druidical circle. On the right the road and Saddleback; on the left a fine but unwatered vale, walled by grassy hills and a fine black crag standing single at the terminus as sentry. Before me, that is, towards Keswick, the mountains stand, one behind the other, in orderly array, as if evoked by and attentive to the white-vested wizards.” It was from almost the same point of view that, thirty years afterwards, his wife, on her journey south after her daughter’s marriage, took a solemn farewell of the Vale of Keswick once so strange, but then so dear and so familiar. [217] George Fricker, Mrs. Coleridge’s younger brother. [218] A gossiping account of the early history and writings of “Mr. Robert Southey” appeared in Public Characters for 1799-1800, a humble forerunner of Men of the Time, published by Richard Phillips, the founder of the Monthly Magazine, and afterwards knighted as a sheriff of the city of London. Possibly Coleridge was displeased at the mention of his name in connection with Pantisocracy, and still more by the following sentence: “The three young poetical friends, Lovel, Southey, and Coleridge, married three sisters. Southey is attached to domestic life, and, fortunately, was very happy in his matrimonial connection.” It was Sir Richard Phillips, the “knight” of Coleridge’s anecdote, who told Mrs. Barbauld that he would have given “nine guineas a sheet for the last hour and a half of his conversation.” Letters, Conversations, etc., 1836, ii. 131, 132. [219] “These various pieces were rearranged in three volumes under the title of Minor Poems, in 1815, with this motto, Nos hÆc novimus esse nihil.” Poetical Works of Robert Southey, 1837, ii., xii. [220] Mary Hayes, a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, whose opinions she advocated with great zeal, and whose death she witnessed. Among other works, she wrote a novel, Memoirs of Emma Courtney, and Female Biography, or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women. Six volumes. London: R. Phillips. 1803. [221] He used the same words in a letter to Poole dated December 31, 1799. Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 1. [222] “Essay on the New French Constitution,” Essays on His Own Times, i. 183-189. [223] The Ode appeared in the Morning Post, December 24, 1799. The stanzas in which the Duchess commemorated her passage over Mount St. Gothard appeared in the Morning Post, December 21. They were inscribed to her children, and it was the last stanza, in which she anticipates her return, which suggested to Coleridge the far-fetched conceit that maternal affection enabled the Duchess to overcome her aristocratic prejudices, and “hail Tell’s chapel and the platform wild.” It runs thus:— Hope of my life! dear children of my heart! From a transcript in my possession of which the opening lines are in the handwriting of Mrs. H. N. Coleridge. [224] The libel of which Coleridge justly complained was contained in these words: “Since this time (that is, since leaving Cambridge) he has left his native country, commenced citizen of the world, left his poor children fatherless and his wife destitute. Ex his disce his friends Lamb and Southey.” Biographia Literaria, 1817, vol. i. chapter i. p. 70, n. [225] Mrs. Robinson (“Perdita”) contributed two poems to the Annual Anthology of 1800, “Jasper” and “The Haunted Beach.” The line which caught Coleridge’s fancy, the first of the twelfth stanza, runs thus:— “Pale Moon! thou Spectre of the Sky.” Annual Anthology, 1800, p. 168. [226] St. Leon was published in 1799. William Godwin, his Friends and Contemporaries, i. 330. [227] See “Mr. Coleridge’s Report of Mr. Pitt’s Speech in Parliament of February 17, 1800, On the continuance of the War with France.” Morning Post, February 18, 1800; Essays on His Own Times, ii. 293. See, too, Mrs. H. N. Coleridge’s note, and the report of the speech in The Times. Ibid. iii. 1009-1019. The original notes, which Coleridge took in pencil, have been preserved in one of his note-books. They consist, for the most part, of skeleton sentences and fragmentary jottings. How far Coleridge may have reconstructed Pitt’s speech as he went along, it is impossible to say, but the speech as reported follows pretty closely the outlines in the note-book. The remarkable description of Buonaparte as the “child and champion of Jacobinism,” which is not to be found in The Times report, appears in the notes as “the nursling and champion of Jacobinism,” and, if these were the words which Pitt used, in this instance, Coleridge altered for the worse. [228] “The Beguines I had looked upon as a religious establishment, and the only good one of its kind. When my brother was a prisoner at Brest, the sick and wounded were attended by nurses, and these women had made themselves greatly beloved and respected.” Southey to Rickman, January 9, 1800. Life and Correspondence, ii. 46. It is well known that Southey advocated the establishment of Protestant orders of Sisters of Mercy. [229] In a letter from Southey to Coleridge, dated February 15, 1800 (unpublished), he proposes the establishment of a Magazine with signed articles. But a “History of the Levelling Principle,” which Coleridge had suggested as a joint work, he would only publish anonymously. [230] See Letter from Southey to Coleridge, December 27, 1799. Life and Correspondence, ii. 35. [231] “Concerning the French, I wish Bonaparte had staid in Egypt and that Robespierre had guilloteened SieyÈs. These cursed complex governments are good for nothing, and will ever be in the hands of intriguers: the Jacobins were the men, and one house of representatives, lodging the executive in committees, the plain and common system of government. The cause of republicanism is over, and it is now only a struggle for dominion. There wants a Lycurgus after Robespierre, a man loved for his virtue, and bold and inflexible, who should have levelled the property of France, and then would the Republic have been immortal—and the world must have been revolutionized by example.” From an unpublished letter from Southey to Coleridge, dated December 23, 1799. [232] “Alas, poor human nature! Or rather, indeed, alas, poor Gallic nature! For G?a??? ?e? a?de? the French are always children, and it is an infirmity of benevolence to wish, or dread, aught concerning them.” S. T. C., Morning Post, December 31, 1797; Essays on His Own Times, i. 184. [233] See Poetical Works, Appendix K, pp. 544, 545. Editor’s Note, pp. 646-649. “The winter Moon upon the sand Annual Anthology, 1800: “The Haunted Beach,” sixth stanza, p. 256. [235] These letters, under the title of “Monopolists” and “Farmers,” appeared in the Morning Post, October 3-9, 1800. Coleridge wrote the first of the series, and the introduction to No. III. of “Farmers,” “In what manner they are affected by the War” Essays on His Own Times, ii. 413-450; Thomas Poole and his Friends, ii. 15, 16. [236] It is impossible to explain this statement, which was repeated in a letter to Josiah Wedgwood, dated November 1, 1800. The printed “Christabel,” even including the conclusion to Part II., makes only 677 lines, and the discarded portion, if it ever existed, has never come to light. See Mr. Dykes Campbell’s valuable and exhaustive note on “Christabel,” Poetical Works, pp. 601-607. [237] A former title of “The Excursion.” [238] “Sunday night, half past ten, September 14, 1800, a boy born (Bracy). “September 27, 1800. The child being very ill was baptized by the name of Derwent. The child, hour after hour, made a noise exactly like the creaking of a door which is being shut very slowly to prevent its creaking.” (MS.) S. T. C. My father’s life was saved by his mother’s devotion. “On the occasion here recorded,” he writes, “I had eleven convulsion fits. At last my father took my mother gently out of the room, and told her that she must make up her mind to lose this child. By and by she heard the nurse lulling me, and said she would try once more to give me the breast.” She did so; and from that time all went well, and the child recovered. [239] Afterwards Sir Anthony, the distinguished surgeon, 1768-1840. [240] According to Dr. Davy, the editor of Fragmentary Remains of Sir H. Davy, London, 1858, the reference is to the late Mr. James Thompson of Clitheroe. [241] William, the elder brother of Raisley Calvert, who left Wordsworth a legacy of nine hundred pounds. In that mysterious poem, “Stanzas written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence,” it would seem that Wordsworth begins with a blended portrait of himself and Coleridge, and ends with a blended portrait of Coleridge and William Calvert. Mrs. Joshua Stanger (Mary Calvert) maintained that “the large gray eyes” and “low-hung lip” were certainly descriptive of Coleridge and could not apply to her father; but she admitted that, in other parts of the poem, Wordsworth may have had her father in his mind. Of this we may be sure, that neither Coleridge nor Wordsworth had “inventions rare,” or displayed beetles under a microscope. It is evident that Hartley Coleridge, who said “that his father’s character and habits are here [that is, in these stanzas] preserved in a livelier way than in anything that has been written about him,” regarded the first and not the second half of the poem as a description of S. T. C. “The Last of the Calverts,” Cornhill Magazine, May, 1890, pp. 494-520. [242] On page 210 of vol. ii. of the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads (1800), there is a blank space. The omitted passage, fifteen lines in all, began with the words, “Though nought was left undone.” Works of Wordsworth, p. 134, II. 4-18. [243] During the preceding month Coleridge had busied himself with instituting a comparison between the philosophical systems of Locke and Descartes. Three letters of prodigious length, dated February 18, 24 (a double letter), and addressed to Josiah Wedgwood, embodied the result of his studies. They would serve, he thought, as a preliminary excursus to a larger work, and would convince the Wedgwoods that his wanderjahr had not been altogether misspent. Mr. Leslie Stephen, to whom this correspondence has been submitted, is good enough to allow me to print the following extract from a letter which he wrote at my request: “Coleridge writes as though he had as yet read no German philosophy. I knew that he began a serious study of Kant at Keswick; but I fancied that he had brought back some knowledge of Kant from Germany. This letter seems to prove the contrary. There is certainly none of the transcendentalism of the Schelling kind. One point is, that he still sticks to Hartley and to the Association doctrine, which he afterwards denounced so frequently. Thus he is dissatisfied with Locke, but has not broken with the philosophy generally supposed to be on the Locke line. In short, he seems to be at the point where a study of Kant would be ready to launch him in his later direction, but is not at all conscious of the change. When he wrote the Friend [1809-10] he had become a Kantian. Therefore we must, I think, date his conversion later than I should have supposed, and assume that it was the study of Kant just after this letter was written which brought about the change.” [244] Nothing is known of these lines beyond the fact that in 1816 Coleridge printed them as “Conclusion to Part II.” of “Christabel.” It is possible that they were intended to form part of a distinct poem in the metre of “Christabel,” or, it may be, they are the sole survival of an attempted third part of the ballad itself. It is plain, however, that the picture is from the life, that “the little child, the limber elf,” is the four-year-old Hartley, hardly as yet “fitting to unutterable thought, The breeze-like motion, and the self-born carol.” [245] George Hutchinson, the fourth son of John Hutchinson of Penrith, was at this time in occupation of land at Bishop’s Middleham, the original home of the family. He migrated into Radnorshire in 1815, being then about the age of thirty-seven; but between that date and his leaving Bishop’s Middleham he had resided for some time in Lincolnshire, at Scrivelsby, where he was engaged probably as agent on the estate of the “Champion.” His first residence after migration was at New Radnor, where he married Margaret Roberts of Curnellan, but he subsequently removed into Herefordshire, where he resided in many places, latterly at Kingston. He died at his son’s house, The Vinery, Hereford, in 1866. It would seem from a letter dated July 25, 1801 (Letter CXX.), that at this time Sarah Hutchinson kept house for her brother George, and that Mary (Mrs. Wordsworth) and Joanna Hutchinson lived with their elder brother Tom at Gallow Hill, in the parish of Brompton, near Scarborough. The register of Brompton Church records the marriage of William Wordsworth and Mary Hutchinson, on October 4, 1802; but in the notices of marriages in the Gentleman’s Magazine, of October, 1802, the latter is described as “Miss Mary Hutchinson of Wykeham,” an adjoining parish. [From information kindly supplied to me by Mr. John Hutchinson, the keeper of the Library of the Middle Temple.] [246] The historian William Roscoe (afterwards M. P. for Liverpool), and the physician James Currie, the editor and biographer of Burns, were at this time settled at Liverpool and on terms of intimacy with Dr. Peter Crompton of Eaton Hall. [247] The Bristol merchant who lent the manor-house of Racedown to Wordsworth in 1795. [248] In the well-known lines “On revisiting the Sea-shore,” allusion is made to this “mild physician,” who vainly dissuaded him from bathing in the open sea. Sea-bathing was at all times an irresistible pleasure to Coleridge, and he continued the practice, greatly to his benefit, down to a late period of his life and long after he had become a confirmed invalid. Poetical Works, p. 159. [249] Francis Wrangham, whom Coleridge once described as “admirer of me and a pitier of my political principles” (Letter to Cottle [April], 1796), was his senior by a few years. On failing to obtain, it is said on account of his advanced political views, a fellowship at Trinity Hall, he started taking pupils at Cobham in Surrey in partnership with Basil Montagu. The scheme was of short duration, for Montagu deserted tuition for the bar, and Wrangham, early in life, was preferred to the benefices of Hemmanby and Folkton, in the neighborhood of Scarborough. He was afterwards appointed to a Canonry of York, to the Archdeaconry of Cleveland, and finally to a prebendal stall at Chester. He published a volume of Poems (London, 1795), in which are included Coleridge’s Translation of the “Hendecasyllabli ad Bruntonam e Grant exituram,” and some “Verses to Miss Brunton with the preceding Translation.” He died in 1842. Poetical Works, p. 30. See, too, Editor’s Note, p. 569; Reminiscences of Cambridge, by Henry Gunning, London, 1855, ii. 12 seq. [250] “I took a first floor for him in King Street, Covent Garden, at my tailor’s, Howell’s, whose wife is a cheerful housewife of middle age, who I knew would nurse Coleridge as kindly as if he were her son.” D. Stuart, Gent. Mag., May, 1838. See, too, Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 7. [251] Captain Luff, for many years a resident at Patterdale, near Ulleswater, was held in esteem for the energy with which he procured the enrolment of large companies of volunteers. Wordsworth and Coleridge were frequent visitors at his house, For his account of the death of Charles Gough, on Helvellyn, and the fidelity of the famous spaniel, see Coleorton Letters, i. 97. Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 131. [252] Ciceronis Epist. ad Fam. iv. 10. [253] Ib. i. 2. [254] The lines are taken, with some alterations, from a kind of l’envoy or epilogue which Bruno affixed to his long philosophical poem, Jordani Bruni Nolani de Innumerabilibus Immenso et Infigurabili; seu de Universo et Mundis libri octo. Francofurti, 1591, p. 654. [255] John Hamilton Mortimer, 1741-1779. He painted King John granting Magna Charta, the Battle of Agincourt, the Conversion of the Britons, and other historical subjects. [256] Drayton’s Poly-Olbion, Song 22, 1-17. [257] The Latin Iambics, in which Dean Ogle celebrated the little Blyth, which ran through his father’s park at Kirkley, near Ponteland, deserve the highest praise; but Bowles’s translation is far from being execrable. He may not have caught the peculiar tones of the Northumbrian burn which awoke the memories of the scholarly Dean, but his irregular lines are not without their own pathos and melody. Bowles was a Winchester boy, and Dr. Newton Ogle, then Dean of Winchester, was one of his earliest patrons. It was from the Dean’s son, his old schoolfellow, Lieutenant Ogle, that he claimed to have gathered the particulars of Coleridge’s discovery at Reading and discharge from the army. “Poems of William Lisle Bowles,” Galignani, 1829, p. 131; “The Late Mr. Coleridge a Common Soldier,” Times, August 13, 1834. [258] One of a series of falls made by the Dash Beck, which divides the parishes of Caldbeck and Skiddaw Forest, and flows into Bassenthwaite Lake. The following minute description is from an entry in a note-book dated October 10, 1800:— “The Dash itself is by no means equal to the Churnmilk (sic) at Eastdale (sic) or the Wytheburn Fall. This I wrote standing under and seeing the whole Dash; but when I went over and descended to the bottom, then I only saw the real Fall and the curve of the steep slope, and retracted. It is, indeed, so seen, a fine thing. It falls parallel with a fine black rock thirty feet, and is more shattered, more completely atomized and white, than any I have ever seen.... The Fall of the Dash is in a horse-shoe basin of its own, wildly peopled with small ashes standing out of the rocks. Crossed the beck close by the white pool, and stood on the other side in a complete spray-rain. Here it assumes, I think, a still finer appearance. You see the vast rugged net and angular points and upright cones of the black rock; the Fall assumes a variety and complexity, parts rushing in wheels, other parts perpendicular, some in white horse-tails, while towards the right edge of the black [rock] two or three leisurely fillets have escaped out of the turmoil.” [259] I have been unable to discover any trace of the MS. of this translation. [260] The “Ode to Dejection,” of which this is the earliest version, was composed on Sunday evening, April 4, and published six months later, in the Morning Post of October 4, 1802. It was reprinted in the Sibylline Leaves, 1817. A comparison of the Ode, as sent to Sotheby, with the first printed version (Poetical Works, Appendix G, pp. 522-524) shows that it underwent many changes before it was permitted to see the “light of common day” in the columns of the Morning Post. The Ode was begun some three weeks after Coleridge returned to Keswick, after an absence of four months. He had visited Southey in London, he had been a fellow guest with Tom Wedgwood for a month at Stowey, he had returned to London and attended Davy’s lectures at the Royal Institution, and on his way home he had stayed for a fortnight with his friend T. Hutchinson, Wordsworth’s brother-in-law, at Gallow Hill. He left Gallow Hill “on March 13 in a violent storm of snow, wind, and rain,” and must have reached Keswick on Sunday the 14th or Monday the 15th of March. On the following Friday he walked over to Dove Cottage, and once more found himself in the presence of his friends, and, once again, their presence and companionship drove him into song. The Ode is at once a confession and a contrast, a confession that he had fled from the conflict with his soul into the fastnesses of metaphysics, and a contrast of his own hopelessness with the glad assurance of inward peace and outward happiness which attended the pure and manly spirit of his friend. But verse was what he had been wedded to, A MS. note-book of 1801-2, which has helped to date his movements at the time, contains, among other hints and jottings, the following almost illegible fragment: “The larches in spring push out their separate bundles of ... into green brushes or pencils which ... small tassels;”—and with the note may be compared the following lines included in the version contained in the letter, but afterwards omitted:— In this heartless mood, Another jotting in the same note-book: “A Poem on the endeavour to emancipate the mind from day-dreams, with the different attempts and the vain ones,” perhaps found expression in the lines which follow “My shaping spirit of Imagination,” which appeared for the first time in print in Sibylline Leaves, 1817, but which, as Mr. Dykes Campbell has rightly divined, belonged to the original draft of the Ode. Poetical Works, p. 159. Appendix G, pp. 522-524. Editor’s Note, pp. 626-628. [261] “A lovely skye-canoe.” Morning Post. The reference is to the Prologue to “Peter Bell.” Compare stanza 22, “My little vagrant Form of light, Wordsworth’s Poetical Works, p. 100. [262] For Southey’s reply, dated Bristol, August 4, 1802, see Life and Correspondence, ii. 189-192. [263] The Right Hon. Isaac Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland, to whom Southey acted as secretary for a short time. [264] “On Sunday, August 1st, ½ after 12, I had a shirt, cravat, 2 pairs of stockings, a little paper, and half dozen pens, a German book (Voss’s Poems), and a little tea and sugar, with my night cap, packed up in my natty green oil-skin, neatly squared, and put into my net knapsack, and the knapsack on my back and the besom stick in my hand, which for want of a better, and in spite of Mrs. C. and Mary, who both raised their voices against it, especially as I left the besom scattered on the kitchen floor, off I sallied over the bridge, through the hop-field, through the Prospect Bridge, at Portinscale, so on by the tall birch that grows out of the centre of the huge oak, along into Newlands.” MS. Journal of tour in the Lake District, August 1-9, 1802, sent in the form of a letter to the Wordsworths and transcribed by Miss Sarah Hutchinson. [265] “The following month, September (1802), was marked by the birth of his first child, a daughter, named after her paternal grandmother, Margaret.” Southey’s Life and Correspondence, ii. 192. [266] Southey’s reply, which was not in the affirmative, has not been preserved. The joint-residence at Greta Hall began in September, 1803. [267] Charles and Mary Lamb’s visit to Greta Hall, which lasted three full weeks, must have extended from (about) August 12 to September 2, 1802. Letters of Charles Lamb, i. 180-184. “Here melancholy, on the pale crags laid, “Coombe-Ellen, written in Radnorshire, September, 1798.” “Poems of William Lisle Bowles,” Galignani, p. 139. For “Melancholy, a Fragment,” see Poetical Works, p. 34. [269] I have not been able to verify this reference. [270] “O my God! what enormous mountains there are close by me, and yet below the hill I stand on.... And here I am, lounded [i. e., sheltered],—so fully lounded,—that though the wind is strong and the clouds are hastening hither from the sea, and the whole air seaward has a lurid look, and we shall certainly have thunder,—yet here (but that I am hungered and provisionless), here I could be warm and wait, methinks, for to-morrow’s sun—and on a nice stone table am I now at this moment writing to you—between 2 and 3 o’clock, as I guess. Surely the first letter ever written from the top of Sca Fell.” “After the thunder-storm I shouted out all your names in the sheep-fold—where echo came upon echo, and then Hartley and Derwent, and then I laughed and shouted Joanna. It leaves all the echoes I ever heard far, far behind, in number, distinctness and humanness of voice; and then, not to forget an old friend, I made them all say Dr. Dodd etc.” MS. Journal, August 6, 1802. Compare Lamb’s Latin letter of October 9, 1802:— “Ista tua Carmina Chamouniana satis grandia esse mihi constat; sed hoc mihi nonnihil displicet, quod in iis illÆ montium Grisosonum inter se responsiones totidem reboant anglicÉ, God, God, haud aliter atque temet audivi tuas [sic] montes Cumbrianas [sic] resonare docentes, Tod, Tod, nempe Doctorem infelicem: vocem certe haud Deum sonantem.” Letters of Charles Lamb, i. 185. See, too, Canon Ainger’s translation and note, ibid. p. 331. See, also, Southey’s Letter to Grosvenor Bedford, January 9, 1804. Life and Correspondence, ii. 248. [271] “The Spirit of Navigation and Discovery.” “Bowles’s Poetical Works,” Galignani, p. 142. [272] These lines form part of the poem addressed “To Matilda Betham. From a Stranger.” The date of composition was September 9, 1802, the day before they were quoted in the letter to Sotheby. Poetical Works, p. 168. [273] The “Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni” was first printed in the Morning Post, September 11, 1802. It was reprinted in the original issue of The Friend, No. xi. (October 16, 1809, pp. 174-176), and again in Sibylline Leaves, 1817. As De Quincey was the first to point out, Coleridge was indebted to the Swiss poetess, Frederica Brun, for the framework of the poem and for many admirable lines and images, but it was his solitary walk on Scafell, and the consequent uplifting of spirit, which enabled him “to create the dry bones of the German outline into the fulness of life.” Coleridge will never lose his title of a Lake Poet, but of the ten years during which he was nominally resident in the Lake District, he was absent at least half the time. Of his greater poems there are but four, the second part of “Christabel,” the “Dejection: an Ode,” the “Picture,” and the “Hymn before Sunrise,” which take their colouring from the scenery of Westmoreland and Cumberland. He was but twenty-six when he visited Ottery for the last time. It was in his thirty-fifth year that he bade farewell to Stowey and the Quantocks, and after he was turned forty he never saw Grasmere or Keswick again. Ill health and the res angusta domi are stern gaolers, but, if he had been so minded, he would have found a way to revisit the pleasant places in which he had passed his youth and early manhood. In truth, he was well content to be a dweller in “the depths of the huge city” or its outskirts, and like Lamb, he “could not live in Skiddaw.” Poetical Works, p. 165, and Editor’s Note, pp. 629, 630. [274] Coleridge must have presumed on the ignorance of Sotheby and of his friends generally. He could hardly have passed out of Boyer’s hands without having learned that ?st?se signifies, “He hath placed,” not “He hath stood.” But, like most people who have changed their opinions, he took an especial pride in proclaiming his unswerving allegiance to fixed principles. The initials S. T. C., Grecised and mistranslated, expressed this pleasing delusion, and the Greek, “Punic [sc. punnic] Greek,” as he elsewhere calls it, might run the risk of detection. [275] Parts III. and IV. of the “Three Graves”—were first published in The Friend, No. vi. Sept. 21, 1809. Parts I. and II. were published for the first time in The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Macmillan, 1893. The final version of this stanza (ll. 509-513) differs from that in the text. “A small blue sun” became “A tiny sun,” and for “Ten thousand hairs of colour’d light” Coleridge substituted “Ten thousand hairs and threads of light.” See Poetical Works, p. 92, and Editor’s Note, pp. 589-591. [276] The six essays to which he calls Estlin’s attention are reprinted in Essays on His Own Times, ii. 478-585. [277] The residence of Josiah Wedgwood. [278] Paley’s last work, “Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of A Deity, collected from the Appearances of Nature,” was published in 1802. [279] For Southey’s well known rejoinder to this “ebullience of schematism,” see Life and Correspondence, ii. 220-223. [280] Southey’s correspondence contains numerous references to the historian Sharon Turner [1768-1847], and to William Owen, the translator of the Mabinogion and author of the Welsh Paradise Lost. [281] It may be interesting to compare the following unpublished note from Coleridge’s Scotch Journal with the well known passage in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal of her tour in the Highlands (Memoir of Wordsworth, i. 235): “Next morning we went in the boat to the end of the lake, and so on by the old path to the Garrison to the Ferry House by Loch Lomond, where now the Fall was in all its fury, and formed with the Ferry cottage, and the sweet Highland lass, a nice picture. The boat gone to the preaching we stayed all day in the comfortless hovel, comfortless, but the two little lassies did everything with such sweetness, and one of them, 14, with such native elegance. Oh! she was a divine creature! The sight of the boat, full of Highland men and women and children from the preaching, exquisitely fine. We soon reached E. Tarbet—all the while rain. Never, never let me forget that small herd-boy in his tartan-plaid, dim-seen on the hilly field, and long heard ere seen, a melancholy voice calling to his cattle! nor the beautiful harmony of the heath, and the dancing fern, and the ever-moving birches. That of itself enough to make Scotland visitable, its fields of heather giving a sort of shot silk finery in the apotheosis of finery. On Monday we went to Arrochar. Here I left W. and D. and returned myself to E. Tarbet, slept there, and now, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 1803, am to make my own way to Edinburgh.” Many years after he added the words: “O Esteese, that thou hadst from thy 22nd year indeed made thy own way and alone!” A sweet and playful Highland girl, [283] Margaret Southey, who was born in September, 1802, died in the latter part of August, 1803. [284] The “Pains of Sleep” was published for the first time, together with “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan,” in 1816. With the exception of the insertion of the remarkable lines 52-54, the first draft of the poem does not materially differ from the published version. A transcript of the same poem was sent to Poole in a letter dated October 3, 1803. Poetical Works, p. 170, and Editor’s Note, pp. 631, 632. [285] The Rev. Peter Elmsley, the well known scholar, who had been a school and college friend of Southey’s, was at this time resident at Edinburgh. The Edinburgh Review had been founded the year before, and Elmsley was among the earliest contributors. His name frequently recurs in Southey’s correspondence. [286] Compare Southey’s first impressions of Edinburgh, contained in a letter to Wynn, dated October 20, 1805: “You cross a valley (once a loch) by a high bridge, and the back of the old city appears on the edge of this depth—so vast, so irregular—with such an outline of roofs and chimneys, that it looks like the ruins of a giant’s palace. I never saw anything so impressive as the first sight of this; there was a wild red sunset slanting along it.” Selections from the Letters of R. Southey, i. 342. [287] Compare Table Talk, for September 26, 1830, where a similar statement is made in almost the same words. [288] The same sentence occurs in a letter to Sir G. Beaumont, dated September 22, 1803. Coleorton Letters, i. 6. [289] The MS. of this letter was given to my father by the Rev. Dr. Wreford. I know nothing of the person to whom it was addressed, except that he was “Matthew Coates, Esq., of Bristol.” [290] Dr. Joseph Adams, the biographer of Hunter, who in 1816 recommended Coleridge to the care of Mr. James Gillman. This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. 1.F. 1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. 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