_writing paragraphs_. Coleridge was connected with the staff of the
Courier as a sort of assistant-editor for five months in 1811. His
contributions during this period appeared as the "Essays on His Own Times"
in 1850.
_poet-laureate_ and _stamp-distributor_ are references respectively to
Southey and Wordsworth.
_bourne from whence_. "Hamlet," iii, 1, 79.
_tantalized by useless resources_. Compare this with Coleridge's own lines
of bitter self-reproach addressed "To a Gentleman":
"Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain."
P. 214. _one splendid passage_. The lines beginning "Alas! they had been
friends in youth" (408-426). The same passage had been singled out for
praise by Hazlitt in his lecture "On the Living Poets" and in the review
of "Christabel" which had appeared in the Examiner of June 2, 1816. The
authorship of this review has been disputed but should on internal
evidence, despite its failure in appreciation, be ascribed to Hazlitt. See
Works, XI, 580-582.
_Translation of Schiller's Wallenstein_, made by Coleridge in 1799-1800.
_Remorse_. This tragedy was played at the Drury Lane Theatre with
considerable popular success in 1813. It was a recast of an early play
entitled "Osorio," composed in 1797.
P. 215. _The Friend_; a literary, moral, and political weekly paper,
excluding personal and party politics and the events of the day
(1809-1810), was reissued in one volume in 1812, and with additions and
alterations (rather a rifacimento than a new edition) in 1818.
The sketch in the Spirit of the Age concludes with a contrast between
Coleridge and William Godwin.