Oct. 1802, Oct. 1805, Oct. 1807, Feb. 1811, &c. Life and Correspondence of R. S., iii. 51, 124, 275.

PAGE 41 1. 11. the words of Jeremy Taylor. I cannot trace this quotation.

16. From the lofty address of Bacon. See Novum Organum, ed. T. Fowler, p. 157:- Franciscus de Verulamio sic cogitavit ; talemque apud se rationem instituit, quam viventibus et posteris notam fieri ipsorum interesse putavit' (ref. Biog. Lit. 1847). The sentence in our text beginning with these words ('from the lofty', &c.) has, in the original edition of the Biog. Lit., no conclusion. The words following the quotation from Pindar ('there was a gradual sinking', &c.) were added by the editors of the second edition.

PAGE 42 1. 2. all men being supposed able to read. Cp. Southey's complaint (Letter to J. Rickman, Mch. 1804) that 'everybody is a critic, that is, every reader imagines himself superior to the author, and reads his book that he may censure it, not that he may profit by it'. (Southey's Life and Correspondence, ii. 277.)

11. St. Nepomuc. St. John of Nepomuc (1330-1383), patron saint of Bohemia, and Canon of the metropolitan chapter of Prague. The enmity of the Emperor Wenceslaus (the causes of which are disputed) led to his persecution, and finally to his death by drowning in the Moldau. The story alluded to in the text is told in J. P. Richter's Blumen-, Frucht- u. Dornenstücke, Nr. v (ref. Biog. Lit. 1847).

13. St. Cecilia. Her position as patron saint of music is generally ascribed to the fact that 'in singing the praises of the Lord, she often joined instrument to vocal music'. I do not know from what source Coleridge's account of the legend is drawn. Another version is given by Herder ('Caecilia,' Werke, ed. Suphan, v. 253), who bases the tradition on a monkish misinterpretation of the Latin in the Acta Caeciliae.

21. the unique 'Cid'. Southey's Cid (1808) consists of a translation of the Spanish Cronica del Cid (thirteenth century), enriched with incidents and descriptions borrowed from the Poem of the Cid (twelfth century) and the ballads of which the 'Cid' is the hero. The same subject had already attracted Herder in Germany. (See Life and Correspondence of R. S., vol. iii, ch. xiii and xiv.)

PAGE 43 1. 1. half a dozen or more playful poems. Such are the 'Devil's Thoughts' written in conjunction with Coleridge, and published with additions as The Devil's Walk in Southey's Collected Poetical Works, the Nondescripts, Gooseberry Pie, &c. All these pieces were written before 1800.

25. I know nothing that surpasses the vileness, &c. This style of criticism is again animadverted on in ch. xxi, conclusion. Cp. A. P. 1803 (p. 30), on 'the head-dimming, heart-damping principle of judging a work by its defects, not its beauties'.

PAGE 44 1. 13. till... the reviewers support their decisions, &c. Cp. Coleridge's suggestions in ch. xxi, for the establishment of a review which should administer judgement according to a constitution and code of laws' grounded on the twofold basis of universal morals and philosophic reason'.

27. Haec ipsi novimus esse nihil. The motto prefixed by Southey, at Coleridge's suggestion, to his Minor Poems, 1815. Cp. letter to Southey, Dec. 1799 (Letters, p. 317), 'On this I am decided, that all the light pieces should be put together under one title, with a motto thus: "Nos haec novimus esse nihil-Phillis amat Corylos".

30. the prudery of Spratt. Sprat, the biographer of Cowley, refused to publish his letters, on the ground that Letters that pass between particular Friends, if they are written as they should be, can scarce ever be fit to see the light'. (See Life prefixed to Works, 1668.) Johnson remarks of this biography that 'Sprat's zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has produced a funeral oration rather than a history'. (Johnson, Lives of the Poets: Cowley.)

PAGE 45 1. 24. the articles of his composition in the reviews. Southey was invited by Jeffrey to contribute to the Edin. Review, but declined. When the Quarterly was established, chiefly through the efforts of Sir Walter Scott, in 1809, Southey was asked to write for it. He accordingly sent an article to the first number, and subsequently became a regular contributor, although he regretted the resemblance of the review in tone and temper to the Edinburgh. See Life and Correspondence of R. S., iii. 124, 222.

F. N. the articles on Methodism, &c. See the Quarterly Review, Nov. 1810, Art. xiii, On the Evangelical Sects; and Oct. 1811, Art. xv; Life and Correspondence of R. S., iii. 303, 319.

PAGE 46 1. 3. if we except the highest lyric... he has attempted every species successfully. Coleridge's privately expressed opinion of Southey's poetry was hardly so favourable. As early as 1796 (Letters, p. 210) he had criticized Joan of Arc unfavourably. To Payne Collier he said, in 1811 (Preface to Payne Collier's edition of the Lectures on Shakespeare (1859), pp. xxiv, xxv), that 'he looked upon the Curse of Kehama as a work of great talent, but not of much genius'; and to Crabb Robinson he declared (Diary, &c., MS. March 13, 1811), that 'he deemed him (Southey) not qualified to appreciate Spanish poetry. He was a jewel-setter'; and (Jan. 29, MS.) that neither Southey nor Scott were poets'. See, however, T. T., p. 338 (ed. 1858), for praise of The Curse of Kehama.

10. claims. Apparently a misprint for charms.

PAGE 47 1. 2. Publicly has Mr. Southey been reviled, &c. See reference to Anti-Jacobin at the end of this chapter. The tone of the criticisms in the Edin. Review (see previous note) hardly merits

such severe language as this. Here, again, we must suppose that Coleridge refers to more obscure periodicals.

PAGE 48 1. 18. the character which an antient attributes to Marcus Cato. ". - homo virtuti simillimus, et per omnia ingenio Diis quam hominibus propior, qui numquam recte fecit, ut facere videretur, sed quia aliter facere non potuerat.' Vell. Paterc. ii. 35 (quoted Biog. Lit. 1847). This conception of the truly virtuous character was, it may be remarked, also Coleridge's, and on it he grounded his difference from Kant's Stoic principle, 'Duty for Duty's sake.' (Letters, p. 681, &c.)

Since their

PAGE 49 F. N. my opportunities of intercourse. quarrel over Pantisocracy in 1795, the intercourse between Southey and Coleridge had been fitful. They saw much of each other from time to time in the years 1800-1804, and again in 1808-10; since then they had scarcely met. Southey was estranged by Coleridge's failings, of which he always thought and spoke with more justice than charity; and Coleridge was no doubt keenly alive to his want of sympathy. To Coleridge's family Southey was always kindness itself.

the Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin. See the poem entitled The New Morality, written by Canning and published in the Anti-Jacobin for July 9, 1798, and in the Beauties of the AntiJacobin, 1799. In the note to which Coleridge refers (Beauties, &c., p. 306) Lamb and Southey are mentioned, but not Lloyd. The attack on Coleridge and his friends was renewed in the AntiJacobin Review and Magazine, August and September, 1798. (See the Life of C. Lamb, by E. V. Lucas, i. 36; The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, ed. C. Edwards, pp. 271, 299.)

CHAPTER IV

'Lyrical Ballads.

PAGE 50 1. 12. the two volumes so entitled. With other Poems. In Two Volumes, by W. Wordsworth. 1800.' Vol. i contained the poems of the first edition (1798), with the addition of Love: vol. ii the new poems, which were all by Wordsworth. The first edition was published as one volume.

PAGE 51 1. 2. acute notices of men and manners, &c. Cp. ch. i. p. 11, where the merits of the school of Pope are characterized in similar terms.

29. In the critical remarks, therefore, &c. The justice of this remark is borne out by the tone of the various reviews of Wordsworth's poems in the Edinburgh Review. The critics speak of 'the debasing effects of this miserable theory', 'the open violation of the established laws of poetry', &c.; and cite the weakest verses to confirm their censures. (See Edin. Rev., Oct. 1802, Oct. 1807.)

PAGE 52 F.N. The bull namely consists. See A. P. 1803 (p. 40) for an example of ' that curious modification of ideas by each other which is the element of bulls'; and A. P. p. 156, on 'bulls of action'.

PAGE 53 1. 10. the composition which one cited as execrable, &c. Wordsworth had the same experience among his critics. See Memoirs of Wordsworth, by Christopher Wordsworth, i. 174,

where he cites a number of these 'Harmonies of Criticism'.

PAGE 54 1. 32. Marini (1569-1625), a poet of the later Italian Renaissance. The conceits of Marini and his imitators followed inevitably from a vigorous application of rules that denied to poetry the right of natural expression' (Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, ii. 257).

PAGE 55 1. 14. the contest... between Bacchus and the frogs. Aristoph. Ranae, 225-7, 257-66.

F.N. If we may judge from the preface, &c. Coleridge is no doubt thinking of the Essay Supplementary to the Preface, 1815, in which Wordsworth records his distrust and contempt of the judgement of the Public, as opposed to that of the People. (0.W. p. 953.)

PAGE 56 1. 18. During the last year of my residence, &c. Wordsworth's Descriptive Sketches were published in 1793, and Coleridge was already acquainted with them in the autumn of that year. The 'last year of his residence' was 1794. (See Social Life at the English Universities, by Christopher Wordsworth, 1874, Appendix; Life, pp. 25-6, 41.)

19. Mr. Wordsworth's first publication. The Evening Walk was also published (separately) in 1793.

33. a greater closeness of attention, &c. Cp. Biog. Lit. i. 3 (of his own early poems): 'I forgot to inquire, whether the thoughts themselves did not demand a degree of attention unsuitable to the nature and objects of poetry.'

1. 35. In the following extract. (See Descriptive Sketches, 11. 332-47 (O. W., p. 608). For 'deeper' in 1. 2 read 'deepening'; and, instead of 11. 3-5 in the quotation, the following:

And mournful sounds, as of a Spirit lost,

Pipe wild along the hollow-blustering coast,
Till the sun walking on his western field

Shakes from behind the clouds his flashing shield.

PAGE 57 F. N. an unpublished poem. The Butterfly (1815?).

PAGE 58 1. 1. I was in my twenty-fourth year, &c. See Life, p. 64 n. The precise date of the first meeting of Coleridge and Wordsworth (a point which has been discussed) has not been ascer

tained, but a careful examination of all the evidence available, published and unpublished, has all but convinced me that it may have probably taken place as early as September, 1795. The men do not appear to have met a second time until the autumn of 1796, after which intercourse seems to have been more or less frequent.' Coleridge was born on Oct. 21, 1772. He is no doubt thinking of their second meeting.

5. a manuscript poem, which still remains unpublished. Coleridge speaks as if this poem was not the Female Vagrant; but his memory is probably at fault. According to H. N. Coleridge (Biog. Lit. 1847, i. 76) 'the poem to which reference is here made was intituled, An adventure on Salisbury Plain. Mr. Wordsworth afterwards broke it up, and the Female Vagrant was composed out of it.' The Female Vagrant was first published in Lyrical Ballads (1798). The whole poem was not printed until 1842, when it appeared in an amended form, in the volume entitled, Poems chiefly of Early and Late Years. In a note prefixed to the poem, Wordsworth speaks as if it was composed after his visit to Salisbury Plain in the summer of 1793: but in a later note (printed in the 1857 edition of his poems) he declared that much of the Female Vagrant's story was written at least two years before. The truth seems to be that an earlier poem had been composed, dealing with particular events which had come to Wordsworth's notice, and that after his rambles on Salisbury Plain he enlarged it and gave it the imaginative setting which those rambles had suggested. However this may be, it was in the completer form that Coleridge first knew the poem. 'Mr. Coleridge,' writes Wordsworth in the later note, 'when I first became acquainted with him, was so much impressed with this poem, that he would have encouraged me to publish the whole as it then stood; but the mariner's fate appeared to me so tragical as to require a treatment more subdued and yet more strictly applicable in expression than I had yet given it. This fault was corrected nearly fifty years afterwards, when I determined to publish the whole poem.' Of the Female Vagrant Wordsworth subsequently came to hold a very poor opinion. J. Payne Collier records (Diary, Feb. 10, 1814: see his ed. of Coleridge's Lectures, 1856, Preface li) that, on his praising the poem, Wordsworth said 'it was one on which he set comparatively small value: it was addressed to coarse sympathies, and had little or no imagination about it, or invention as to story'. He added that it was merely descriptive 'although the description is accurate enough'. How far the treatment of nature in the poem is merely descriptive, how far imaginative, in Coleridge's sense of the term, the reader may judge for himself. Cp. Biog. Lit. ii. 16 'It has before been observed, that images however beautiful, though faithfully copied from nature, and as accurately represented in words, do not of themselves constitute the poet', &c.