Who, in safe rage, without or rent or scar,
Bound pictur'd strongholds sketching mimic war
Closet their valour--Thou mid thickest fire
Leapst on the wall: therefore shall Freedom choose 5
Ungaudy flowers that chastest odours breathe,
And weave for thy young locks a Mural wreath;
Nor there my song of grateful praise refuse.
My ill-adventur'd youth by Cam's slow stream
Pin'd for a woman's love in slothful ease: 10
First by thy fair example [taught] to glow
With patriot zeal; from Passion's feverish dream
Starting I tore disdainful from my brow
A Myrtle Crown inwove with Cyprian bough--
Blest if to me in manhood's years belong 15
Thy stern simplicity and vigorous Song.
FOOTNOTES:
[1090:1] Now first published from Cottle's MSS. in the Library of Rugby
School.
R[1090:2]
'Relative to a Friend remarkable for Georgoepiscopal Meanderings, and
the combination of the _utile dulci_ during his walks to and from any
given place, composed, together with a book and a half of an Epic Poem,
during one of the _Halts_:--
'Lest after this life it should prove my sad story
That my soul must needs go to the Pope's Purgatory,
Many prayers have I sighed, May T. P. * * * * be my guide,
For so often he'll halt, and so lead me about,
That e'er we get there, thro' earth, sea, or air,
The last Day will have come, and the Fires have burnt out.
'JOB JUNIOR.
'_circumbendiborum patientissimus_.'
FOOTNOTES:
[1090:2] Endorsed by T. P.: 'On my Walks. Written by Coleridge,
September, 1807.' First published _Thomas Poole and His Friends_, by
Mrs. Henry Sandford, 1888, ii. 196.
APPENDIX II
ALLEGORIC VISION[1091:1]
A feeling of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, is wont to take
possession of me alike in Spring and in Autumn. But in Spring
it is the melancholy of Hope: in Autumn it is the melancholy
of Resignation. As I was journeying on foot through the
Appennine, I fell in with a pilgrim in whom the Spring and 5
the Autumn and the Melancholy of both seemed to have
combined. In his discourse there were the freshness and the
colours of April:
Qual ramicel a ramo,
Tal da pensier pensiero 10
In lui germogliava.
But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I bethought me
of the not unlovely decays, both of age and of the late season,
in the stately elm, after the clusters have been plucked from
its entwining vines, and the vines are as bands of dried withies 15
around its trunk and branches. Even so there was a memory
on his smooth and ample forehead, which blended with the
dedication of his steady eyes, that still looked--I know not,
whether upward, or far onward, or rather to the line of meeting
where the sky rests upon the distance. But how may I express 20
that dimness of abstraction which lay on the lustre of the
pilgrim's eyes like the flitting tarnish from the breath of a sigh
on a silver mirror! and which accorded with their slow and
reluctant movement, whenever he turned them to any object
on the right hand or on the left? It seemed, methought, as 25
if there lay upon the brightness a shadowy presence of
disappointments now unfelt, but never forgotten. It was at once
the melancholy of hope and of resignation.
We had not long been fellow-travellers, ere a sudden tempest
of wind and rain forced us to seek protection in the vaulted 30
door-way of a lone chapelry; and we sate face to face each on
the stone bench alongside the low, weather-stained wall, and
as close as possible to the massy door.
After a pause of silence: even thus, said he, like two strangers
that have fled to the same shelter from the same storm, not 35
seldom do Despair and Hope meet for the first time in the
porch of Death! All extremes meet, I answered; but yours
was a strange and visionary thought. The better then doth it
beseem both the place and me, he replied. From a Visionary
wilt thou hear a Vision? Mark that vivid flash through this 40
torrent of rain! Fire and water. Even here thy adage holds
true, and its truth is the moral of my Vision. I entreated him
to proceed. Sloping his face toward the arch and yet averting
his eye from it, he seemed to seek and prepare his words: till
listening to the wind that echoed within the hollow edifice, 45
and to the rain without,
Which stole on his thoughts with its two-fold sound,
The clash hard by and the murmur all round,[1092:1]
he gradually sank away, alike from me and from his own purpose,
and amid the gloom of the storm and in the duskiness of that 50
place, he sate like an emblem on a rich man's sepulchre, or like a
mourner on the sodded grave of an only one--an aged mourner,
who is watching the waned moon and sorroweth not. Starting
at length from his brief trance of abstraction, with courtesy and
an atoning smile he renewed his discourse, and commenced his 55
parable.
During one of those short furloughs from the service of the
body, which the soul may sometimes obtain even in this its
militant state, I found myself in a vast plain, which I
immediately knew to be the Valley of Life. It possessed an 60
astonishing diversity of soils: here was a sunny spot, and
there a dark one, forming just such a mixture of sunshine and
shade, as we may have observed on the mountains' side in an
April day, when the thin broken clouds are scattered over
heaven. Almost in the very entrance of the valley stood 65
a large and gloomy pile, into which I seemed constrained to
enter. Every part of the building was crowded with tawdry
ornaments and fantastic deformity. On every window was
portrayed, in glaring and inelegant colours, some horrible tale,
or preternatural incident, so that not a ray of light could enter, 70
untinged by the medium through which it passed. The body
of the building was full of people, some of them dancing, in and
out, in unintelligible figures, with strange ceremonies and antic
merriment, while others seemed convulsed with horror, or
pining in mad melancholy. Intermingled with these, I observed 75
a number of men, clothed in ceremonial robes, who appeared
now to marshal the various groups, and to direct their
movements; and now with menacing countenances, to drag some
reluctant victim to a vast idol, framed of iron bars intercrossed,
which formed at the same time an immense cage, and the shape 80
of a human Colossus.
I stood for a while lost in wonder what these things might
mean; when lo! one of the directors came up to me, and with
a stern and reproachful look bade me uncover my head, for
that the place into which I had entered was the temple of 85
the only true Religion, in the holier recesses of which the
great Goddess personally resided. Himself too he bade me
reverence, as the consecrated minister of her rites. Awestruck
by the name of Religion, I bowed before the priest, and humbly
and earnestly intreated him to conduct me into her presence. 90
He assented. Offerings he took from me, with mystic
sprinklings of water and with salt he purified, and with strange
sufflations he exorcised me; and then led me through many
a dark and winding alley, the dew-damps of which chilled my
flesh, and the hollow echoes under my feet, mingled, methought, 95
with moanings, affrighted me. At length we entered a large
hall, without window, or spiracle, or lamp. The asylum and
dormitory it seemed of perennial night--only that the walls were
brought to the eye by a number of self-luminous inscriptions in
letters of a pale sepulchral light, which held strange neutrality 100
with the darkness, on the verge of which it kept its rayless vigil.
I could read them, methought; but though each of the words
taken separately I seemed to understand, yet when I took them
in sentences, they were riddles and incomprehensible. As I
stood meditating on these hard sayings, my guide thus addressed 105
me--'Read and believe: these are mysteries!'--At the
extremity of the vast hall the Goddess was placed. Her features,
blended with darkness, rose out to my view, terrible, yet vacant.
I prostrated myself before her, and then retired with my guide,
soul-withered, and wondering, and dissatisfied. 110
As I re-entered the body of the temple I heard a deep buzz
as of discontent. A few whose eyes were bright, and either
piercing or steady, and whose ample foreheads, with the weighty
bar, ridge-like, above the eyebrows, bespoke observation followed
by meditative thought; and a much larger number, who were 115
enraged by the severity and insolence of the priests in exacting
their offerings, had collected in one tumultuous group, and with
a confused outcry of 'This is the Temple of Superstition!' after
much contumely, and turmoil, and cruel maltreatment on all
sides, rushed out of the pile: and I, methought, joined them. 120
We speeded from the Temple with hasty steps, and had now
nearly gone round half the valley, when we were addressed by
a woman, tall beyond the stature of mortals, and with a
something more than human in her countenance and mien, which
yet could by mortals be only felt, not conveyed by words or 125
intelligibly distinguished. Deep reflection, animated by ardent
feelings, was displayed in them: and hope, without its
uncertainty, and a something more than all these, which I understood
not, but which yet seemed to blend all these into a divine unity
of expression. Her garments were white and matronly, and of 130
the simplest texture. We inquired her name. 'My name,'
she replied, 'is Religion.'
The more numerous part of our company, affrighted by the
very sound, and sore from recent impostures or sorceries,
hurried onwards and examined no farther. A few of us, struck 135
by the manifest opposition of her form and manners to those
of the living Idol, whom we had so recently abjured, agreed to
follow her, though with cautious circumspection. She led us to
an eminence in the midst of the valley, from the top of which
we could command the whole plain, and observe the relation of 140
the different parts to each other, and of each to the whole, and
of all to each. She then gave us an optic glass which assisted
without contradicting our natural vision, and enabled us to see
far beyond the limits of the Valley of Life; though our eye
even thus assisted permitted us only to behold a light and 145
a glory, but what we could not descry, save only that it was,
and that it was most glorious.
And now with the rapid transition of a dream, I had overtaken
and rejoined the more numerous party, who had abruptly
left us, indignant at the very name of religion. They journied 150
on, goading each other with remembrances of past oppressions,
and never looking back, till in the eagerness to recede from the
Temple of Superstition they had rounded the whole circle of the
valley. And lo! there faced us the mouth of a vast cavern, at
the base of a lofty and almost perpendicular rock, the interior 155
side of which, unknown to them and unsuspected, formed the
extreme and backward wall of the Temple. An impatient
crowd, we entered the vast and dusky cave, which was the only
perforation of the precipice. At the mouth of the cave sate
two figures; the first, by her dress and gestures, I knew to be 160
Sensuality; the second form, from the fierceness of his demeanour,
and the brutal scornfulness of his looks, declared himself
to be the monster Blasphemy. He uttered big words, and yet
ever and anon I observed that he turned pale at his own
courage. We entered. Some remained in the opening of the 165
cave, with the one or the other of its guardians. The rest, and
I among them, pressed on, till we reached an ample chamber,
that seemed the centre of the rock. The climate of the place
was unnaturally cold.
In the furthest distance of the chamber sate an old dim-eyed 170
man, poring with a microscope over the torso of a statue
which had neither basis, nor feet, nor head; but on its breast
was carved Nature! To this he continually applied his glass,
and seemed enraptured with the various inequalities which it
rendered visible on the seemingly polished surface of the 175
marble.--Yet evermore was this delight and triumph followed
by expressions of hatred, and vehement railing against a Being,
who yet, he assured us, had no existence. This mystery
suddenly recalled to me what I had read in the holiest recess
of the temple of Superstition. The old man spake in divers 180
tongues, and continued to utter other and most strange
mysteries. Among the rest he talked much and vehemently
concerning an infinite series of causes and effects, which he
explained to be a string of blind men, the last of whom
caught hold of the skirt of the one before him, he of the next, 185
and so on till they were all out of sight; and that they all
walked infallibly straight, without making one false step
though all were alike blind. Methought I borrowed courage
from surprise, and asked him--Who then is at the head to
guide them? He looked at me with ineffable contempt, not 190
unmixed with an angry suspicion, and then replied, 'No one.'
The string of blind men went on for ever without any beginning;
for although one blind man could not move without stumbling,
yet infinite blindness supplied the want of sight. I burst into
laughter, which instantly turned to terror--for as he started 195
forward in rage, I caught a glimpse of him from behind; and
lo! I beheld a monster bi-form and Janus-headed, in the hinder
face and shape of which I instantly recognised the dread
countenance of Superstition--and in the terror I awoke.
FOOTNOTES:
[1091:1] First published in _The Courier_, Saturday, August 31, 1811:
included in 1829, 1834-5, &c. (3 vols.), and in 1844 (1 vol.). Lines
1-56 were first published as part of the 'Introduction' to _A Lay
Sermon, &c._, 1817, pp. xix-xxxi.
The 'Allegoric Vision' dates from August, 1795. It served as a kind of
preface or prologue to Coleridge's first Theological Lecture on 'The
Origin of Evil. The Necessity of Revelation deduced from the Nature of
Man. An Examination and Defence of the Mosaic Dispensation' (see
Cottle's _Early Recollections_, 1837, i. 27). The purport of these
Lectures was to uphold the golden mean of Unitarian orthodoxy as opposed
to the Church on the one hand, and infidelity or materialism on the
other. 'Superstition' stood for and symbolized the Church of England.
Sixteen years later this opening portion of an unpublished Lecture was
rewritten and printed in _The Courier_ (Aug. 31, 1811), with the heading
'An Allegoric Vision: Superstition, Religion, Atheism'. The attack was
now diverted from the Church of England to the Church of Rome. 'Men clad
in black robes,' intent on gathering in their Tenths, become 'men
clothed in ceremonial robes, who with menacing countenances drag some
reluctant victim to a vast idol, framed of iron bars intercrossed which
formed at the same time an immense cage, and yet represented the form of
a human Colossus. At the base of the Statue I saw engraved the words "To
Dominic holy and merciful, the preventer and avenger of soul-murder".'
The vision was turned into a political _jeu d'esprit_ levelled at the
aiders and abettors of Catholic Emancipation, a measure to which
Coleridge was more or less opposed as long as he lived. See
_Constitution of Church and State_, 1830, _passim_. A third adaptation
of the 'Allegorical Vision' was affixed to the Introduction to _A Lay
Sermon: Addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes_, which was published
in 1817. The first fifty-six lines, which contain a description of
Italian mountain scenery, were entirely new, but the rest of the
'Vision' is an amended and softened reproduction of the preface to the
Lecture of 1795. The moral he desires to point is the 'falsehood of
extremes'. As Religion is the golden mean between Superstition and
Atheism, so the righteous government of a righteous people is the mean
between a selfish and oppressive aristocracy, and seditious and
unbridled mob-rule. A probable 'Source' of the first draft of the
'Vision' is John Aikin's _Hill of Science, A Vision_, which was included
in _Elegant Extracts_, 1794, ii. 801. In the present issue the text of
1834 has been collated with that of 1817 and 1829, but not
(exhaustively) with the MS. (1795), or at all with the _Courier_ version
of 1811.
[1092:1] From the _Ode to the Rain_, 1802, ll. 15-16:--
O Rain! with your dull two-fold sound,
The clash hard by, and the murmur all round!
LINENOTES:
[21-3] --the breathed tarnish, shall I name it?--on the lustre of the
pilgrim's eyes? Yet had it not a sort of strange accordance with 1817.
[37] Compare:
like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!
_Constancy to an Ideal Object_, p. 456.
[39] VISIONARY 1817, 1829.
[40] VISION 1817, 1829.
[49] sank] sunk 1817.
[51-2] _or like_ an aged mourner on the sodden grave of an only one--a
mourner, _who_ 1817.
[57-9] It was towards morning when the Brain begins to reassume its
waking state, and our dreams approach to the regular trains of Reality,
that I found MS. 1795.
[60] VALLEY OF LIFE 1817, 1829.
[61] and here was 1817, 1829.
[63] mountains' side] Hills MS. 1795.
[75-86] intermingled with all these I observed a great number of men in
Black Robes who appeared now marshalling the various Groups and now
collecting with scrupulous care the Tenths of everything that grew
within their reach. I stood wondering a while what these Things might be
when one of these men approached me and with a reproachful Look bade me
uncover my Head for the Place into which I had entered was the Temple of
_Religion_. MS. 1795.
[80] shape] form 1817.
[92-3] of water he purified me, and then led MS. 1795.
[94-9] chilled and its hollow echoes beneath my feet affrighted me, till
at last we entered a large Hall where not even a Lamp glimmered. Around
its walls I observed a number of phosphoric Inscriptions MS. 1795.
[96-102] _large hall_ where not even a single lamp glimmered. It was
made half visible by the wan phosphoric rays which proceeded from
inscriptions on the walls, in letters of the same pale and sepulchral
light. I could read them, methought; but though each one of the _words_
1817.
[106] _me_. The fallible becomes infallible, and the infallible remains
fallible. Read and believe: these are MYSTERIES! In the middle of _the
vast_ 1817.
[106] MYSTERIES 1829.
[108] _vacant_. No definite thought, no distinct image was afforded me:
all was uneasy and obscure feeling. I _prostrated_ 1817.
[118] SUPERSTITION 1817.
[132] RELIGION 1817, 1829.
[141] _parts_ of each to the other, _and of_ 1817, 1829.
[146] _was_ 1817, 1829.
[161] SENSUALITY 1817, 1829.
[163] BLASPHEMY 1817, 1829.
[173] NATURE 1817, 1829.
[180] _Superstition_ 1817, 1829. spake] spoke 1817, 1829.
[196] glimpse] glance 1817, 1829.
[199] SUPERSTITION 1817, 1829.
APPENDIX III
[Vide _ante_ p. 237.]
APOLOGETIC PREFACE TO 'FIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER'[1097:1]
At the house of a gentleman[1097:2] who by the principles and
corresponding virtues of a sincere Christian consecrates a
cultivated genius and the favourable accidents of birth, opulence,
and splendid connexions, it was my good fortune to meet, in
a dinner-party, with more men of celebrity in science or polite 5
literature than are commonly found collected round the same
table. In the course of conversation, one of the party reminded
an illustrious poet [Scott], then present, of some verses which
he had recited that morning, and which had appeared in
a newspaper under the name of a War-Eclogue, in which Fire, 10
Famine, and Slaughter were introduced as the speakers. The
gentleman so addressed replied, that he was rather surprised
that none of us should have noticed or heard of the poem, as it
had been, at the time, a good deal talked of in Scotland. It
may be easily supposed that my feelings were at this moment 15
not of the most comfortable kind. Of all present, one only [Sir
H. Davy] knew, or suspected me to be the author; a man who
would have established himself in the first rank of England's
living poets[1097:3], if the Genius of our country had not decreed that
he should rather be the first in the first rank of its philosophers 20
and scientific benefactors. It appeared the general wish to
hear the lines. As my friend chose to remain silent, I chose
to follow his example, and Mr. . . . . [Scott] recited the poem.
This he could do with the better grace, being known to have
ever been not only a firm and active Anti-Jacobin and 25
Anti-Gallican, but likewise a zealous admirer of Mr. Pitt, both as
a good man and a great statesman. As a poet exclusively, he
had been amused with the Eclogue; as a poet he recited it;
and in a spirit which made it evident that he would have read
and repeated it with the same pleasure had his own name been 30
attached to the imaginary object or agent.
After the recitation our amiable host observed that in his
opinion Mr. . . . . had over-rated the merits of the poetry;
but had they been tenfold greater, they could not have
compensated for that malignity of heart which could alone have 35
prompted sentiments so atrocious. I perceived that my
illustrious friend became greatly distressed on my account; but
fortunately I was able to preserve fortitude and presence of
mind enough to take up the subject without exciting even
a suspicion how nearly and painfully it interested me. 40
What follows is the substance of what I then replied, but
dilated and in language less colloquial. It was not my intention,
I said, to justify the publication, whatever its author's feelings
might have been at the time of composing it. That they are
calculated to call forth so severe a reprobation from a good man, 45
is not the worst feature of such poems. Their moral deformity
is aggravated in proportion to the pleasure which they are
capable of affording to vindictive, turbulent, and unprincipled
readers. Could it be supposed, though for a moment, that the
author seriously wished what he had thus wildly imagined, 50
even the attempt to palliate an inhumanity so monstrous would
be an insult to the hearers. But it seemed to me worthy of
consideration, whether the mood of mind and the general state
of sensations in which a poet produces such vivid and fantastic
images, is likely to co-exist, or is even compatible with, that 55
gloomy and deliberate ferocity which a serious wish to realize
them would pre-suppose. It had been often observed, and all
my experience tended to confirm the observation, that prospects
of pain and evil to others, and in general all deep feelings of
revenge, are commonly expressed in a few words, ironically tame, 60
and mild. The mind under so direful and fiend-like an influence
seems to take a morbid pleasure in contrasting the intensity of
its wishes and feelings with the slightness or levity of the
expressions by which they are hinted; and indeed feelings
so intense and solitary, if they were not precluded (as in almost 65
all cases they would be) by a constitutional activity of fancy
and association, and by the specific joyousness combined with it,
would assuredly themselves preclude such activity. Passion, in
its own quality, is the antagonist of action; though in an
ordinary and natural degree the former alternates with the latter, 70
and thereby revives and strengthens it. But the more intense
and insane the passion is, the fewer and the more fixed are the
correspondent forms and notions. A rooted hatred, an inveterate
thirst of revenge, is a sort of madness, and still eddies round its
favourite object, and exercises as it were a perpetual tautology 75
of mind in thoughts and words which admit of no adequate
substitutes. Like a fish in a globe of glass, it moves restlessly
round and round the scanty circumference, which it cannot
leave without losing its vital element.
There is a second character of such imaginary representations 80
as spring from a real and earnest desire of evil to another,
which we often see in real life, and might even anticipate from
the nature of the mind. The images, I mean, that a vindictive
man places before his imagination, will most often be taken
from the realities of life: they will be images of pain and 85
suffering which he has himself seen inflicted on other men, and
which he can fancy himself as inflicting on the object of his
hatred. I will suppose that we had heard at different times
two common sailors, each speaking of some one who had
wronged or offended him: that the first with apparent violence 90
had devoted every part of his adversary's body and soul to all
the horrid phantoms and fantastic places that ever Quevedo
dreamt of, and this in a rapid flow of those outrageous and wildly
combined execrations, which too often with our lower classes
serve for escape-valves to carry off the excess of their passions, 95
as so much superfluous steam that would endanger the vessel if
it were retained. The other, on the contrary, with that sort of
calmness of tone which is to the ear what the paleness of anger
is to the eye, shall simply say, 'If I chance to be made
boatswain, as I hope I soon shall, and can but once get that 100
fellow under my hand (and I shall be upon the watch for him),
I'll tickle his pretty skin! I won't hurt him! oh no! I'll only
cut the -- -- to the liver!' I dare appeal to all present, which
of the two they would regard as the least deceptive symptom
of deliberate malignity? nay, whether it would surprise them 105
to see the first fellow, an hour or two afterwards, cordially
shaking hands with the very man the fractional parts of whose
body and soul he had been so charitably disposing of; or even
perhaps risking his life for him? What language Shakespeare
considered characteristic of malignant disposition we see in the 110
speech of the good-natured Gratiano, who spoke 'an infinite
deal of nothing more than any man in all Venice';
----Too wild, too rude and bold of voice!
the skipping spirit, whose thoughts and words reciprocally ran
away with each other; 115
----O be them damn'd, inexorable dog!
And for thy life let justice be accused!
and the wild fancies that follow, contrasted with Shylock's
tranquil 'I stand here for Law'.
Or, to take a case more analogous to the present subject, 120
should we hold it either fair or charitable to believe it to have
been Dante's serious wish that all the persons mentioned by
him (many recently departed, and some even alive at the time,)
should actually suffer the fantastic and horrible punishments to
which he has sentenced them in his Hell and Purgatory? 125
Or what shall we say of the passages in which Bishop Jeremy
Taylor anticipates the state of those who, vicious themselves,
have been the cause of vice and misery to their fellow-creatures?
Could we endure for a moment to think that a spirit, like
Bishop Taylor's, burning with Christian love; that a man 130
constitutionally overflowing with pleasurable kindliness; who
scarcely even in a casual illustration introduces the image of
woman, child, or bird, but he embalms the thought with so
rich a tenderness, as makes the very words seem beauties and
fragments of poetry from Euripides or Simonides;--can we 135
endure to think, that a man so natured and so disciplined, did
at the time of composing this horrible picture, attach a sober
feeling of reality to the phrases? or that he would have
described in the same tone of justification, in the same luxuriant
flow of phrases, the tortures about to be inflicted on a living 140
individual by a verdict of the Star-Chamber? or the still more
atrocious sentences executed on the Scotch anti-prelatists and
schismatics, at the command, and in some instances under the
very eye of the Duke of Lauderdale, and of that wretched bigot
who afterwards dishonoured and forfeited the throne of Great 145
Britain? Or do we not rather feel and understand, that these
violent words were mere bubbles, flashes and electrical
apparitions, from the magic cauldron of a fervid and ebullient fancy,
constantly fuelled by an unexampled opulence of language?
Were I now to have read by myself for the first time the poem 150
in question, my conclusion, I fully believe, would be, that the
writer must have been some man of warm feelings and active
fancy; that he had painted to himself the circumstances that
accompany war in so many vivid and yet fantastic forms, as
proved that neither the images nor the feelings were the result 155
of observation, or in any way derived from realities. I should
judge that they were the product of his own seething imagination,
and therefore impregnated with that pleasurable exultation
which is experienced in all energetic exertion of intellectual
power; that in the same mood he had generalized the causes of 160
the war, and then personified the abstract and christened it by
the name which he had been accustomed to hear most often
associated with its management and measures. I should guess
that the minister was in the author's mind at the moment of
composition as completely ἀπαθὴς, ἀναιμόσαρκος, as Anacreon's 165
grasshopper, and that he had as little notion of a real person of
flesh and blood,
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
[_Paradise Lost_, II. 668.]
as Milton had in the grim and terrible phantom (half person,
half allegory) which he has placed at the gates of Hell. I 170
concluded by observing, that the poem was not calculated to excite
passion in any mind, or to make any impression except on
poetic readers; and that from the culpable levity betrayed
at the close of the eclogue by the grotesque union of epigrammatic
wit with allegoric personification, in the allusion to the 175
most fearful of thoughts, I should conjecture that the 'rantin'
Bardie', instead of really believing, much less wishing, the fate
spoken of in the last line, in application to any human individual,
would shrink from passing the verdict even on the Devil himself,
and exclaim with poor Burns, 180
But fare ye weel, auld Nickie-ben!
Oh! wad ye tak a thought an' men!
Ye aiblins might--I dinna ken--
Still hae a stake--
I'm wae to think upon yon den, 185
Ev'n for your sake!
I need not say that these thoughts, which are here dilated,
were in such a company only rapidly suggested. Our kind
host smiled, and with a courteous compliment observed, that
the defence was too good for the cause. My voice faltered 190
a little, for I was somewhat agitated; though not so much on
my own account as for the uneasiness that so kind and friendly
a man would feel from the thought that he had been the
occasion of distressing me. At length I brought out these words:
'I must now confess, sir! that I am author of that poem. It 195
was written some years ago. I do not attempt to justify my
past self, young as I then was; but as little as I would now
write a similar poem, so far was I even then from imagining
that the lines would be taken as more or less than a sport
of fancy. At all events, if I know my own heart, there was 200
never a moment in my existence in which I should have been
more ready, had Mr. Pitt's person been in hazard, to interpose
my own body, and defend his life at the risk of my own.'
I have prefaced the poem with this anecdote, because to have
printed it without any remark might well have been understood 205
as implying an unconditional approbation on my part, and this
after many years' consideration. But if it be asked why I
republished it at all, I answer, that the poem had been attributed
at different times to different other persons; and what I had
dared beget, I thought it neither manly nor honourable not to 210
dare father. From the same motives I should have published
perfect copies of two poems, the one entitled The Devil's
Thoughts, and the other, The Two Round Spaces on the
Tombstone, but that the three first stanzas of the former, which
were worth all the rest of the poem, and the best stanza of the 215
remainder, were written by a friend [Southey] of deserved
celebrity; and because there are passages in both which might
have given offence to the religious feelings of certain readers.
I myself indeed see no reason why vulgar superstitions and
absurd conceptions that deform the pure faith of a Christian 220
should possess a greater immunity from ridicule than stories of
witches, or the fables of Greece and Rome. But there are those
who deem it profaneness and irreverence to call an ape an ape,
if it but wear a monk's cowl on its head; and I would rather
reason with this weakness than offend it. 225
The passage from Jeremy Taylor to which I referred is found
in his second Sermon on Christ's Advent to Judgment; which
is likewise the second in his year's course of sermons. Among
many remarkable passages of the same character in those
discourses, I have selected this as the most so. 'But when this 230
Lion of the tribe of Judah shall appear, then Justice shall strike,
and Mercy shall not hold her hands; she shall strike sore strokes,
and Pity shall not break the blow. As there are treasures of
good things, so hath God a treasure of wrath and fury, and
scourges and scorpions; and then shall be produced the shame 235
of Lust and the malice of Envy, and the groans of the oppressed
and the persecutions of the saints, and the cares of Covetousness
and the troubles of Ambition, and the insolencies of traitors and
the violences of rebels, and the rage of anger and the uneasiness
of impatience, and the restlessness of unlawful desires; and by 240
this time the monsters and diseases will be numerous and
intolerable, when God's heavy hand shall press the sanies and
the intolerableness, the obliquity and the unreasonableness, the
amazement and the disorder, the smart and the sorrow, the
guilt and the punishment, out from all our sins, and pour them 245
into one chalice, and mingle them with an infinite wrath, and
make the wicked drink off all the vengeance, and force it down
their unwilling throats with the violence of devils and accursed
spirits.'
That this Tartarean drench displays the imagination rather 250
than the discretion of the compounder; that, in short, this passage
and others of the same kind are in a bad taste, few will deny
at the present day. It would, doubtless, have more behoved
the good bishop not to be wise beyond what is written on
a subject in which Eternity is opposed to Time, and a Death 255
threatened, not the negative, but the positive Opposite of Life;
a subject, therefore, which must of necessity be indescribable
to the human understanding in our present state. But I can
neither find nor believe that it ever occurred to any reader to
ground on such passages a charge against Bishop Taylor's 260
humanity, or goodness of heart. I was not a little surprised
therefore to find, in the Pursuits of Literature and other works,
so horrible a sentence passed on Milton's moral character, for
a passage in his prose writings, as nearly parallel to this of
Taylor's as two passages can well be conceived to be. All his 265
merits, as a poet, forsooth--all the glory of having written the
Paradise Lost, are light in the scale, nay, kick the beam,
compared with the atrocious malignity of heart, expressed in the
offensive paragraph. I remembered, in general, that Milton had
concluded one of his works on Reformation, written in the 270
fervour of his youthful imagination, in a high poetic strain, that
wanted metre only to become a lyrical poem. I remembered
that in the former part he had formed to himself a perfect ideal
of human virtue, a character of heroic, disinterested zeal and
devotion for Truth, Religion, and public Liberty, in act and in 275
suffering, in the day of triumph and in the hour of martyrdom.
Such spirits, as more excellent than others, he describes as
having a more excellent reward, and as distinguished by a
transcendant glory: and this reward and this glory he displays and
particularizes with an energy and brilliance that announced the 280
Paradise Lost as plainly, as ever the bright purple clouds in the
east announced the coming of the Sun. Milton then passes to
the gloomy contrast, to such men as from motives of selfish
ambition and the lust of personal aggrandizement should, against
their own light, persecute truth and the true religion, and 285
wilfully abuse the powers and gifts entrusted to them, to bring
vice, blindness, misery and slavery, on their native country, on
the very country that had trusted, enriched and honoured them.
Such beings, after that speedy and appropriate removal from
their sphere of mischief which all good and humane men must 290
of course desire, will, he takes for granted by parity of reason,
meet with a punishment, an ignominy, and a retaliation, as
much severer than other wicked men, as their guilt and its
consequences were more enormous. His description of this
imaginary punishment presents more distinct pictures to the 295
fancy than the extract from Jeremy Taylor; but the thoughts
in the latter are incomparably more exaggerated and horrific.
All this I knew; but I neither remembered, nor by reference
and careful re-perusal could discover, any other meaning, either
in Milton or Taylor, but that good men will be rewarded, and 300
the impenitent wicked, punished, in proportion to their
dispositions and intentional acts in this life; and that if the
punishment of the least wicked be fearful beyond conception, all words
and descriptions must be so far true, that they must fall short
of the punishment that awaits the transcendantly wicked. Had 305
Milton stated either his ideal of virtue, or of depravity, as an
individual or individuals actually existing? Certainly not!
Is this representation worded historically, or only
hypothetically? Assuredly the latter! Does he express it as his own
wish that after death they should suffer these tortures? or as 310
a general consequence, deduced from reason and revelation, that
such will be their fate? Again, the latter only! His wish is
expressly confined to a speedy stop being put by Providence to
their power of inflicting misery on others! But did he name
or refer to any persons living or dead? No! But the 315
calumniators of Milton daresay (for what will calumny not dare say?)
that he had Laud and Strafford in his mind, while writing of
remorseless persecution, and the enslavement of a free country
from motives of selfish ambition. Now what if a stern anti-prelatist
should daresay, that in speaking of the insolencies of 320
traitors and the violences of rebels, Bishop Taylor must have
individualised in his mind Hampden, Hollis, Pym, Fairfax,
Ireton, and Milton? And what if he should take the liberty of
concluding, that, in the after-description, the Bishop was feeding
and feasting his party-hatred, and with those individuals before 325
the eyes of his imagination enjoying, trait by trait, horror after
horror, the picture of their intolerable agonies? Yet this
bigot would have an equal right thus to criminate the one good
and great man, as these men have to criminate the other.
Milton has said, and I doubt not but that Taylor with equal 330
truth could have said it, 'that in his whole life he never spake
against a man even that his skin should be grazed.' He asserted
this when one of his opponents (either Bishop Hall or his
nephew) had called upon the women and children in the streets
to take up stones and stone him (Milton). It is known that 335
Milton repeatedly used his interest to protect the royalists;
but even at a time when all lies would have been meritorious
against him, no charge was made, no story pretended, that he
had ever directly or indirectly engaged or assisted in their
persecution. Oh! methinks there are other and far better feelings 340
which should be acquired by the perusal of our great elder
writers. When I have before me, on the same table, the works
of Hammond and Baxter; when I reflect with what joy and
dearness their blessed spirits are now loving each other; it
seems a mournful thing that their names should be perverted to 345
an occasion of bitterness among us, who are enjoying that happy
mean which the human too-much on both sides was perhaps
necessary to produce. 'The tangle of delusions which stifled
and distorted the growing tree of our well-being has been torn
away; the parasite-weeds that fed on its very roots have been 350
plucked up with a salutary violence. To us there remain only
quiet duties, the constant care, the gradual improvement, the
cautious unhazardous labours of the industrious though
contented gardener--to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and one
by one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and 355
the caterpillar. But far be it from us to undervalue with light
and senseless detraction the conscientious hardihood of our
predecessors, or even to condemn in them that vehemence, to
which the blessings it won for us leave us now neither
temptation nor pretext. We antedate the feelings, in order to 360
criminate the authors, of our present liberty, light and
toleration.' (_The Friend_, No. IV. Sept. 7, 1809.) [1818, i. 105.]
If ever two great men might seem, during their whole lives,
to have moved in direct opposition, though neither of them has
at any time introduced the name of the other, Milton and 365
Jeremy Taylor were they. The former commenced his career
by attacking the Church-Liturgy and all set forms of prayer.
The latter, but far more successfully, by defending both.
Milton's next work was against the Prelacy and the then
existing Church-Government--Taylor's in vindication and 370
support of them. Milton became more and more a stern republican,
or rather an advocate for that religious and moral aristocracy
which, in his day, was called republicanism, and which, even more
than royalism itself, is the direct antipode of modern jacobinism.
Taylor, as more and more sceptical concerning the fitness of 375
men in general for power, became more and more attached to
the prerogatives of monarchy. From Calvinism, with a still
decreasing respect for Fathers, Councils, and for Church-antiquity
in general, Milton seems to have ended in an indifference,
if not a dislike, to all forms of ecclesiastic government, and to 380
have retreated wholly into the inward and spiritual church-communion
of his own spirit with the Light that lighteth every
man that cometh into the world. Taylor, with a growing
reverence for authority, an increasing sense of the insufficiency of
the Scriptures without the aids of tradition and the consent of 385
authorized interpreters, advanced as far in his approaches (not
indeed to Popery, but) to Roman-Catholicism, as a conscientious
minister of the English Church could well venture. Milton
would be and would utter the same to all on all occasions: he
would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 390
truth. Taylor would become all things to all men, if by any
means he might benefit any; hence he availed himself, in his
popular writings, of opinions and representations which stand
often in striking contrast with the doubts and convictions
expressed in his more philosophical works. He appears, indeed, 395
not too severely to have blamed that management of truth
(istam falsitatem dispensativam) authorized and exemplified by
almost all the fathers: Integrum omnino doctoribus et coetus
Christiani antistitibus esse, ut dolos versent, falsa veris
intermisceant et imprimis religionis hostes fallant, dummodo 400
veritatis commodis et utilitati inserviant.
The same antithesis might be carried on with the elements
of their several intellectual powers. Milton, austere, condensed,
imaginative, supporting his truth by direct enunciation of lofty
moral sentiment and by distinct visual representations, and in 405
the same spirit overwhelming what he deemed falsehood by
moral denunciation and a succession of pictures appalling or
repulsive. In his prose, so many metaphors, so many allegorical
miniatures. Taylor, eminently discursive, accumulative,
and (to use one of his own words) agglomerative; still more 410
rich in images than Milton himself, but images of fancy, and
presented to the common and passive eye, rather than to the
eye of the imagination. Whether supporting or assailing, he
makes his way either by argument or by appeals to the
affections, unsurpassed even by the schoolmen in subtlety, 415
agility, and logic wit, and unrivalled by the most rhetorical of
the fathers in the copiousness and vividness of his expressions
and illustrations. Here words that convey feelings, and words
that flash images, and words of abstract notion, flow together,
and whirl and rush onward like a stream, at once rapid and full 420
of eddies; and yet still interfused here and there we see a tongue
or islet of smooth water, with some picture in it of earth or sky,
landscape or living group of quiet beauty.
Differing then so widely and almost contrariantly, wherein
did these great men agree? wherein did they resemble each 425
other? In genius, in learning, in unfeigned piety, in blameless
purity of life, and in benevolent aspirations and purposes for
the moral and temporal improvement of their fellow-creatures!
Both of them wrote a Latin Accidence, to render education
more easy and less painful to children; both of them composed 430
hymns and psalms proportioned to the capacity of common
congregations; both, nearly at the same time, set the glorious
example of publicly recommending and supporting general
toleration, and the liberty both of the Pulpit and the press!
In the writings of neither shall we find a single sentence, like 435
those meek deliverances to God's mercy, with which Laud
accompanied his votes for the mutilations and loathsome
dungeoning of Leighton and others!--nowhere such a pious prayer
as we find in Bishop Hall's memoranda of his own life, concerning
the subtle and witty atheist that so grievously perplexed 440
and gravelled him at Sir Robert Drury's till he prayed to the
Lord to remove him, and behold! his prayers were heard: for
shortly afterward this Philistine-combatant went to London,
and there perished of the plague in great misery! In short,
nowhere shall we find the least approach, in the lives and 445
writings of John Milton or Jeremy Taylor, to that guarded
gentleness, to that sighing reluctance, with which the holy
brethren of the Inquisition deliver over a condemned heretic
to the civil magistrate, recommending him to mercy, and
hoping that the magistrate will treat the erring brother with 450
all possible mildness!--the magistrate who too well knows what
would be his own fate if he dared offend them by acting on their
recommendation.
The opportunity of diverting the reader from myself to
characters more worthy of his attention, has led me far beyond my 455
first intention; but it is not unimportant to expose the false
zeal which has occasioned these attacks on our elder patriots.
It has been too much the fashion first to personify the Church
of England, and then to speak of different individuals, who in
different ages have been rulers in that church, as if in some 460
strange way they constituted its personal identity. Why should
a clergyman of the present day feel interested in the defence
of Laud or Sheldon? Surely it is sufficient for the warmest
partisan of our establishment that he can assert with
truth,--when our Church persecuted, it was on mistaken principles 465
held in common by all Christendom; and at all events, far less
culpable was this intolerance in the Bishops, who were
maintaining the existing laws, than the persecuting spirit afterwards
shewn by their successful opponents, who had no such excuse,
and who should have been taught mercy by their own sufferings, 470
and wisdom by the utter failure of the experiment in their own
case. We can say that our Church, apostolical in its faith,
primitive in its ceremonies, unequalled in its liturgical forms; that
our Church, which has kindled and displayed more bright and
burning lights of genius and learning than all other protestant 475
churches since the reformation, was (with the single exception
of the times of Laud and Sheldon) least intolerant, when all
Christians unhappily deemed a species of intolerance their
religious duty; that Bishops of our church were among the first
that contended against this error; and finally, that since the 480
reformation, when tolerance became a fashion, the Church of
England in a tolerating age, has shewn herself eminently
tolerant, and far more so, both in spirit and in fact, than
many of her most bitter opponents, who profess to deem
toleration itself an insult on the rights of mankind! As to 485
myself, who not only know the Church-Establishment to be
tolerant, but who see in it the greatest, if not the sole safe
bulwark of toleration. I feel no necessity of defending or
palliating oppressions under the two Charleses, in order to
exclaim with a full and fervent heart, Esto perpetua! 490
FOOTNOTES:
[1097:1] First published in _Sibylline Leaves_ in 1817: included in
1828, 1829, and 1834. The 'Apologetic Preface' must have been put
together in 1815, with a view to publication in the volume afterwards
named _Sibylline Leaves_, but the incident on which it turns most
probably took place in the spring of 1803, when both Scott and Coleridge
were in London. Davy writing to Poole, May 1, 1803, says that he
generally met Coleridge during his stay in town, 'in the midst of large
companies, where he was the image of power and activity,' and Davy, as
we know, was one of Sotheby's guests. In a letter to Mrs. Fletcher dated
Dec. 18, 1830 (?), Scott tells the story in his own words, but throws no
light on date or period. The implied date (1809) in Morritt's report of
Dr. Howley's conversation (Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, 1837, ii. 245) is
out of the question, as Coleridge did not leave the Lake Country between
Sept. 1808 and October 1810. Coleridge set great store by 'his own
stately account of this lion-show' (ibid.). In a note in a MS. copy of
_Sibylline Leaves_ presented to his son Derwent he writes:--'With the
exception of this slovenly sentence (ll. 109-19) I hold this preface to
be my happiest effort in prose composition.'
[1097:2] William Sotheby (1756-1838), translator of Wieland's _Oberon_
and the _Georgics_ of Virgil. Coleridge met him for the first time at
Keswick in July, 1802.
[1097:3] 'The compliment I can witness to be as just as it is handsomely
recorded,' Sir W. Scott to Mrs. Fletcher, _Fragmentary Remains of Sir H.
Davy_, 1858, p. 113.
LINENOTES:
[24] _he_ 1817, 1829.
[41] What follows is substantially the same as _I then_ 1817, 1829.
[56] _realize_ 1817, 1829.
[93] outrageous] outrè, 1817, 1829.
[95] _escape-valves_ 1817, 1829. _liver_ 1817, 1829.
[106] afterwards] afterward 1817, 1829.
[119] '_I . . . Law_' 1817, 1829.
[125] _Hell and Purgatory_ 1817, 1829.
[135] a Euripides _1817_: an Euripides 1829.
[136] _so_ natured 1817, 1829.
[172] _passion . . . any_ 1817, 1829.
[173] _poetic_ 1817, 1829. For _betrayed in_ r. _betrayed by_, Errata,
1817, p. [xi].]
[174] in the grotesque 1817.
[195] am author] am the author 1817.
[203] my body MS. corr. 1817.
[212-3] _The . . . Thoughts_ 1817, 1829.
[213-4] _The . . . Tombstone_ 1817, 1829.
[238] insolencies] _indolence_ 1829.
[238-9] _and the . . . rebels_ 1817, 1829.
[252] _in . . . taste_ 1817, 1829.
[256] _positive_ 1817, 1829. Opposite] Oppositive 1829, 1893.
[264] _his_ 1817, 1829.
[267] PARADISE LOST 1817, 1829.
[273] former] preceding MS. corr. 1817.
[278] and as] as MS. corr. 1817.
[295] _pictures_ 1817, 1829.
[296] _thoughts_ 1817, 1829.
[310] _wish . . . should_ 1817, 1829.
[312] _will be_ 1817, 1829.
[316] _daresay_ 1817, 1829.
[320] _daresay_ 1817, 1829.
[320-1] _insolencies . . . rebels_ 1817, 1829.
[335] _him_ 1817, 1829.
[346] _us_ 1817, 1829.
[347] _human_ TOO-MUCH 1817, 1829.
[349] has] have 1817.
[360] _feelings_ 1817, 1829.
[361] _authors_ 1817, 1829.
[373] _called_ 1817, 1829.
[380] _all_ 1817, 1829.
[387] Roman-Catholicism] Catholicism 1817, 1829.
[393] _popular_ 1817, 1829.
[396] _too severely . . . management_ 1817, 1829.
[397] _istam . . . dispensativam_ 1817, 1829.
[410] _agglomerative_ 1817, 1829.
[416] logic] logical 1817, 1829.
[420] and at once whirl 1817, 1829.
[422] islet] isle 1829. Carlyle in the _Life of John Sterling_, cap.
viii, quotes the last two words of the Preface. Was it from the same
source that he caught up the words 'Balmy sunny islets, islets of the
blest and the intelligible' which he uses to illustrate the lucid
intervals in Coleridge's monologue?
[436] _meek . . . mercy_ 1817, 1829.
[441] _he . . . him_ 1817, 1829.
[450] _hoping_ 1817, 1829.
[461] _they_ 1817, 1829.
[467] culpable were the Bishops 1817, 1829.
[481] reformation] Revolution in 1688 MS. corr. 1817.
[488] _bulwark_ 1817, 1829.
[490] ESTO PERPETUA 1817, 1829.
[After 490] Braving the cry. O the Vanity and self-dotage of Authors! I,
yet, after a reperusal of the preceding Apol. Preface, now some 20 years
since its first publication, dare deliver it as my own judgement that
both in style and thought it is a work creditable to the head and heart
of the Author, tho' he happens to have been the same person, only a few
stone lighter and with chesnut instead of silver hair, with his Critic
and Eulogist.
S. T. Coleridge,
May, 1829.
[_MS. Note in a copy of the edition of 1829, vol. i, p. 353._]
APPENDIX IV
PROSE VERSIONS OF POEMS, ETC.
A
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS IN THE COURT
OF LOVE
[Vide _ante_, p. 409.]
Why is my Love like the Sun?
1. The Dawn = the presentiment of my Love.
No voice as yet had made the air
Be music with thy name: yet why
That obscure [over _aching_] Hope: that yearning Sigh?
That sense of Promise everywhere?
Beloved! flew thy spirit by?
2. The Sunrise = the suddenness, the all-at-once of Love--and the first
silence--the beams of Light fall first on the distance, the interspace
still dark.
3. The Cheerful Morning--the established Day-light universal.
4. The Sunset--who can behold it, and think of the Sun-rise? It takes
all the thought to itself. The Moon-reflected Light--soft, melancholy,
warmthless--the absolute purity (nay, it is always _pure_, but), the
incorporeity of Love in absence--Love _per se_ is a Potassium--it can
subsist by itself, tho' in presence it has a natural and necessary
combination with the comburent principle. All other Lights (the fixed
Stars) not borrowed from the absent Sun--Lights for other worlds, not
for me. I see them and admire, but they irradiate nothing.
B
PROSE VERSION OF GLYCINE'S SONG IN
ZAPOLYA
[Vide _ante_, pp. 426, 919, 920.]
1
On the sky with liquid openings of Blue,
The slanting pillar of sun mist,
Field-inward flew a little Bird.
Pois'd himself on the column,
Sang with a sweet and marvellous voice, 5
Adieu! adieu!
I must away, Far, far away,
Set off to-day.
2
Listened--listened--gaz'd--
Sight of a Bird, sound of a voice-- 10
It was so well with me, and yet so strange.
Heart! Heart!
Swell'st thou with joy or smart?
But the Bird went away--
Adieu! adieu! 15
3
All cloudy the heavens falling and falling--
Then said I--Ah! summer again--
The swallow, the summer-bird is going,
And so will my Beauty fall like the leaves
From my pining for his absence, 20
And so will his Love fly away.
Away! away!
Like the summer-bird,
Swift as the Day.
4
But lo! again came the slanting sun-shaft, 25
Close by me pois'd on its wing,
The sweet Bird sang again,
And looking on my tearful Face
Did it not say,
'Love has arisen, 30
True Love makes its summer,
In the Heart'?
1845
C
_Notebook No. 29, p. 168._
21 Feb. 1825.
MY DEAR FRIEND
I have often amused myself with the thought of a self-conscious
Looking-glass, and the various metaphorical applications of such a
fancy--and this morning it struck across the Eolian Harp of my Brain
that there was something pleasing and emblematic (of what I did not
distinctly make out) in two such Looking-glasses fronting, each seeing
the other in itself, and itself in the other. Have you ever noticed the
Vault or snug little Apartment which the Spider spins and weaves for
itself, by spiral threads round and round, and sometimes with strait
lines, so that its lurking parlour or withdrawing-room is an oblong
square? This too connected itself in my mind with the melancholy truth,
that as we grow older, the World (alas! how often it happens that the
less we love it, the more we care for it, the less reason we have to
value its Shews, the more anxious are we about them--alas! how often do
we become more and more loveless, as Love which can outlive all change
save a change with regard to itself, and all loss save the loss of its
_Reflex_, is more needed to sooth us and alone is able so to do!) What
was I saying? O, I was adverting to the fact that as we advance in
years, the World, that spidery Witch, spins its threads narrower and
narrower, still closing on us, till at last it shuts us up within four
walls, walls of flues and films, windowless--and well if there be
sky-lights, and a small opening left for the Light from above. I do not
know that I have anything to add, except to remind you, that _pheer_ or
_phere_ for _Mate_, _Companion_, _Counterpart_, is a word frequently
used by Spencer (_sic_) and Herbert, and the Poets generally, who wrote
before the Restoration (1660), before I say that this premature warm and
sunny day, antedating Spring, called forth the following.
* * * * *
Strain in the manner of G. HERBERT, which might be entitled THE ALONE
MOST DEAR: a Complaint of Jacob to Rachel as in the tenth year of her
service he saw in her or _fancied_ that he saw symptoms of Alienation.
[*N.B. The Thoughts and Images being modernized and turned into
English.*]
(_It was fancy_) [Pencil note by Mrs. Gillman.]
All Nature seems at work. [*Snails*] Slugs leave their lair;
The Bees are stirring; Birds are on the wing;
And WINTER slumb'ring in the open air
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring.
And
[*But*] I the while, the sole unbusy thing.
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Yet well I ken the banks where[1111:1]Amaranths blow
Have traced the fount whence Streams of Nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye Amaranths! bloom for whom ye may--
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams! away!
? _Lip unbrighten'd, wreathless B._
With unmoist Lip and wreathless Brow I stroll;
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
WORK without Hope draws nectar in a sieve;
And HOPE without an Object cannot live.
I speak in figures, inward thoughts and woes
Interpreting by Shapes and outward shews:
{ Where daily nearer me with magic Ties,
{ What time and where, (wove close with magic Ties
Line over line, and thickning as they rise)
The World her spidery threads on all sides spin
Side answ'ring side with narrow interspace,
My Faith (say I; I and my Faith are one)
Hung, as a Mirror, there! And face to face
(For nothing else there was between or near)
One Sister Mirror hid the dreary Wall,
{ bright compeer
But _that_ is broke! And with that { only pheere[1111:2]
I lost my object and my inmost All----
Faith _in_ the Faith of THE ALONE MOST DEAR!
JACOB HODIERNUS.
Ah! me!!
Call the World spider: and at fancy's touch
Thought becomes image and I see it such.
With viscous masonry of films and threads
Tough as the nets in Indian Forests found
It blends the Waller's and the Weaver's trades
And soon the tent-like Hangings touch the ground
A dusky chamber that excludes the day
But cease the prelude and resume the lay
FOOTNOTES:
[1111:1] _Literally_ rendered is Flower Fadeless, or never-fading, from
the Greek a NOT and marainō to wither.
[1111:2] Mate, Counterpart.
D
_Note to Line 34 of the_ Joan of Arc _Book II. 1796, pp. 41, 42_.
Line 34. Sir Isaac Newton at the end of the last edition of his Optics
supposes that a very subtile and elastic fluid, which he calls aether,
is diffused thro' the pores of gross bodies, as well as thro' the open
spaces that are void of gross matter: he supposes it to pierce all
bodies, and to touch their least particles, acting on them with a force
proportional to their number or to the matter of the body on which it
acts. He supposes likewise, that it is rarer in the pores of bodies than
in open spaces, and even rarer in small pores and dense bodies, than in
large pores and rare bodies; and also that its density increases in
receding from gross matter; so for instance as to be greater at the
1/100 of an inch from the surface of any body, than at its surface; and
so on. To the action of this aether he ascribes the attractions of
gravitation and cohœsion, the attraction and repulsion of electrical
bodies, the mutual influences of bodies and light upon each other, the
effects and communication of heat, and the performance of animal
sensation and motion. David Hartley, from whom this account of aether is
chiefly borrowed, makes it the instrument of propagating those
vibrations or configurative motions which are ideas. It appears to me,
no hypothesis ever involved so many contradictions; for how can the same
fluid be both dense and rare in the same body at one time? Yet in the
Earth as gravitating to the Moon, it must be very rare; and in the Earth
as gravitating to the Sun, it must be very dense. For as Andrew Baxter
well observes, it doth not appear sufficient to account how the fluid
may act with a force proportional to the body to which another is
impelled, to assert that it is rarer in great bodies than in small ones;
it must be further asserted that this fluid is rarer or denser in the
same body, whether small or great, according as the body to which that
is impelled is itself small or great. But whatever may be the solidity
of this objection, the following seems unanswerable:
If every particle thro' the whole solidity of a heavy body receive its
impulse from the particles of this fluid, it should seem that the fluid
itself must be as dense as the very densest heavy body, gold for
instance; there being as many impinging particles in the one, as there
are gravitating particles in the other which receive their gravitation
by being impinged upon: so that, throwing gold or any heavy body upward,
against the impulse of this fluid, would be like throwing gold _thro'_
gold; and as this aether must be equally diffused over the whole sphere
of its activity, it must be as dense when it impels cork as when it
impels gold, so that to throw a piece of cork upward, would be as if we
endeavoured to make cork penetrate a medium as dense as gold; and tho'
we were to adopt the extravagant opinions which have been advanced
concerning the progression of pores, yet however porous we suppose a
body, if it be not all pore, the argument holds equally, the fluid must
be as dense as the body in order to give every particle its impulse.
It has been asserted that Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy leads in its
consequences to Atheism: perhaps not without reason. For if matter, by
any powers or properties _given_ to it, can produce the order of the
visible world and even generate thought; why may it not have possessed
such properties by _inherent_ right? and where is the necessity of a
God? matter is according to the mechanic philosophy capable of acting
most wisely and most beneficently without Wisdom or Benevolence; and
what more does the Atheist assert? if matter possess those properties,
why might it not have possessed them from all eternity? Sir Isaac
Newton's Deity seems to be alternately operose and indolent; to have
delegated so much power as to make it inconceivable what he can have
reserved. He is dethroned by Vice-regent second causes.
We seem placed here to acquire a knowledge of _effects_. Whenever we
would pierce into the _Adyta_ of Causation, we bewilder ourselves; and
all that laborious Conjecture can do, is to fill up the gaps of
imagination. We are restless, because _invisible_ things are not the
objects of vision--and philosophical systems, for the most part, are
received not for their Truth, but in proportion as they attribute to
Causes a susceptibility of being _seen_, whenever our visual organs
shall have become sufficiently powerful.
E
DEDICATION[1113:1]
Ode on the Departing Year, 1796, pp. [3]-4.
[Vide _ante_, p. 160.]
TO THOMAS POOLE, OF STOWEY.
MY DEAR FRIEND--
Soon after the commencement of this month, the Editor of the Cambridge
Intelligencer (a newspaper conducted with so much ability, and such
unmixed and fearless zeal for the interests of Piety and Freedom, that I
cannot but think my poetry honoured by being permitted to appear in it)
requested me, by Letter, to furnish him with some Lines for the last day
of this Year. I promised him that I would make the attempt; but almost
immediately after, a rheumatic complaint seized on my head, and
continued to prevent the possibility of poetic composition till within
the last three days. So in the course of the last three days the
following Ode was produced. In general, when an Author informs the
Public that his production was struck off in a great hurry, he offers an
insult, not an excuse. But I trust that the present case is an
exception, and that the peculiar circumstances which obliged me to write
with such unusual rapidity give a propriety to my professions of it:
_nec nunc eam apud te jacto, sed et ceteris indico; ne quis asperiore
limâ carmen examinet, et a confuso scriptum et quod frigidum erat ni
statim traderem_.[1113:2] (I avail myself of the words of Statius, and
hope that I shall likewise be able to say of any weightier publication,
what _he_ has declared of his Thebaid, that it had been tortured[1113:3]
with a laborious Polish.)
For me to discuss the _literary_ merits of this hasty composition were
idle and presumptuous. If it be found to possess that impetuosity of
Transition, and that Precipitation of Fancy and Feeling, which are the
_essential_ excellencies of the sublimer Ode, its deficiency in less
important respects will be easily pardoned by those from whom alone
praise could give me pleasure: and whose minuter criticisms will be
disarmed by the reflection, that these Lines were conceived 'not in the
soft obscurities of Retirement, or under the Shelter of Academic Groves,
but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in
sorrow'.[1114:1] I am more anxious lest the _moral_ spirit of the Ode
should be mistaken. You, I am sure, will not fail to recollect that
among the Ancients, the Bard and the Prophet were one and the same
character; and you _know_, that although I prophesy curses, I pray
fervently for blessings. Farewell, Brother of my Soul!
----O ever found the same,
And trusted and belov'd![1114:2]
Never without an emotion of honest pride do I subscribe myself
Your grateful and affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
BRISTOL, _December 26, 1796_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1113:1] Published 4to, 1796: reprinted in _P. and D. W._, 1877, i.
165-8.
[1113:2] The quotation is from an apology addressed 'Meliori suo',
prefixed to the Second Book of the _Silvae_:--'nec nunc eam (_sc._
celeritatem) apud te jacto qui nosti: sed et caeteris indico, ne quis
asperiore limâ carmen examinet et a confuso scriptum, et dolenti datum
cum paene sint supervacua sint tarda solatia.' Coleridge has 'adapted'
the words of Statius to point his own moral.
[1113:3] _Multâ cruciata limâ_ [S. T. C.] [SILV. lib. iv. 7, 26.]
[1114:1] From Dr. Johnson's Preface to the _Dictionary of the English
Language_. _Works_, 1806, ii. 59.
[1114:2] Akenside's _Pleasures of the Imagination_ (Second Version), Bk.
I.
F
Preface to the MS. of _Osorio_.
[Vide _ante_, p. 519.]
In this sketch of a tragedy, all is imperfect, and much obscure. Among
other equally great defects (millstones round the slender neck of its
merits) it presupposes a long story; and this long story, which yet is
necessary to the complete understanding of the play, is not half told.
Albert had sent a letter informing his family that he should arrive
about such a time by ship; he was shipwrecked; and wrote a private
letter to Osorio, informing him alone of this accident, that he might
not shock Maria. Osorio destroyed the letter, and sent assassins to meet
Albert. . . Worse than all, the growth of Osorio's character is nowhere
explained--and yet I had most clear and psychologically accurate ideas
of the whole of it. . . A man, who from constitutional calmness of
appetites, is seduced into pride and the love of power, by these into
misanthropism, or rather a contempt of mankind, and from thence, by the
co-operation of envy, and a curiously modified love for a beautiful
female (which is nowhere developed in the play), into a most atrocious
guilt. A man who is in truth a weak man, yet always duping himself into
the belief that he has a soul of iron. Such were some of my leading
ideas.
In short the thing is but an embryo, and whilst it remains in
manuscript, which it is destined to do, the critic would judge unjustly
who should call it a miscarriage. It furnished me with a most important
lesson, namely, that to have conceived strongly, does not always imply
the power of successful execution. S. T. C.
[From _Early Years and Late Reflections_, by Clement Carlyon, M.D.,
1856, i. 143-4.]
APPENDIX V
ADAPTATIONS
For a critical study of Coleridge's alterations in the text of the
quotations from seventeenth-century poets, which were inserted in the
_Biographia Literaria_ (2 vols., 1817), or were prefixed as mottoes to
Chapters in the rifacimento of _The Friend_ (3 vols., 1818), see an
article by J. D Campbell entitled 'Coleridge's Quotations,' which was
published in the _Athenæum_, August 20, 1892, and 'Adaptations', _P.
W._, 1893, pp. 471-4. Most of these textual alterations or garblings
were noted by H. N. Coleridge in an edition of _The Friend_ published in
1837; Mr. Campbell was the first to collect and include the mottoes and
quotations in a sub-section of Coleridge's Poetical Works. Three poems,
(1) 'An Elegy Imitated from Akenside', (2) 'Farewell to Love ', (3)
'Mutual Passion altered and modernized from an Old Poet', may be
reckoned as 'Adaptations'. The first and third of these composite
productions lay no claim to originality, whilst the second, 'Farewell to
Love', which he published anonymously in _The Courier_, September 27,
1806, was not included by Coleridge in _Sibylline Leaves_, or in 1828,
1829, 1834. For (1) vide _ante_, p. 69, and _post_, _Read_:--p. 1123;
for (2) _ante_, p. 402; and for (3) vide _post_, p. 1118.
1
FULKE GREVILLE. LORD BROOKE
God and the World they worship still together,
Draw not their lawes to him, but his to theirs,
Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither,
Amid their owne desires still raising feares;
'Unwise, as all distracted powers be; 5
Strangers to God, fooles in humanitie.'
Too good for great things, and too great for good;
Their Princes serve their Priest, &c.
_A Treatie of Warres_, st. lxvi-vii.
MOTTO TO 'A LAY SERMON', 1817
God and the World _we_ worship still together,
Draw not _our_ Laws to Him, but _His_ to ours;
Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither,
_The imperfect Will brings forth but barren Flowers_!
Unwise as all distracted _Interests_ be, 5
Strangers to God, fools in Humanity:
Too good for great things and too great for good,
_While still_ 'I dare not' waits upon 'I wou'd'!
S. T. C.
The same quotation from Lord Brooke is used to illustrate Aphorism xvii,
'Inconsistency,' _Aids to Reflection_, 1825, p. 93 (with the word
'both', substituted for 'still' in line 1). Line 8 is from _Macbeth_,
Act I, Sc. VII, 'Letting I dare not,' &c. The reference to Lord Brooke
was first given in _N. and Q._, Series VIII, Vol. ii, p. 18.
2
[Vide _ante_, p. 403]
SONNET XCIV [Coelica]
The _Augurs_ we of all the world admir'd
Flatter'd by Consulls, honour'd by the State,
Because the event of all that was desir'd
They seem'd to know, and keepe the books of Fate:
Yet though abroad they thus did boast their wit, 5
Alone among themselves they scornèd it.
Mankind that with his wit doth gild his heart
Strong in his Passions, but in Goodnesse weake,
Making great vices o're the lesse an Art,
Breeds wonder, and mouves Ignorance to speake, 10
Yet when his fame is to the highest borne,
We know enough to laugh his praise to scorne.
Lines on a King and Emperor-Making-King altered from the 93rd Sonnet of
Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sydney.
ll. 1-4 The augurs, &c.
l. 5 _Abroad they thus did boast each other's_ wit.
l. 7 _Behold yon Corsican with dropsied heart_
l. 9 _He wonder breeds, makes_ ignorance to speak
l. 12 TALLEYRAND WILL _laugh his Creature's_ praise to scorn.
First published in the _Courier_, Sept. 12, 1806. See Editor's note,
_Athenæum_, April 25, 1903, p. 531.
3
OF HUMANE LEARNING
STANZA CLX
For onely that man understands indeed,
And well remembers, which he well can doe,
The Laws live, onely where the Law doth breed
Obedience to the workes it bindes us to:
And as the life of Wisedome hath exprest,
If this ye know, then doe it, and be blest.
LORD BROOKE.
Motto to _Notes on a Barrister's Hints on Evangelical Preaching, 1810_,
in _Lit. Rem._, 1839, iv. 320.
ll. 2, 3
_Who_ well remembers _what_ he well can do;
The _Faith_ lives only where the _faith_ doth breed.
4
SIR JOHN DAVIES
ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
(Sect. iv. Stanzas 12-14.)
Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirits, by sublimation strange;
As fire converts to fire the things it burns;
As we our meats into our nature change.
From their gross matter she abstracts the forms, 5
And draws a kind of quintessence from things;
Which to her proper nature she transforms,
To bear them light, on her celestial wings.
This doth she, when, from things particular,
She doth abstract the universal kinds, 10
Which bodiless and immaterial are,
And can be only lodg'd within our minds.
Stanza 12 Doubtless, &c.
l. 2 Bodies to _spirit_, &c.
l. 4. As we our _food_, &c.
Stanza 13, l. 1 From their gross matter she abstracts _their_ forms.
Stanza 14
_Thus doth she, when from individual states_
She doth abstract the universal kinds;
_Which then re-clothed in divers names and_ fates
_Steal access through our senses to our_ minds.
_Biog. Lit._, Cap. xiv, 1817, II, 12; 1847, II, Cap. i, pp. 14-15. The
alteration was first noted in 1847.
5
DONNE
ECLOGUE. 'ON UNWORTHY WISDOM'
So reclused Hermits oftentimes do know
More of Heaven's glory than a worldly can:
As Man is of the World, the Heart of Man
Is an Epitome of God's great Book
Of Creatures, and Men need no further look.
These lines are quoted by Coleridge in _The Friend_, 1818, i. 192; 1850,
i. 147. The first two lines run thus:
_The_ recluse _Hermit oft'_ times _more doth_ know
_Of the world's inmost wheels_, than worldlings can, &c.
The alteration was first pointed out in an edition of _The Friend_
issued by H. N. Coleridge in 1837.
6
LETTER TO SIR HENRY GOODYERE
Stanzas II, III, IV, and a few words from Stanza V, are prefixed as the
motto to Essay XV of _The Friend_, 1818, i. 179; 1850, i. 136.
For Stanza II, line 3--
But he which dwells there is not so; for he
_With him_ who dwells there 'tis not so; for he
For Stanza III--
So had your body her morning, hath her noon,
And shall not better, her next change is night:
But her fair larger guest, t'whom sun and moon
Are sparks, and short liv'd, claims another right.--
The motto reads:
_Our bodies had their_ morning, have their noon,
And shall not better--the next change is night,
But _their_ fair larger guest, t'whom sun and moon
Are sparks and short liv'd, claims another right.
The alteration was first noted in 1837. In 1850 line 3 of Stanza III
'fair' is misprinted 'far'.
7
BEN JONSON
A NYMPH'S PASSION
I love, and he loves me again,
Yet dare I not tell who;
For if the nymphs should know my swain,
I fear they'd love him too;
Yet if it be not known, 5
The pleasure is as good as none,
For that's a narrow joy is but our own.
I'll tell, that if they be not glad,
They yet may envy me;
But then if I grow jealous mad, 10
And of them pitied be,
It were a plague 'bove scorn,
And yet it cannot be forborne,
Unless my heart would, as my thought, be torn.
He is, if they can find him, fair, 15
And fresh and fragrant too,
As summer's sky or purged air,
And looks as lilies do
That are this morning blown;
Yet, yet I doubt he is not known, 20
And fear much more, that more of him be shown.
But he hath eyes so round and bright,
As make away my doubt,
Where Love may all his torches light
Though hate had put them out; 25
But then, t'increase my fears,
What nymph soe'er his voice but hears,
Will be my rival, though she have but ears.
I'll tell no more, and yet I love,
And he loves me; yet no 30
One unbecoming thought doth move
From either heart, I know;
But so exempt from blame,
As it would be to each a fame,
If love or fear would let me tell his name. 35
_Underwoods_ No. V.
MUTUAL PASSION
ALTERED AND MODERNIZED FROM AN OLD POET
I love, and he loves me again,
Yet dare I not tell who:
For if the nymphs should know my swain,
I fear they'd love him too.
_Yet while my joy's unknown, 5
Its rosy buds are but half-blown:
What no one with me shares, seems scarce my own._
I'll tell, that if they be not glad,
They yet may envy me:
But then if I grow jealous mad, 10
And of them pitied be,
_'Twould vex me worse than_ scorn!
And yet it cannot be forborn,
Unless my heart would _like_ my _thoughts_ be torn.
He is, if they can find him, fair 15
And fresh, and fragrant too;
_As after rain the summer air_,
And looks as lilies do,
That are this morning blown!
Yet, yet I doubt, he is not known, 20
_Yet, yet I fear to have him fully shewn_.
But he hath eyes so _large_, and bright.
_Which none can see, and_ doubt
_That_ Love _might thence_ his torches light
Tho' Hate had put them out! 25
But then to _raise_ my fears,
_His voice--what maid so ever_ hears
Will be my rival, tho' she have but ears.
I'll tell no more! _yet I love him_,
And ho loves me; _yet so, 30
That never one low wish did dim
Our love's pure light, I know--
In each so free from_ blame,
_That both of us would gain new_ fame,
If love's _strong fears_ would let me tell his name! 35
First published in _The Courier_, September 21, 1811; included in the
supplementary sheet to _Sibylline Leaves_; reprinted in _Essays on His
Own Times_, iii. 995, 996, and in the Appendix to _P. W._, 1863. It was
first pointed out by W. E. Henley that 'Mutual Passion' is an adaptation
of 'A Nymph's Passion', No. V of Ben Jonson's _Underwoods_.
8
UNDERWOODS
No. VI. THE HOUR-GLASS.
Consider this small dust, here in the glass
By atoms moved:
Could you believe that this the body was
Of one that loved;
And in his mistress' flame playing like a fly, 5
Was turned to cinders by her eye:
Yes; and in death, as life unblest,
To have 't exprest,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.
THE HOUR-GLASS
O think, fair maid! these sands that pass
In slender threads adown this glass,
Were once the body of some swain,
Who lov'd too well and lov'd in vain,
And let one soft sigh heave thy breast, 5
That not in life alone unblest
E'en lovers' ashes find no rest.
First published in _The Courier_, August 30, 1811; included in _Essays
on His Own Times_, iii. 994. Now collected for the first time.
The original is a translation of a Latin Epigram, 'Horologium Pulvereum,
Tumulus Alcippi,' by Girolamo Amaltei.
9
THE POETASTER. Act I, Scene 1.
O my Tibullus,
Let us not blame him; for against such chances
The heartiest strife of virtue is not proof.
We may read constancy and fortitude
To other souls; but had ourselves been struck 5
With the like planet, had our loves, like his,
Been ravished from us by injurious death,
And in the height and heat of our best days,
It would have cracked our sinews, shrunk our veins,
And made our very heart-strings jar like his. 10
* * * * *
Let us not blame him: for against such chances
The heartiest strife of _manhood_ is _scarce_ proof.
We may read constancy and fortitude
To other souls--but had ourselves been struck
_Even_ in the height and heat of our _keen wishing_,
_It might have made_ our heart-strings jar, like his.
First published as a quotation in the _Historie and Gestes of Maxilian_
contributed to _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, January, 1822.
Reprinted as Fragment No. 59, _P. W._, 1893, p. 460.
10
SAMUEL DANIEL
EPISTLE TO SIR THOMAS EGERTON, KNIGHT
Stanza 5
Must there be still some discord mix'd among,
The harmony of men; whose mood accords
Best with contention, tun'd t' a note of wrong?
That when war fails, peace must make war with words,
And b' armed unto destruction ev'n as strong 5
As were in ages past our civil swords:
Making as deep, although unbleeding wounds;
That when as fury fails, wisdom confounds.
Stanza 14
Seeing ev'n injustice may be regular;
And no proportion can there be betwixt 10
Our actions, which in endless motion are,
And th' ordinances, which are always fix'd:
Ten thousand laws more cannot reach so far
But malice goes beyond, or lives immix'd
So close with goodness, as it ever will 15
Corrupt, disguise, or counterfeit it still.
Stanza 15
And therefore did those glorious monarchs (who
Divide with God the style of majesty, &c.
Stanza 5
Must there be still some discord mix'd among
The harmony of men; whose mood accords
Best with contention tun'd _to notes_ of wrong?
That when War fails, Peace must make war with words,
_With words_ unto destruction _arm'd more_ strong 5
_Than ever were our foreign Foeman's swords_;
Making as deep, _tho' not yet bleeding_ wounds?
_What War left scarless, Calumny_ confounds.
Stanza 14
_Truth lies entrapp'd where Cunning finds no bar_:
_Since_ no proportion can there be betwixt 10
Our actions, which in endless motion are,
And ordinances, which are always fixt.
Ten thousand Laws more cannot reach so far
But Malice goes beyond, or lives _commixt_
So close with Goodness, _that_, it ever will 15
Corrupt, disguise, or counterfeit it still.
Stanza 15
And therefore _would our glorious Alfred, who
Join'd with the King's the good man's Majesty,
Not leave Law's labyrinth without a clue--
Gave to deep skill its just authority_,-- 20
* * * * *
_But the last Judgement (this his Jury's plan)--
Left to the natural sense of Work-day Man_
_Adapted from an elder Poet._
Motto to _The Friend_, Essay xiii, 1818, i. 149; 1850, i. 113.
Coleridge's alteration of, and addition to the text of Daniel's poem
were first pointed out in an edition of _The Friend_, issued by H. N.
Coleridge in 1837.
11
MUSOPHILUS
STANZA CXLVII.
Who will not grant, and therefore this observe,
No state stands sure, but on the grounds of right,
Of virtue, knowledge, judgment to preserve,
And all the powers of learning requisite?
Though other shifts a present turn may serve,
Yet in the trial they will weigh too light.
* * * * *
_Blind is that soul which from this truth can swerve_
No state stands sure, &c.
Motto to Essay xvi of _The Friend_, 1818, i. 190; 1850, i. 145. The
alteration was first noted in 1837.
12
STANZAS XXVII, XXIX, XXX.
Although the stronger constitution shall
Wear out th' infection of distemper'd days,
And come with glory to out-live this fall,
Recov'ring of another spring of praise, &c.
For these lines are the veins and arteries
And undecaying life-strings of those hearts,
That still shall pant, and still shall exercise
The motion, spir't and nature both imparts,
And shall with those alive so sympathize,
As nourish'd with stern powers, enjoy their parts.
O blessed letters! that combine in one
All ages past, and make one live with all:
By you we do confer with who are gone,
And the dead-living unto council call:
By you the unborn shall have communion
Of what we feel, and what does us befall.
* * * * *
O blessed letters, &c.
Since Writings are the Veins, the Arteries,
And undecaying Life-strings of those Hearts,
They still shall pant and still shall exercise
Their mightiest powers when Nature none imparts:
And the strong constitution of their Praise
Wear out the infection of distemper'd days
_Motto_ to 'The Landing-Place', Essay i, _The Friend_, 1818, i. 215;
1850, 165. The piecing together of the lines in the second stanza of the
motto was first noted by J. D. Campbell, in _The Athenæum_, art.
'Coleridge's Quotations,' Aug. 20, 1892.
13
CHRISTOPHER HARVEY
THE SYNAGOGUE
THE NATIVITY OR CHRISTMAS DAY.
Unfold thy face, unmask thy ray,
Shine forth, bright sun, double the day;
Let no malignant misty fume
Nor foggy vapour, once presume
To interpose thy perfect sights, 5
This day which makes us use thy lights
For ever better that we could
That blessed object once behold,
Which is both the circumference
And centre of all excellence, &c. 10
Substitute the following for the fifth to the eighth line.
To sheath or blunt one happy ray,
That wins new splendour from the day,--
This day that gives thee power to rise,
And shine on hearts as well as eyes:
This birth-day of all souls, when first
On eyes of flesh and blood did burst
That primal great lucific light,
That rays to thee, to us gave sight.
[S. T. C.]
First published in 'Notes on Harvey's Synagogue', _Notes and Lectures_,
&c., 1849, ii. 263. Now first collected.
Coleridge's notes to _The Synagogue_, including these original lines,
were reprinted in the notes to _The Complete Poems_ of Christopher
Harvey, 1874, p. 47.
14
MARK AKENSIDE
BLANK VERSE INSCRIPTIONS
No. III.
[For Elegy Imitated from one of Akenside's 'Blank Verse Inscriptions',
vide _ante_, p. 69.]
Whoe'er thou art whose path in Summer lies
Through yonder village, turn thee where the Grove
Of branching oaks a rural palace old
Embosoms--there dwells Albert, generous lord
Of all the harvest round. And onward thence 5
A low plain chapel fronts the morning light
Fast by a silent rivulet. Humbly walk,
O stranger, o'er the consecrated ground;
And on that verdant Hillock, which thou seest
Beset with osiers, let thy pious hand 10
Sprinkle fresh water from the brook, and strew
Sweet-smelling flowers--for there doth Edmund rest,
The learned shepherd; for each rural art
Famed, and for songs harmonious, and the woes
Of ill-requited love. The faithless pride 15
Of fair Matilda sank him to the grave
In manhood's prime. But soon did righteous Heaven
With tears, with sharp remorse, and pining care
Avenge her falsehood. Nor could all the gold
And nuptial pomp, which lured her plighted faith 20
From Edmund to a loftier husband's home,
Relieve her breaking heart, or turn aside
The strokes of death. Go, traveller, relate
The mournful story. Haply some fair maid
May hold it in remembrance, and be taught 25
That riches cannot pay for truth or love.
15
W. L. BOWLES
----I yet remain
To mourn the hours of youth (yet mourn in vain)
That fled neglected: wisely thou hast trod
The better path--and that high meed which God
Assign'd to virtue, tow'ring from the dust, 5
Shall wait thy rising, Spirit pure and just!
O God! how sweet it were to think, that all
Who silent mourn around this gloomy ball
Might hear the voice of joy;--but 'tis the will
Of man's great Author, that thro' good and ill 10
Calm he should hold his course, and so sustain
His varied lot of pleasure, toil and pain!
1793
['These lines,' which 'were found in Mr. Coleridge's handwriting in one
of the Prayer Books in the Chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge,' were
first published in _Lit. Rem._, 1836, i. 34. They were first collected
in _P. W._, 1885, i. 127. The first six lines are (see _P. W._, 1893, p.
474) taken from Bowles's elegy 'On the Death of Henry Headley'. J. D.
Campbell surmised that the last six lines 'practically belonged to the
same poem', but of this there is no evidence. The note of the elegy is a
lament for the 'untimely sorrow' which had befallen an innocent
sufferer, and the additional lines, which Coleridge composed or quoted,
moralized the theme.
_Note._ Bowles wrote, I, alas, remain (l. 1), and 'Ordain'd for virtue'
(l. 5).]
16
NAPOLEON
Then we may thank ourselves,
Who spell-bound by the magic name of Peace
Dream golden dreams. Go, warlike Britain, go,
For the grey olive-branch change thy green laurels:
Hang up thy rusty helmet, that the bee 5
May have a hive, or spider find a loom!
Instead of doubling drum and thrilling fife
Be lull'd in lady's lap with amorous flutes:
But for Napoleon, know, he'll scorn this calm:
The ruddy planet at _his_ birth bore sway, 10
Sanguine adust his humour, and wild fire
His ruling element. Rage, revenge, and cunning
Make up the temper of this Captain's valour.
_Adapted from an old Play._
First published in _The Friend_, 1818, ii. 115. In later editions the
word 'Adapted' was omitted. First collected in 1893.
J. D. Campbell (_P. W._, 1893, p. 473) suggests that the 'calm' was,
probably, the 'Peace of Amiens'.
APPENDIX VI
ORIGINALS OF TRANSLATIONS
A
[Vide _ante_, p. 307]
MILESISCHES MÄHRCHEN
Ein milesisches Mährchen, Adonide:
Unter heiligen Lorbeerwipfeln glänzte
Hoch auf rauschendem Vorgebirg ein Tempel.
Aus den Fluthen erhub, von Pan gesegnet,
In Gedüfte der Ferne sich ein Eiland. 5
Oft, in mondlicher Dämmrung, schwebt' ein Nachen
Vom Gestade des heerdenreichen Eilands,
Zur umwaldeten Bucht, wo sich ein Steinpfad
Zwischen Mirten zum Tempelhain emporwand.
Dort im Rosengebüsch, der Huldgöttinnen 10
Marmorgruppe geheiligt, fleht' oft einsam
Eine Priesterin, reizend wie Apelles
Seine Grazien malt, zum Sohn Cytherens,
Ihren Kallias freundlich zu umschweben
Und durch Wogen und Dunkel ihn zu leiten, 15
Bis der nächtliche Schiffer, wonneschauernd,
An den Busen ihr sank.
The German original of the translation was published in _Poems_, 1852,
Notes, pp. 387-9.
B
[Vide _ante_, p. 307]
SCHILLER
DER EPISCHE HEXAMETER
Schwindelnd trägt er dich fort auf rastlos strömenden Wogen;
Hinter dir siehst du, du siehst vor dir nur Himmel und Meer.
DAS DISTICHON
Im Hexameter steigt des Springquells flüssige Säule;
Im Pentameter drauf fällt sie melodisch herab.
See _Poems_, 1844, p. 372.
C
[Vide _ante_, p. 308]
STOLBERG
ON A CATARACT
Unsterblicher Jüngling!
Du strömest hervor
Aus der Felsenkluft.
Kein Sterblicher sah
Die Wiege des Starken; 5
Es hörte kein Ohr
Das Lallen des Edlen im sprudelnden Quell.
Dich kleidet die Sonne
In Strahlen des Ruhmes!
Sie malet mit Farben des himmlischen Bogens 10
Die schwebenden Wolken der stäubenden Fluth.
See _Poems_, 1844, pp. 371-2.
D
[Vide _ante_, p. 309]
STOLBERG
BEI WILHELM TELLS GEBURTSSTÄTTE IM KANTON URI
Seht diese heilige Kapell!
Hier ward geboren Wilhelm Tell,
Hier wo der Altar Gottes steht
Stand seiner Eltern Ehebett!
Mit Mutterfreuden freute sich 5
Die liebe Mutter inniglich,
Die gedachte nicht an ihren Schmerz
Und hielt das Knäblein an ihr Herz.
Sie flehte Gott: er sei dein Knecht,
Sei stark und muthig und gerecht. 10
Gott aber dachte: ich thu' mehr
Durch ihn als durch ein ganzes Heer.
Er gab dem Knaben warmes Blut,
Des Rosses Kraft, des Adlers Muth,
Im Felsennacken freien Sinn, 15
Des Falken Aug' und Feuer drin!
Dem Worte sein' und der Natur
Vertraute Gott das Knäblein nur;
Wo sich der Felsenstrom ergeusst
Erhub sich früh des Helden Geist. 20
Das Ruder und die Gemsenjagd
Hatt' seine Glieder stark gemacht;
Er scherzte früh mit der Gefahr
Und wusste nicht wie gross er war.
Er wusste nicht dass seine Hand, 25
Durch Gott gestärkt, sein Vaterland
Erretten würde von der Schmach
Der Knechtschaft, deren Joch er brach.
FRIEDRICH LEOPOLD
GRAF ZU STOLBERG,
1775
The German original is supplied in the Notes to _P. W._, 1893, pp. 618,
619.
E
[Vide _ante_, p. 310]
SCHILLER
DITHYRAMBE
Nimmer, das glaubt mir,
Erscheinen die Götter,
Nimmer allein.
Kaum dass ich Bacchus, den Lustigen, habe,
Kommt auch schon Amor, der lächelnde Knabe, 5
Phöbus, der Herrliche, findet sich ein!
Sie nahen, sie kommen--
Die Himmlischen alle,
Mit Göttern erfüllt sich
Die irdische Halle. 10
Sagt, wie bewirth' ich,
Der Erdegeborne,
Himmlischen Chor?
Schenket mir euer unsterbliches Leben,
Götter! Was kann euch der Sterbliche geben? 15
Hebet zu eurem Olymp mich empor.
Die Freude, sie wohnt nur
In Jupiters Saale;
O füllet mit Nektar,
O reicht mir die Schale! 20
Reich' ihm die Schale!
Schenke dem Dichter,
Hebe, nur ein!
Netz' ihm die Augen mit himmlischem Thaue,
Dass er den Styx, den verhassten, nicht schaue, 25
Einer der Unsern sich dünke zu seyn.
Sie rauschet, sie perlet,
Die himmlische Quelle:
Der Busen wird ruhig,
Das Auge wird helle. 30
The German original is printed in the Notes to _P. W._, 1893, p. 619.
F
[Vide _ante_, p. 311]
GOETHE
_Wilhelm Meister_, Bk. III, Cap. 1.--_Sämmtliche Werke_, 1860, iii, p.
194.
Kennst du das Land, wo die Citronen blühn,
Im dunkeln Laub die Goldorangen glühn,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht
Dahin! Dahin 5
Möcht' ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn.
G
[Vide _ante_, p. 311]
FRANÇOIS-ANTOINE-EUGÈNE DE PLANARD
'BATELIER, DIT LISETTE'
_Marie, opéra-comique en trois actes_, 1826, p. 9.
SUSETTE, _assise dans la barque_.
Batelier, dit Lisette,
Je voudrais passer l'eau,
Mais je suis bien pauvrette
Pour payer le bateau:
--Venez, venez, toujours . . . 5
Et vogue la nacelle
Qui porte mes amours!
(_Ils abordent. Lubin reste sur la rive à attacher sa barque._)
SUSETTE, _s'avancant en scène_.
Je m'en vais chez mon père,
Dit Lisette à Colin.
--Eh bien! Crois-tu, ma chère, 10
Qu'il m'accorde ta main?
--Ah! répondit la belle,
Osez, osez toujours.
--Et vogue la nacelle
Qui porte mes amours! 15
LUBIN et SUSETTE
Après le mariage,
Toujours dans son bateau
Colin fut le plus sage
Des maris du hameau.
A sa chanson fidèle, 20
Il répète toujours:
Et vogue la nacelle
Qui porte mes amours!
H
[Vide _ante_, p. 313]
DES KNABEN WUNDERHORN
Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär
Und auch zwei Flüglein hätt',
Flög' ich zu dir;
Weil's aber nicht kann sein,
Weil's aber nicht kann sein, 5
Bleib' ich allhier.
Bin ich gleich weit von dir,
Bin ich doch im Schlaf bei dir
Und red' mit dir;
Wenn ich erwachen thu', 10
Wenn ich erwachen thu',
Bin ich allein.
Es vergeht keine Stund' in der Nacht
Da mein Herz nicht erwacht
Und an dich gedenkt. 15
Wie du mir viel tausendmal,
Wie du mir viel tausendmal,
Dein Herz geschenkt.
I
STOLBERG
Lied eines deutschen Knaben.--_Gesammelte Werke_, Hamburg, 1827, i. 42.
Mein Arm wird stark und gross mein Muth,
Gieb, Vater, mir ein Schwert!
Verachte nicht mein junges Blut;
Ich bin der Väter werth!
Ich finde fürder keine Ruh 5
Im weichen Knabenstand!
Ich stürb', O Vater, stolz, wie du,
Den Tod für's Vaterland!
Schon früh in meiner Kindheit war
Mein täglich Spiel der Krieg! 10
Im Bette träumt' ich nur Gefahr
Und Wunden nur und Sieg.
Mein Feldgeschrei erweckte mich
Aus mancher Türkenschlacht;
Noch jüngst ein Faustschlag, welchen ich 15
Dem Bassa zugedacht!
Da neulich unsrer Krieger Schaar
Auf dieser Strasse zog,
Und, wie ein Vogel, der Husar
Das Haus vorüberflog, 20
Da gaffte starr und freute sich
Der Knaben froher Schwarm:
Ich aber, Vater, härmte mich,
Und prüfte meinen Arm!
Mein Arm ist stark und gross mein Muth, 25
Gieb, Vater, mir ein Schwert!
Verachte nicht mein junges Blut;
Ich bin der Väter werth!
The German original is printed in the Notes to _P. W._, 1893, pp. 617,
618.
J
[Vide _ante_, p. 318]
LESSING
_Sämmtliche Schriften_, vol. i, p. 50, ed. Lachmann-Maltzahn, Leipzig,
1853.
DIE NAMEN.
Ich fragte meine Schöne:
Wie soll mein Lied dich nennen?
Soll dich als Dorimana,
Als Galathee, als Chloris,
Als Lesbia, als Doris, 5
Die Welt der Enkel kennen?
Ach! Namen sind nur Töne;
Sprach meine holde Schöne,
Wähl' selbst. Du kannst mich Doris,
Und Galathee und Chloris 10
Und ---- wie du willst mich nennen:
Nur nenne mich die deine.
The German original is printed in the Notes to _P. W._, 1893, pp. 619,
620.
K
[Vide _ante_, p. 327]
STOLBERG
HYMNE AN DIE ERDE.
Erde, du Mutter zahlloser Kinder, Mutter und Amme!
Sei mir gegrüsst! Sei mir gesegnet im Feiergesange!
Sieh, O Mutter, hier lieg' ich an deinen schwellenden Brüsten!
Lieg', O Grüngelockte, von deinem wallenden Haupthaar
Sanft umsäuselt und sanft geküsst von thauenden Lüften! 5
Ach, du säuselst Wonne mir zu, und thauest mir Wehmuth
In das Herz, dass Wehmuth und Wonn' aus schmelzender Seele
Sich in Thränen und Dank und heiligen Liedern ergiessen!
Erde, du Mutter zahlloser Kinder, Mutter und Amme!
Schwester der allesfreuenden Sonne, des freundlichen Mondes 10
Und der strahlenden Stern', und flammenbeschweiften Kometen,
Eine der jüngsten Töchter der allgebärenden Schöpfung,
Immer blühendes Weib des segenträufelnden Himmels!
Sprich, O Erde, wie war dir als du am ersten der Tage
Deinen heiligen Schooss dem buhlenden Himmel enthülltest? 15
Dein Erröthen war die erste der Morgenröthen,
Als er im blendenden Bette von weichen schwellenden Wolken
Deine gürtende Binde mit siegender Stärke dir löste!
Schauer durchbebten die stille Natur und tausend und tausend
Leben keimten empor aus der mächtigen Liebesumarmung. 20
Freudig begrüssten die Fluthen des Meeres neuer Bewohner
Mannigfaltige Schaaren; es staunte der werdende Wallfisch
Ueber die steigenden Ströme die seiner Nasen entbrausten;
Junges Leben durchbrüllte die Auen, die Wälder, die Berge,
Irrte blökend im Thal, und sang in blühenden Stauden. 25
The German original is printed in the Notes to _P. W._, 1893, p. 615.
L
[Vide _ante_, p. 376]
FRIEDERIKE BRUN
CHAMOUNY BEYM SONNENAUFGANGE
(Nach Klopstock.)
'Aus tiefem Schatten des schweigenden Tannenhains
Erblick' ich bebend dich, Scheitel der Ewigkeit,
Blendenden Gipfel, von dessen Höhe
Ahndend mein Geist ins Unendliche schwebet!
'Wer senkte den Pfeiler tief in der Erde Schooss, 5
Der, seit Jahrtausenden, fest deine Masse stützt?
Wer thürmte hoch in des Aethers Wölbung
Mächtig und kühn dein umstrahltes Antlitz?
'Wer goss Euch hoch aus des ewigen Winters Reich,
O Zackenströme, mit Donnergetös' herab? 10
Und wer gebietet laut mit der Allmacht Stimme:
"Hier sollen ruhen die starrenden Wogen"?
'Wer zeichnet dort dem Morgensterne die Bahn?
Wen kränzt mit Blüthen des ewigen Frostes Saum?
Wem tönt in schrecklichen Harmonieen, 15
Wilder Arveiron, dein Wogengetümmel?
'Jehovah! Jehovah! Kracht's im berstenden Eis:
Lawinendonner rollen's die Kluft hinab:
Jehovah Rauscht's in den hellen Wipfeln,
Flüstert's an rieselnden Silberbächen.' 20
See _Poems_, 1844, p. 572.
M
[Vide _ante_, p. 392]
_Opere del Cavalier Giambattista Marino_, with introduction by Giuseppe
Zirardini. Napoli, 1861, p. 550.
ALLA SUA AMICA
_Sonetto._
Donna, siam rei di morte. Errasti, errai;
Di perdon non son degni i nostri errori,
Tu che avventasti in me sì fieri ardori
Io che le fiamme a sì bel sol furai.
Io che una fiera rigida adorai, 5
Tu che fosti sord' aspra a' miei dolori;
Tu nell' ire ostinata, io negli amori:
Tu pur troppo sdegnasti, io troppo amai.
Or la pena laggiù nel cieco Averno
Pari al fallo n'aspetta. Arderà poi, 10
Chi visse in foco, in vivo foco eterno.
Quivi: se Amor fia giusto, amboduo noi,
All' incendio dannati, avrem l' inferno,
Tu nel mio core, ed io negli occhi tuoi.
The Italian original is printed in the Notes to _P. W._, 1893, p. 632.
N
[Vide _ante_, p. 409]
In diesem Wald, in diesen Gründen
Herrscht nichts, als Freyheit, Lust und Ruh.
Hier sagen wir der Liebe zu,
Im dichtsten Schatten uns zu finden:
Da find' ich dich, mich findest du. 5
The German original is translated from an MS. Notebook of ? 1801.
O
[Vide _ante_, p. 414]
THE MADMAN AND THE LETHARGIST
Κοινῇ πὰρ κλισίῃ ληθαργικὸς ἠδὲ φρενοπλὴξ
κείμενοι, ἀλλήλων νοῦσον ἀπεσκέδασαν.
ἐξέθορε κλίνης γὰρ ὁ τολμήεις ὑπὸ λύσσης,
καὶ τὸν ἀναίσθητον παντὸς ἔτυπτε μέλους.
πληγαὶ δ' ἀμφοτέροις ἐγένοντ' ἄκος, αἷς ὁ μὲν αὐτῶν 5
ἔγρετο, τὸν δ' ὕπνῳ πουλὺς ἔριψε κόπος.
_Anthologia Græca_, Lib. 1, Cap. 45.
See Lessing's 'Zerstreute Anmerkungen über das Epigramm', _Sämmtliche
Werke_, 1824, ii. 22.
P
[Vide _ante_, p. 427]
MADRIGALI DEL SIGNOR CAVALIER GUARINI
DIALOGO
FEDE, SPERANZA, CARITÀ.
FEDE.
Canti terreni amori
Chi terreno hà il pensier, terreno il zelo;
Noi Celesti Virtù cantiam del Cielo.
CARITÀ.
Mà chi fia, che vi ascolti
Fuggirà i nostri accenti orecchia piena 5
De le lusinghe di mortal Sirena?
SPERANZA.
Cantiam pur, che raccolti
Saran ben in virtù di chi li move;
E suoneran nel Ciel, se non altrove.
FE. SP. CA.
Spirane dunque, eterno Padre, il canto, 10
Che già festi al gran Cantor Ebreo,
Che poi tant' alto feo
Suonar la gloria del tuo nomine santo.
CA. FE.
Noi siam al Ciel rapite
E pur lo star in terra è nostra cura, 15
A ricondur à Dio l' alme smarrite.
FE. SP.
Così facciamo, e 'n questa valle oscura
L' una sia scorta al sol d' l' intelletto,
L' altra sostegno al vacillante affetto.
CA.
E com' è senz' amor l' anima viva? 20
SP. FE.
Come stemprata cetra,
Che suona sì, mà di concento priva.
CA. SP.
Amor' è quel, ch' ogni gran dono impetra.
FE.
Mà tempo è, che le genti
Odan l' alta virtù de' nostri accenti. 25
FE. SP. CA.
O mondo--eco la via;
Chi vuol salir' al Ciel, creda, ami, e spetti.
O félici pensieri
Di chi, per far in Dio santa armonia
E per ogn' altro suon l'anima hà sorda, 30
FEDE, SPERANZA, e CARITATE accenda.
Il Pastor Fido
Con le Rime
del
Signor Cavalier
Battista Guarini
In Amstelodami
Madrigali 138, 139. 1663 or 9.
Q
[Vide _ante_, p. 435]
STOLBERG
'_An das Meer._'
Der blinde Sänger stand am Meer,
Die Wogen rauschten um ihn her,
Und Riesenthaten goldner Zeit
Umrauschten ihn im Feierkleid.
Es kam zu ihm auf Schwanenschwung 5
Melodisch die Begeisterung,
Und Iliad und Odyssee
Entsteigen mit Gesang der See.
The German original is printed in the Notes to _P. W._, 1893, p. 639.
See, too, Prefatory Memoir to the Tauchnitz edition of Coleridge's
_Poems_, by P. Freiligrath (1852).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF THE
POETICAL WORKS OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
1794-1834
I
The / FALL / of / ROBESPIERRE. / An / HISTORIC DRAMA. / By S. T.
COLERIDGE, / Of Jesus College, Cambridge. / [=Cambridge=]: / Printed by
Benjamin Flower, / For W. H. Lunn, and J. and J. Merrill; and Sold / By
J. March, Norwich. / 1794. / [Price One Shilling.] [8{o}.
_Collation._--Title, one leaf, p. [i], [Dedication] To H. Martin,
_Esq._, Of Jesus College, Cambridge (dated, September 22. 1794), p. [3];
Text, pp. [5]-37.
II
POEMS / on / VARIOUS SUBJECTS, /By S. T. COLERIDGE, / Late of Jesus
College, Cambridge. / Felix curarum, cui non Heliconia cordi / Serta,
nec imbelles Parnassi e vertice laurus! / Sed viget ingenium, et magnos
accinctus in usus / Fert animus quascunque vices.--Nos tristia vitae /
Solamur cantu. / STAT. _Silv._ Lib. iv. 4.[1135:1] / LONDON: / Printed
for G. G. and J. Robinsons, and / J. Cottle, Bookseller, Bristol. /
1796. / [8{o}.
_Collation._--Half-title, Poems / on Various Subjects, / By / S. T.
Coleridge, / Late / Of Jesus College, Cambridge. /, one leaf, p. [i];
Title, one leaf, p. [iii]; Preface, pp. [v]-xi; Contents, pp.
[xiii]-xvi; Text, pp. [1]-168; Notes on _Religious Musings_, pp.
[169]-175; Notes, pp. [177]-188; Errata, p. [189].[1135:2]
_Contents._--
PREFACE
Poems on various subjects written at different times and prompted by
very different feelings; but which will be read at one time and under
the influence of one set of feelings--this is an heavy disadvantage: for
we love or admire a poet in proportion as he developes our own
sentiments and emotions, or reminds us of our own knowledge.
Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not unfrequently
condemned for their querulous egotism. But egotism is to be condemned
then only when it offends against time and place, as in an History or an
Epic Poem. To censure it in a Monody or Sonnet is almost as absurd as to
dislike a circle for being round. Why then write Sonnets or Monodies?
Because they give me pleasure when perhaps nothing else could. After the
more violent emotions of Sorrow, the mind demands solace and can find it
in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings it can endure no
employment not connected with those sufferings. Forcibly to turn away
our attention to other subjects is a painful and in general an
unavailing effort.
"But O how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of misery to impart;
From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow
And raise esteem upon the base of woe!"[1136:1]
The communicativeness of our nature leads us to describe our own
sorrows; in the endeavor to describe them intellectual activity is
exerted; and by a benevolent law of our nature from intellectual
activity a pleasure results which is gradually associated and mingles as
a corrective with the painful subject of the description. True! it may
be answered, but how are the PUBLIC interested in your sorrows or your
description? We are for ever attributing a personal unity to imaginary
aggregates. What is the PUBLIC but a term for a number of scattered
individuals of whom as many will be interested in these sorrows as have
experienced the same or similar?
"Holy be the Lay,
Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way!"
There is one species of egotism which is truly disgusting; not that
which leads us to communicate our feelings to others, but that which
would reduce the feelings of others to an identity with our own. The
Atheist, who exclaims "pshaw!" when he glances his eye on the praises of
Deity, is an Egotist; an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of
love-verses, is an Egotist; and your sleek favourites of Fortune are
Egotists, when they condemn all "melancholy discontented" verses.
Surely it would be candid not merely to ask whether the Poem pleases
ourselves, but to consider whether or no there may not be others to whom
it is well-calculated to give an innocent pleasure. With what anxiety
every fashionable author avoids the word _I_!--now he transforms himself
into a third person,--"the present writer"--now multiplies himself and
swells into "_we_"--and all this is the watchfulness of guilt. Conscious
that this said _I_ is perpetually intruding on his mind and that it
monopolizes his heart, he is prudishly solicitous that it may not escape
from his lips.
This disinterestedness of phrase is in general commensurate with
selfishness of feeling: men old and hackneyed in the ways of the world
are scrupulous avoiders of Egotism.
Of the following Poems a considerable number are styled "Effusions," in
defiance of Churchill's line
"Effusion on Effusion _pour_ away."[1136:2]
I could recollect no title more descriptive of the manner and matter of
the Poems--I might indeed have called the majority of them Sonnets--but
they do not possess that _oneness_ of thought which I deem indispensible
(sic) in a Sonnet--and (not a very honorable motive perhaps) I was
fearful that the title "Sonnet" might have reminded my reader of the
Poems of the Rev. W. L. Bowles--a comparison with whom would have sunk
me below that mediocrity, on the surface of which I am at present
enabled to float.
Some of the verses allude to an intended emigration to America on the
scheme of an abandonment of individual property.
The Effusions signed C. L. were written by Mr. CHARLES LAMB, of the
India House--independently of the signature their superior merit would
have sufficiently distinguished them. For the rough sketch of Effusion
XVI, I am indebted to Mr. FAVELL. And the first half of Effusion XV was
written by the Author of "Joan of Arc", an Epic Poem.
NOTES ATTACHED TO A FIRST DRAFT OF THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
[_MS. R_]
(i)
I cannot conclude the Preface without expressing my grateful
acknowledgments to Mr. Cottle, Bristol, for the liberality with which
(with little probability I know of remuneration from the sale) he
purchased the poems, and the typographical elegance by which he
endeavoured to recommend them, (or)--the liberal assistance which he
afforded me, by the purchase of the copyright with little probability of
remuneration from the sale of the Poems.
[This acknowledgement, which was omitted from the Preface to the First
Edition, was rewritten and included in the 'Advertisement' to the
'Supplement' to the Second Edition.]
(ii)
To EARL STANHOPE
A man beloved of Science and of Freedom, these Poems are
respectfully inscribed by
The Author.
[In a letter to Miss Cruikshank (? 1807) (_Early Recollections_, 1837,
i. 201), Coleridge maintains that the 'Sonnet to Earl Stanhope', which
was published in _Poems_, 1796 (vide _ante_, pp. 89, 90), 'was inserted
by the fool of a publisher [Cottle prints 'inserted by Biggs, the fool
of a printer'] in order, forsooth, that he might send the book and a
letter to Earl Stanhope; who (to prove that he is not _mad_ in all
things) treated both book and letter with silent contempt.' In a note
Cottle denies this statement, and maintains that the 'book (handsomely
bound) and the letter were sent to Lord S. by Mr. C. himself'. It is
possible that before the book was published Coleridge had repented of
Sonnet, Dedication, and Letter, and that the 'handsomely bound' volume
was sent by Cottle and not by Coleridge, but the 'Dedication' is in his
own handwriting and proves that he was, in the first instance at least,
_particeps criminis_. See Note by J. D. Campbell, _P. W._, 1893, pp.
575, 576.]
CONTENTS
PAGE
Monody to Chatterton 1
To the Rev. W. J. H. 12
Songs of the Pixies 15
Lines on the Man of Ross 26
Lines to a beautiful Spring 28
Epitaph on an Infant 31
Lines on a Friend 32
To a Young Lady with a Poem 36
Absence, a Farewell Ode 40
Effusion 1, to Bowles 45
Effusion 2, to Burke 46
Effusion 3, to Mercy 47
Effusion 4, to Priestley 48
Effusion 5, to Erskine 49
Effusion 6, to Sheridan 50
Effusion 7, to Siddons [signed 'C. L.'] 51
Effusion 8, to Kosciusco 52
Effusion 9, to Fayette 53
Effusion 10, to Earl Stanhope 54
Effusion 11 ['Was it some sweet device'--'C. L.'] 55
Effusion 12 ['Methinks how dainty sweet'--'C. L.'] 56
Effusion 13, written at Midnight ['C. L.'] 57
Effusion 14 59
Effusion 15 60
Effusion 16, to an Old Man 61
Effusion 17, to Genevieve 62
Effusion 18, to the Autumnal Moon 63
Effusion 19, to my own heart 64
Effusion 20, to Schiller 65
Effusion 21, on Brockley Coomb 66
[Effusion 22,] To a Friend with an unfinished Poem 68
Effusion 23, to the Nightingale 71
Effusion 24, in the manner of Spencer 73
Effusion 25, to Domestic Peace 77
Effusion 26, on a Kiss 78
Effusion 27 80
Effusion 28 82
Effusion 29, Imitated from Ossian 84
Effusion 30, Complaint of Ninathoma 86
Effusion 31, from the Welsh 88
Effusion 32, The Sigh 89
Effusion 33, to a Young Ass 91
Effusion 34, to an Infant 94
Effusion 35, written at Clevedon 96
Effusion 36, written in Early Youth 101
Epistle 1, written at Shurton Bars 111
Epistle 2, to a Friend in answer to a Melancholy Letter 119
Epistle 3, written after a Walk 122
Epistle 4, to the Author of Poems published in Bristol 125
Epistle 5, from a Young Lady 129
Religious Musings 139
III
[A SHEET OF SONNETS.]
_Collation._--No title; Introduction, pp. [1]-2; Text (of Sonnets Nos.
i-xxviii), pp. 3-16. Signatures A. B. B{2}. [1796.] [8{o}.
[There is no imprint. In a letter to John Thelwall, dated December 17,
1796 (_Letters of S. T. C._, 1895, i, 206), Coleridge writes, 'I have
sent you . . . Item, a sheet of sonnets collected by me, for the use of
a few friends, who payed the printing.' The 'sheet' is bound up with a
copy of 'Sonnets and Other poems, by The Rev. W. L. Bowles A. M. Bath,
printed by R. Cruttwell: and sold by C. Dilly, Poultry, London,
MDCCXCVI. _Fourth Edition_,' which was presented to Mrs. Thelwall, Dec.
18, 1796. At the end of the 'Sonnets' a printed slip (probably a cutting
from a newspaper) is inserted, which contains the lines 'To a FRIEND who
had declared his intention of Writing no more Poetry' (vide _ante_, pp.
158, 159). This volume is now in the Dyce Collection, which forms part
of the Victoria and Albert Museum. See _P. and D. W._, 1877, ii, pp.
375-9, and _P. W._, 1893, p. 544.]
_Contents._--
[INTRODUCTION]
The composition of the Sonnet has been regulated by Boileau in his Art /
of Poetry, and since Boileau, by William Preston, in the elegant preface
/ to his Amatory Poems: the rules, which they would establish, are
founded / on the practice of Petrarch. I have never yet been able to
discover either / sense, nature, or poetic fancy in Petrarch's poems;
they appear to me all / one cold glitter of heavy conceits and
metaphysical abstractions. How/ever, Petrarch, although not the inventor
of the Sonnet, was the first / who made it popular; and _his_ countrymen
have taken his poems as the / model. Charlotte Smith and Bowles are they
who first made the Sonnet / popular among the present English: I am
justified therefore by analogy / in deducing its laws from _their_
compositions.
The Sonnet then is a small poem, in which some lonely feeling is
de/veloped. It is limited to a _particular_ number of lines, in order
that the / reader's mind having expected the close at the place in which
he finds it, / may rest satisfied; and that so the poem may acquire, as
it were, a _Totality_,/--in 15 plainer phrase, may become a _Whole_. It
is confined to fourteen lines, / because as some particular number is
necessary, and that particular / number must be a small one, it may as
well be fourteen as any other / number. When no reason can be adduced
against a thing, Custom is a / sufficient reason for it. Perhaps, if the
Sonnet were comprized in less / than fourteen lines, it would become a
serious Epigram; if it extended to / more, it would encroach on the
province of the Elegy. Poems, in which / no lonely feeling is developed,
are not Sonnets because the Author has / chosen to write them in
fourteen lines; they should rather be entitled / Odes, or Songs, or
Inscriptions. The greater part of Warton's Sonnets are / severe and
masterly likenesses of the style of the Greek επιγραμματα.
In a Sonnet then we require a developement of some lonely feeling, by /
whatever cause it may have been excited; but those Sonnets appear to me
/ the most exquisite, in which moral Sentiments, Affections, or
Feelings, / are deduced from, and associated with, the scenery of
Nature. Such / compositions generate a habit of thought highly
favourable to delicacy of / character. They create a sweet and
indissoluble union between the / intellectual and the material world.
Easily remembered from their briefness, / and interesting alike to the
eye and the affections, these are the poems / which we can "lay up in
our heart, and our soul," and repeat them "when / we walk by the way,
and when we lie down, and when we rise up". / Hence the Sonnets of
_Bowles_ derive their marked superiority over all / other Sonnets; hence
they domesticate with the heart, and become, as it / were, a part of our
identity.
Respecting the metre of a Sonnet, the Writer should consult his own /
convenience.--Rhymes, many or few, or no rhymes at all--whatever the /
chastity of his ear may prefer, whatever the rapid expression of his /
feelings will permit;--all these things are left at his own disposal. A
same/ness in the final sound of its words is the great and grievous
defect of the / Italian language. That rule, therefore, which the
Italians have estab/lished, of exactly _four_ different sounds in the
Sonnet, seems to have arisen / from their wish to have _as many_, not
from any dread of finding _more_. But / surely it is ridiculous to make
the _defect_ of a foreign language a reason for / our not availing
ourselves of one of the marked excellencies of our own. / "The Sonnet
(says Preston,) will ever be cultivated by those who write on / tender,
pathetic subjects. It is peculiarly adapted to the state of a man /
violently agitated by a real passion, and wanting composure and vigor of
/ mind to methodize his thought. It is fitted to express a momentary
burst / of Passion" etc. Now, if there be one species of composition
more difficult / and artificial than another, it is an English Sonnet on
the Italian Model. / Adapted to the agitations of a real passion!
Express momentary bursts / of feeling in it! I should sooner expect to
write pathetic _Axes_ or _pour / forth Extempore Eggs_ and
_Altars_![1140:1] But the best confutation of such idle rules / is to be
found in the Sonnets of those who have observed them, in their /
inverted sentences, their quaint phrases, and incongruous mixture of /
obsolete and Spenserian words: and when, at last, the thing is toiled
and / hammered into fit shape, it is in general racked and tortured
Prose rather / than any thing resembling Poetry. Miss Seward, who has
perhaps / succeeded the best in these laborious trifles and who most
dogmatically / insists on what she calls "the sonnet-claim," has written
a very in/genious although unintentional burlesque on her own system, in
the / following lines prefixed to the Poems of a Mr. Carey.
"Prais'd be the Poet, who the sonnet-claim,
Severest of the orders that belong
Distinct and separate to the Delphic song 70
Shall reverence, nor its appropriate name
Lawless assume: peculiar is its frame--
From him derived, who spurn'd the city throng,
And warbled sweet the rocks and woods among,
Lonely Valclusa! and that heir of Fame, 75
Our greater Milton, hath in many a lay
Woven on this arduous model, clearly shewn
That English verse may happily display
Those strict energic measures which alone
Deserve the name of Sonnet, and convey 80
A spirit, force, and grandeur, all their own!
"ANNE SEWARD."
"_A spirit, force, and grandeur, all their own!!_"--EDITOR.[1140:2]
[SONNETS]
SONNET
I. TO A FRIEND
'Bereave me not of these delightful Dreams.'--W. L. BOWLES.[1141:1]
II. 'With many a weary step at length I gain.'--R. SOUTHEY.
III. TO SCOTLAND
'Scotland! when thinking on each heathy hill.'--C. LLOYD.
IV. TO CRAIG-MILLAR CASTLE IN WHICH MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS WAS
CONFINED.
'This hoary labyrinth, the wreck of Time.'--C. LLOYD.
V. TO THE RIVER OTTER
'Dear native Brook! wild Streamlet of the West.'--S. T. COLERIDGE.
VI. 'O Harmony! thou tenderest Nurse of Pain.'--W. L. BOWLES.
VII. TO EVENING
'What numerous tribes beneath thy shadowy wing.'--BAMFIELD.
VIII. ON BATHING
'When late the trees were stript by winter pale'.--T. WARTON.
IX. 'When eddying Leaves begun in whirls to fly.'--HENRY BROOKS,
(_the Author of the Fool of Quality_.)
X. 'We were two pretty Babes, the younger she'.--CHARLES LAMB.
[_Note_]. Innocence which while we possess it is playful as a babe,
becomes AWFUL, when it departs from us. That is the sentiment of the
line, a fine sentiment, and nobly expressed.--THE EDITOR.
XI. 'I knew a gentle maid I ne'er shall view.'--W. SOTHEBY.
XII. 'Was it some sweet device of faery land.'--CHARLES LAMB.
XIII. 'When last I rov'd these winding wood-walks green.'--CHARLES
LAMB.
XIV. ON A DISCOVERY MADE TOO LATE.
'Thou bleedest, my poor HEART! and thy distress.'--S. T. COLERIDGE.
XV. 'Hard by the road, where on that little mound.'--ROBERT SOUTHEY.
XVI. THE NEGRO SLAVE
'Oh he is worn with toil! the big drops run.'--ROBERT SOUTHEY.
XVII. 'Sweet Mercy! how my very heart has bled.'--S. T. COLERIDGE.
XVIII. 'Could then the babes from yon unshelter'd cot.'--THOMAS RUSSEL.
XIX. 'Mild arch of promise on the evening sky.'--ROBERT SOUTHEY.
XX. 'Oh! She was almost speechless nor could hold.'--CHARLES LLOYD.
XXI. 'When from my dreary Home I first mov'd on'--CHARLES LLOYD.
XXII. 'In this tumultuous sphere for thee unfit.'--CHARLOTTE SMITH.
XXIII. 'I love the mournful sober-suited NIGHT.'--CHARLOTTE SMITH.
XXIV. 'Lonely I sit upon the silent shore.'--THOMAS DERMODY.
XXV. 'Oh! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind.'--CHARLES LAMB.
XXVI. 'Thou whose stern spirit loves the awful storm.'--W. L. BOWLES.
XXVII. 'INGRATITUDE, how deadly is thy smart.'--ANNA SEWARD.
XXVIII. TO THE AUTHOR OF THE "ROBBERS"
'That fearful voice, a famish'd Father's cry.'--S. T. COLERIDGE.
[At the foot of l. 14. S. T. C. writes--
'I affirm, John Thelwall! that the six last lines of this
Sonnet to Schiller are strong and fiery; and you are the only
one who thinks otherwise.--There's! a _spurt_ of Author-like
Vanity for you!']
IV
ODE / ON THE / DEPARTING YEAR. / BY S. T. COLERIDGE. / Ιου, ιου, ω ω κακα,
Υπ' αυ με δεινος ορθομαντειας πονος / Στροβει, ταρασσων φροιμιοις εφημιοις, / . . . . . / το
μελλον ηξει· και συ μην ταχει παρων / Αγαν γ' αληθομαντιν μ' ερεις. / ÆSCHYL. AGAMEM.
1225. / BRISTOL; Printed by N. Biggs, / and sold by J. Parsons,
Paternoster Row, London. / 1796. / [4{o}.
_Collation._--Title, one leaf, p. [1]; Dedication, To Thomas Poole of
Stowey, pp. [3]-4; Text, pp. [5]-15; LINES Addressed to a Young Man of
Fortune who abandoned himself to an indolent and causeless Melancholy
(signed) [=S. T. Coleridge=], p. 16. [Signatures--B (p. 5)--D (p. 13).]
V
POEMS, / By / S. T. COLERIDGE, / Second Edition. / To which are now
added / POEMS / _By_ CHARLES LAMB, / And / CHARLES LLOYD. / Duplex nobis
vinculum, et amicitiae et similium / junctarumque Camœnarum; quod
utinam neque mors / solvat, neque temporis longinquitas! / _Groscoll.
Epist. ad Car. Utenhov. et Ptol. Lux. Tast._ / Printed by N. Biggs, /
For J. Cottle, BRISTOL, and Messrs. / Robinsons, London. / 1797. /
[8{o}.
_Collation._--Title-page, one leaf, p. [i]; Half-title, one leaf,
[=Poems=] / by / [=S. T. Coleridge=] / [followed by Motto as in No. II],
pp. [iii]-[iv]; Contents, pp. [v]-vi; DEDICATION, _To the Reverend_
GEORGE COLERIDGE of OTTERY St. MARY, / DEVON. Notus in frates animi
paterni. _Hor. Carm. Lib._ II. 2. /, pp. [vii]-xii; Preface to the First
Edition, pp. [xiii]-xvi; Preface to the Second Edition, pp. [xvii]-xx;
Half-title, [=Ode=] / _on the_ / [=Departing Year=] [with motto (5
lines) from Aeschy. Agamem. 1225], one leaf, pp. [1]-[2]; Argument, pp.
[3]-[4]; Text, pp. [5]-278; Errata (four lines) at the foot of p. 278.
[Carolus Utenhovius (Utenhove, or Uyttenhove) and Ptolomœus Luxius
Tasteus were scholar friends of the Scottish poet and historian George
Buchanan (1506-1582), who prefixes some Iambics 'Carolo Utenhovio F. S.'
to his Hexameters 'Franciscanus et Fratres'. In some Elegiacs addressed
to Tasteus and Tevius, in which he complains of his sufferings from gout
and kindred maladies, he tells them that Groscollius (Professor of
Medicine at the University of Paris) was doctoring him with herbs and by
suggestion:--'Et spe languentem consilioque juvat'. Hence the three
names. In another set of Iambics entitled 'Mutuus Amor' in which he
celebrates the alliance between Scotland and England he writes:--
Non mortis hoc propinquitas
Non temporis longinquitas
Solvet, fides quod nexuit
Intaminata vinculum.
Hence the wording of the motto. Groscollius is, of course, a _mot à
double entente_. It is a name and a nickname. The interpretation of the
names and the reference to Buchanan's Hexameters were first pointed out
by Mr. T. Hutchinson in the _Athenaeum_, Dec. 10, 1898.]
CONTENTS
[Titles of poems not in 1796 are printed in italics.]
POEMS by S. T. COLERIDGE.
PAGE
_Dedication_ vii
Preface to the First Edition xiii
Preface to the Second Edition xvii
_Ode to the New Year_ 1
Monody on Chatterton 17
Songs of the Pixies 29
The Rose 41
The Kiss 43
To a young Ass 45
Domestic Peace 48
The Sigh 49
Epitaph on an Infant 51
Lines on the Man of Ross 52
---- to a beautiful Spring 54
---- on the Death of a Friend 57
To a Young Lady 61
To a Friend, with an unfinished Poem 65
SONNETS.
[_Introduction to the Sonnets_ 71-74]
To W. L. Bowles 75
On a Discovery made too late 76
On Hope 77
_To the River Otter_ 78
On Brockly Comb 79
To an old Man 81
Sonnet 82
To Schiller 83
_On the Birth of a Son_ 85
_On first seeing my Infant_ 87
Ode to Sara 88
Composed at Clevedon 96
_On leaving a Place of Residence_ 100
_On an unfortunate Woman_ 105
_On observing a Blossom_ 107
_The Hour when we shall meet again_ 109
_Lines to C. Lloyd_ 110
Religious Musings 117
[=Poems=] by CHARLES LLOYD. pp. [151]-189. Second Edition.
[=Poems=] _on The Death_ of PRISCILLA FARMER, By her GRANDSON
CHARLES LLOYD, pp. [191]-213.
Sonnet ['The piteous sobs that choak the Virgin's breath', signed S.
T. Coleridge], p. 193.
[=Poems=] by CHARLES LAMB _of the India-House_. pp. [215]-240.
SUPPLEMENT.
_Advertisement_ 243
Lines to Joseph Cottle, by S. T. Coleridge 246
On an Autumnal Evening, by ditto, 249
In the manner of Spencer (_sic_), by ditto, 256
The Composition of a Kiss, by ditto, 260
To an Infant, by Ditto 264
_On the Christening of a Friend's Child_, by ditto, 264
To the Genius of Shakespeare, by Charles Lloyd, 267
Written after a Journey into North Wales, by ditto, 270
A Vision of Repentance, by Charles Lamb, 273
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
[Pp. [xiii]-xvi.]
Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not
unfre/quently condemned for their querulous Egotism. But Egotism is to
be / condemned then only when it offends against Time and Place, as in
an / History or an Epic Poem. To censure it in a Monody or Sonnet is
almost / as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then
write Sonnets / or Monodies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps
nothing else / could. After the more violent emotions of Sorrow, the
mind demands / amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full
of its late / sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some
measure connected / with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to
general subjects is / a painful and most often an unavailing effort:
But O! how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of Misery to impart--
From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow,
And raise esteem upon the base of woe! 15
SHAW.
The communicativeness of our Nature leads us to describe our own /
sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is
exerted; / and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure,
which is gradually / associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the
painful subject of the / description. "True!" (it may be answered) "but
how are the PUBLIC / interested in your Sorrows or your Description?" We
are for ever / attributing personal Unities to imaginary
Aggregates.--What is the PUBLIC, / but a term for a number of scattered
Individuals? Of whom as many / will be interested in these sorrows, as
have experienced the same or / similar.
"Holy be the lay,
Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way."
If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm,
that / the most interesting passages in our most interesting Poems are
those, in / which the Author developes his own feelings. The sweet voice
of Cona[1144:1] / never sounds so sweetly as when it speaks of itself;
and I should almost / suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could
read the opening of the / third book of the Paradise Lost without
peculiar emotion. By a law of / our Nature, he, who labours under a
strong feeling, is impelled to seek for / sympathy; but a Poet's
feelings are all strong. Quicquid amet valde amat. / Akenside therefore
speaks with philosophical accuracy, when he classes / Love and Poetry,
as producing the same effects:
"Love and the wish of Poets when their tongue
Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms 40
Their own."--PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION.
There is one species of Egotism which is truly disgusting; not that /
which leads us to communicate our feelings to others, but that which /
would reduce the feelings of others to an identity with our own. The /
Atheist, who exclaims, "pshaw!" when he glances his eye on the praises /
of Deity, is an Egotist: an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of /
Love-verses is an Egotist: and the sleek Favorites of Fortune are /
Egotists, when they condemn all "melancholy, discontented" verses. /
Surely, it would be candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases /
ourselves but to consider whether or no there may not be others to whom
/ it is well-calculated to give an innocent pleasure.
I shall only add that each of my readers will, I hope, remember that /
these Poems on various subjects, which he reads at one time and under /
the influence of one set of feelings, were written at different times
and / prompted by very different feelings; and therefore that the
supposed / inferiority of one Poem to another may sometimes be owing to
the temper / of mind, in which he happens to peruse it.
[Pp. [xvii]-xx.]
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I return my acknowledgments to the different Reviewers for the /
assistance, which they have afforded me, in detecting my poetic
deficien/cies. I have endeavoured to avail myself of their remarks: one
third of / the former Volume I have omitted, and the imperfections of
the republished / part must be considered as errors of taste, not faults
of carelessness. My / poems have been rightly charged with a profusion
of double-epithets, and / a general turgidness. I have pruned the
double-epithets with no sparing / hand; and used my best efforts to tame
the swell and glitter both of / thought and diction. This latter fault
however had insinuated itself / into my Religious Musings with such
intricacy of union, that sometimes / I have omitted to disentangle the
weed from the fear of snapping the / flower. A third and heavier
accusation has been brought against me, that / of obscurity; but not, I
think, with equal justice. An Author is obscure / when his conceptions
are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, / or unappropriate,
or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, / like the Bard of Gray,
or one that impersonates high and abstract / truths, like Collins's Ode
on the poetical character, claims not to be / popular--but should be
acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the / Reader. But this is a
charge which every poet, whose imagination is / warm and rapid, must
expect from his _contemporaries_. Milton did not / escape it; and it was
adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. / We now hear no more
of it; not that their poems are better understood / at present, than
they were at their first publication; but their fame is / established;
and a critic would accuse himself of frigidity or inattention, / who
should profess not to understand them. But a living writer is yet / sub
judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his /
feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider him as lost
beneath, / than as soaring above, us. If any man expect from my poems
the same / easiness of style which he admires in a drinking-song, for
him I have not / written. Intelligibilia, non intellectum adfero.
I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and I consider
/ myself as having been amply repayed without either. Poetry has been to
/ me its own[1146:1] "exceeding great reward": it has soothed my
afflictions: it / has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has
endeared solitude; / and it has given me the habit of wishing to
discover the Good and the / Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds
me.
There were inserted in my former Edition, a few Sonnets of my Friend /
and old School-fellow, CHARLES LAMB. He has now communicated to me / a
complete Collection of all his Poems; quae qui non prorsus amet, illum /
omnes et Virtutes et Veneres odere. My friend CHARLES LLOYD has /
likewise joined me; and has contributed every poem of his, which he /
deemed worthy of preservation. With respect to my own share of the /
Volume, I have omitted a third of the former Edition, and added almost /
an equal number. The Poems thus added are marked in the Contents by /
Italics. S. T. C.
STOWEY,
_May_, 1797.
MS. Notes attached to proof sheets of the second Edition.
(_a_) As neither of us three were present to correct the Press, and as
my handwriting is not eminently distinguished for neatness or
legibility, the Printer has made a few mistakes. The Reader will consult
equally his own convenience, and our credit if before he peruses the
volume he will scan the Table of Errata and make the desired
alterations.
S. T. Coleridge.
Stowey,
May 1797.
(_b_) Table of Contents. (N.B. of my Poems)--and let it be printed in
the same manner as Southey's Table of Contents--take care to mark _the
new poems_ of the Edition by Italics.
_Dedication._
Preface to the first Edition.
_Refer to the_ Second Edition.
_Ode on the departing Year._
Monody on the death of Chatterton, etc., etc.--
[_MS. R._]
P. [69].
[Half-title] [=Sonnets=], / _Attempted in the Manner_ / Of The / Rev. W.
L. Bowles. / Non ita certandi cupidus, quam propter amorem / Quod te
IMITARI aveo. / LUCRET.
[Pp. 71-74.]
INTRODUCTION TO THE SONNETS
For lines 1-63 vide _ante_, No. III, The Introduction to the 'Sheet of
Sonnets'. Lines 64 to the end are omitted, and the last paragraph runs
thus:
The Sonnet has been ever a favourite species of composition with me; but
I am conscious that I have not succeeded in it. From a large number I
have retained ten only, as seemed not beneath mediocrity. Whatever more
is said of them, ponamus lucro. S. T. COLERIDGE.
[_Note._ In a copy of the Edition of 1797, now in the Rowfant Library,
S. T. C. comments in a marginal note on the words 'I have never yet been
able to discover sense, nature, or poetic fancy in Petrarch's poems,'
&c.--'A piece of petulant presumption, of which I should be more ashamed
if I did not flatter myself that it stands alone in my writings. The
best of the joke is that at the time I wrote it, I did not understand a
word of Italian, and could therefore judge of this divine Poet only by
bald translations of some half-dozen of his Sonnets.']
[Pp. 243-245.]
ADVERTISEMENT
I have excepted the following Poems from those, which I had determined
to omit. Some intelligent friends particularly requested it, observing,
that what most delighted me when I was "young in _writing_ poetry, would
probably best please those who are young in _reading_ poetry: and a man
must learn to be _pleased_ with a subject, before he can yield that
attention to it, which is requisite in order to acquire a just taste." I
however was fully convinced, that he, who gives to the press what he
does not thoroughly approve in his own closet, commits an act of
disrespect, both against himself and his fellow-citizens. The request
and the reasoning would not, therefore, have influenced me, had they not
been assisted by other motives. The first in order of these verses,
which I have thus endeavoured to _reprieve_ from immediate oblivion, was
originally addressed "To the Author of Poems published anonymously, at
Bristol." A second edition of these poems has lately appeared with the
Author's name prefixed; and I could not refuse myself the gratification
of seeing the name of that man among my poems, without whose kindness
they would probably have remained unpublished; and to whom I know myself
greatly and variously obliged, as a Poet, a Man and a Christian.