who feels she knows not why-great disgust for her once favoured knight. This coldness is very painful to the Baron, who has no more conception than herself of the supernatural transformation. She at last yields to her father's entreaties, and consents to approach the altar with this hated suitor. The real lover returning, enters at this moment, and produces the ring which she had once given him in sign of her betrothment. Thus defeated, the supernatural being Geraldine disappears. As predicted, the castle bell tolls, the mother's voice is heard, and to the exceeding great joy of the parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after which follows a reconciliation and explanation between the father and daughter. "Lamb, who visited us soon after Coleridge's death, and not long before his own, talking of the Christabel, observed, 'I was very angry with Coleridge, when I first heard that he had written a second canto, and that he intended to finish it; but when I read the beautiful apostrophe to the two friends, it calmed me.' He was one of those who strongly recommended Coleridge to leave as a fragment what he had so beautifully begun."* In this year, or about the Christmas of 1799, Coleridge commenced his long and brilliant series of political articles in the Morning Post; of verse the little that he contributed was of a satirical kind, and amounted only to three pieces. In this year appeared a second and enlarged edition of the Lyrical Ballads, with the famous Preface in which Wordsworth explained his theories and principles of poetry. This edition contained all Coleridge's former contributions, with the addition of a poem entitled Love, the substance of the Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie, originally printed in the Morning Post, in the previous year.* The majority. of Coleridge's other poetical contributions of 1798-9 to the Morning Post appeared, together with a few pieces never before printed, in the second volume of Southey's Annual Anthology, published at Bristol in 1800. NEW PIECES IN THE SECOND VOLUME OF Seventeen Epigrams Page in Vol. ii. of the present edn. 162-166 Lines to W. L., Esq., while he sang a song to To an Unfortunate Woman at the Theatre. in Germany Home-Sick. Written in Germany 181 . 181 . 190 . 191 * In this enlarged edition of Lyrical Ballads the poem of The Ancient Mariner re-appeared in a considerably altered form-many stanzas being entirely rescinded, a few added, and some remodelled. The Lyrical Ballads passed into a third edition in 1802, and a fourth in 1805, after which The Ancient Mariner was not again published till it re-appeared in the Sibylline Leaves in 1817. In collecting his Minor Poems in 1815, Wordsworth discarded the compositions of his colleague, as Coleridge had himself discarded those of Lamb and Lloyd in the third edition of his Juvenile Poems, published in 1803. This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison 'Perdita' Robinson. 206 . 222 In the summer of 1800 the beautiful, accomplished and unfortunate Mary Robinson (once celebrated under the sobriquet of 'Perdita,') visited the Lake District, and resided chiefly at Keswick. Here she naturally became acquainted with Coleridge, who had just settled there, and who seems to have been much fascinated by her person, talents, and amiable manners. The impression made by Coleridge's wonderful verse and wonderful talk on poor Perdita seems to have been an equally strong one. She addressed to him some lines full of enthusiastic admiraand on the birth of his son Derwent, which took place at Keswick† September 14, 1800, Birth of Coleridge. tion; * Cottle (i. 244) seems to imply that these lines originally appeared in a Bristol newspaper in 1796. The other pieces may have first seen the light in a similar way, but with the exception of a few of the Epigrams, I have not traced any of them to an earlier source than this second volume of The Annual Anthology. the first volume. There is nothing of Coleridge's in "It was in the autumn of the year 1800," says the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, "shortly before my own birth, that my father came with my mother and brother to reside in that land of lakes and mountains with which a supposed school of poetry came to be associated. A large house, in a most beautiful situation, in the vale of Derwentwater, on the bank of the river Greta, and about a mile from the lake, since better known under its name of Greta Hall, as the residence she honoured the occasion with an ode,* in which she invoked the hills and lakes and streams to be gracious to the infant, and to foster and develop in him the gifts and genius of his father. Coleridge missed this gracious lady of the soft blue eye and sweet song, when she departed from the district, and in November of the same year, a few weeks only, as it happened, before the soft blue eyes were closed for ever in death, he addressed to her some exquisite verses, which have until now never appeared in any edition of his Poems.† The following description of the house he was then inhabiting at Keswick, was written by Coleridge to Southey, who himself afterwards came to inhabit it until his death : Greta Hall. "Our house stands on a low hill, the whole front of which is one field and an enormous garden, nine-tenths of which is a nursery garden. Behind the house is an orchard, and a small wood on a steep slope, at the foot of which flows the river Greta, which winds round and catches the evening lights in the front of the house. In front we have a giant's camp—an encamped army of tent-like mountains, which by an inverted arch gives a view of of Robert Southey, was then in building by a Mr. Jackson. An arrangement was made by which this house when completed was to have been divided between my father and his landlord. As it turned out, the portion then completed was shared by them in common, the other portion, and eventually the whole (my father's health obliging him to quit Keswick as a place of permanent residence) being occupied by Southey, who came to reside with my father in 1803." * Both these pieces appear in her Collected Poems. Lond. 1806, vol. i. p. 221, sqq. + See vol. ii. pp. 158-160. another vale. On our right the lovely vale and the wedge-shaped lake of Bassenthwaite; and on our left Derwentwater and Lodore full in view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrowdale. Behind us the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, with two chasms and a tent-like ridge in the larger. A fairer scene you have not seen in all your wanderings."* This letter, as well as another of later date, contained a most gloomy account of his own health. During the later part of the year 1801 Coleridge contributed the following pieces of verse to the columns of The Morning Post : Ode after bathing in the sea. Song to be sung by the lovers of all the noble liquors comprised under the name of Ale. Sept. 15. Sept. 18. Sept. 22. Epitaph on a Bad Man. Sept. 25. Drinking versus Thinking. Sept. 26. The Devil Outwitted. Dec. I. Dec. 4. The Wills of the Wisp. A Sapphic. Dec. 16. To a Critic. In 1802 the poetical contributions of Coleridge to the Morning Post were very rich and varied, and included the magnificent Ode, entitled Dejection. If, therefore, we seem to catch in Wordsworth's sublime Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Childhood the same key-note of thought, and some of the same subtle harmonies, it must be remembered that *S. T. C. to Robert Southey: Greta Hall, Keswick, April 13, 1801. |