61 62 XVII. 147 47 XVI. "Sweet Mercy! how my very heart "Maid of my love! sweet Gene- 63 XVIII. To the Autumnal Moon 66 64 XIX. Thou bleedest, my poor heart, and thy distress " 47 151 148 xx. To the Author of The Robbers. XXII. To a Friend, together with an un- 68 71 XXIII. To the Nightingale . 73 xxiv. In the Manner of Spenser must spoil the whole with me who know it is only a fiction of yours, and that the 'rude dashings' did in fact not 'rock me to repose."" Two rows of asterisks replaced these lines in the edition of 1797; the reader will find Lamb's own lines in his collected Works. * In its original position, as a Song in the First Act of The Fall of Robespierre. Page in orig. ed. 84 XXIX. Imitated from Ossian 86 xxx. Complaint of Ninathoma 88 XXXI. From the Welsh 89 xxxII. The Sigh. 91 XXXIII. To a Young Ass 94 XXXIV. To an Infant 96 xxxv. Written at Clevedon 101 XXXVI. Written in Early Youth . EPISTLES. 119 II. To a Friend in answer to a melan 81 86 120 139 Religious Musings Clevedon. 121 123 88 Inconveniences connected with his residence at Clevedon, not at first taken into the calculation, had compelled Coleridge to forsake with reluctance his rose-bound cottage, and to take Quits up his abode at Bristol. During his journey to the North, to collect subscribers for The Watchman, an accident had introduced him at Birmingham to Charles Lloyd, the eldest son of the eminent banker of that town. The admiration excited in Lloyd by Coleridge's genius and eloquence resulted in an ardent desire to domesticate himself permanently with a man * A portion of this Epistle was probably written by Mrs. Coleridge. But vide infrà, p. 224. whose conversation was to him a revelation from Heaven. The preliminaries having been settled, and the parents of Lloyd having given their consent to the arrangement, Coleridge went to Birmingham on Saturday, September 17, to have an interview with Lloyd's father. * Here, on the following Tuesday morning, he was surprised by a letter from the medical attendant informing him of the birth of a son on the previous day, Monday, 19th September, 1796. The child was named after the metaphysician whose writings Coleridge at this time prized so highly, David Hartley.† His feelings on receiving the intelligence and on first beholding the infant are recorded in three Sonnets, two of which appeared in the Second Edition of his Poems. He hastened home, and Charles Lloyd returned with him, and remained with him, first at Bristol and afterwards at Stowey, until the close of 1797.‡ Birth of his son Hartley. * See the lines "to C. Lloyd on his proposing to domesticate with the Author," printed in the Second Edition of Coleridge's Poems, 1797 (p. 153 of the present volume). "Hartley's name was given him in honour of the metaphysician, David Hartley; and had he been baptized in his infancy, he would have borne both names. His baptism did not, in fact, take place till within the period of his distinct remembrance. The three surviving children, Hartley, Derwent and Sara, were all brought to the sacred font together, in the parish church of Crosthwaite, near Keswick." Memoir of Hartley Coleridge. By his Brother. (Prefixed to Hartley Moxon, 1851,) pp. xxii-xxiv. Coleridge's Poems. Vol. i. pp. 149, 150; and Vol. ii. p. 369, of the present edition. Ode to the The Ode to the Departing Year was composed on the 24th, 25th and 26th December, 1796, at the request of Mr. Flower, the editor of The Cambridge Intelligencer, in which paper it Departing originally appeared on the last day of Year. the year. It was immediately afterwards published in a separate form, as a thin quarto pamphlet,* accompanied by some Lines addressed to a Young Man of Fortune who abandoned himself to an indolent and causeless Melancholy † (most likely his new friend Charles Lloyd), and preceded by a long Dedication in prose to Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey. To Nether Stowey, accompanied by Lloyd, he removed early in the year 1797, in order to become Removes to Nether a neighbour of his friend Poole, who had he passed the happiest and on the whole the most fruitful year of his life, the Dedicatory Lines to his brother George, prefixed to the second Second edition of his Poems, are dated. In this Edition of second edition nineteen pieces of the Poems. former publication were discarded, and twelve new pieces added. Several of these have been already enumerated here follows a complete list of them : : * Ode on the Departing Year, by S. T. Coleridge. Bristol : Printed by N. Biggs, and sold by J. Parsons, Paternoster-row, London, 1796, 4to pp. 16. + Vide infrà, p. 210. NEW PIECES IN THE EDITION OF 1797. Page in present edition. € 163 1. Dedication 2. Ode to the New Year * 3. Sonnet. To the River Otter 4. Sonnet. On the birth of a son 8. On observing a Blossom 9. The Hour when we shall meet again 10. Lines to C. Lloyd . II. Sonnet. "The piteous sobs that choke the virgin's breath ” 12. On the Christening of a Friend's Child . 150 160 152 . 156 . 119 153 217 214 There were also added a new Preface and a Prose Introduction to the Sonnets. The volume was accompanied by some poems of Charles Lloyd, and by an enlarged collection of Sonnets and other Pieces by Lamb.† *sic in the Contents of the original edition. Poems by S. T. Coleridge, Second Edition. To which are now added Poems by CHARLES LAMB and CHARLES LLOYD. "Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitiæ et similium junctarumque Camanarum; 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, pp. xx. 278. The motto from Groscollias, Coleridge afterwards told Cottle, was all a hoax: not meeting with a suitable motto, he invented one, and with references purposely obscure. (Cottle, i. 294.) |