Coleridge's Ode can claim not only priority of composition, but priority of publication.* POEMS BY S. T. C. IN THE MORNING POST, 1802. The Picture, or the Lover's Resolution. Chamouni, the Hour before Sunrise. Inscription on a Jutting Stone over a Sept. 6. Sept. II. Sept. 24. Sept. 27. Sept. 27. A Hint to Premiers and First Consuls. Oct. 4. Dejection an Ode. Oct. 16. Oct. 19. The Language of Birds. The Day-Dream. From an Emigrant to his Absent Wife. His political articles of the same period were also numerous and important. After the autumn of this year, however, Coleridge ceased to contribute to the paper either verse or prose; and in August 1803, Stuart sold the proprietorship of it. In the summer of 1802 Charles Lamb, in company with his sister, visited the lakes, and spent three weeks with Coleridge at Keswick. Wordsworth was not in the lake-country during Lamb's visit. "I set out with Mary to Keswick," he writes, * Wordsworth's Ode originally appeared in his collection of Poems published in 1807, and seems from the date attached to it to have been commenced in 1803 and finished in 1806. Lamb at "without giving Coleridge any notice. He received us with all the hospitality in the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunset, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple, &c. &c. We entered Coleridge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with clouds upon their heads. Glorious creatures, I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that night, like an intrenchment: gone to bed, as it seemed, for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study, which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, with an old-fashioned organ, never played upon, big enough for a church, shelves of scattered folios, an Eolian harp, and an old sofa, half bed, &c. And all looking out upon the last fading view of Skiddaw, and his broad-breasted brethren: what a night! Here we stayed three full weeks."* Birth of In November and during the greater part of December 1802 Coleridge was absent on a tour in Wales with his friend Thomas Wedgwood. Sara Cole- On the eve of his return, his fourth child ridge. and only daughter, Sara, was born at Greta Hall, Keswick, December 21, 1802. Her father reached home again apparently the day after her birth. * Lamb to Manning: Sept. 24, 1802. A pretty word-picture of the three children, partly from the father's, and partly from the daughter's pen, finds a fit place here : Coleridge wrote thus of Hartley and of Sara in a letter to Mr. Poole (1803) : A pretty child-picture. Hartley is what he always was, a strange, strange boy, exquisitely wild,' an utter visionary; like the moon among thin clouds he moves in a circle of light of his own making. He alone is a light of his own. Of all human beings I never saw one so utterly naked of self. He has no vanity, no pride, no resentments; and, though very passionate, I never yet saw him angry with anybody. He is, though seven years old, the merest child you can conceive; and yet Southey says he keeps him in perpetual wonderment; his thoughts are so truly his own. His dispositions are very sweet, a great lover of truth, and of the finest moral nicety of feelings; and yet always dreaming... If God preserve his life for me, it will be interesting to know what he will become; for it is not only my opinion, or the opinion of two or of three, but all who have been with him talk of him as a thing that cannot be forgotten... "My meek little Sara is a remarkably interesting baby, with the finest possible skin, and large blue eyes; and she smiles as if she were basking in a sunshine as mild as moonlight of her own quiet happiness." There is an allusion in the Memoir of Sara Coleridge to her brother Derwent's sweet childhood. "I have often heard from mamma what a fine, fair, broad-chested little fellow he was at two years old, and * *Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge. Edited by her Daughter. Lond. 1873, vol. i. pp. 3, 4, 6, 7. how he got the name of Stumpy Canary when he wore a yellow frock, which made him look like one of these feathery bundles in colour and form. I fancy I see him now as my mother's description brought him before me, racing from kitchen to parlour, and from parlour to kitchen, just putting in his head at the door, with roguish smile, to catch notice, then off again, shaking his little sides with laughter. Charles Lamb and his sister, who paid a visit of three weeks to S. T. C. in the summer of 1802, were charmed with the little fellow, and much struck with the quickness of eye and of memory that he displayed in naming the subjects of prints in books which he was acquainted with. 'Pi-pos, Pot-pos,' were his names for the striped or spotted opossum, and these he would utter with a nonchalant air, as much as to say, 'Of course I know it all as pat as possible.' Lamb calls him 'Pi-pos' in letters to Greta Hall, after his visit to the lakes." * In 1803, a new edition of Coleridge's Juvenile Poems,† of which Longmans had purchased the copyright from Cottle, when the latter retired from business, was decided upon by the London firm. In this edition Coleridge Third Edition of Poems. 66 * In letters to Coleridge of Oct. 11 and 23, 1802, Lamb alludes to "Pi-pos." Talfourd says this was a nickname of endearment for little Hartley Coleridge."-ED. † POEMS, by S. T. COLERIDGE. Felix curarum, cui non Heliconia cordi Serta, nec imbelles Parnassi e vertice laurus! Sed viget ingenium, et magnos accinctus in usus Solamur cantu. Third Edition. London: Printed by N. Biggs, Crane-court, Fleet-street, for T. N. Longman and O. Rees, Paternoster-row, 1803, pp. xi. 202. could now have had little interest, either pecuniary or paternal. Indeed, he was so indifferent as to its fate that he allowed his friend Charles Lamb to see it through the press, giving him, without much demur, what seems to have almost been carte blanche as to selection and omission of pieces, alteration of lines, &c. Lamb's own productions, and those of Lloyd, ceased to appear in this edition: it contained, however, none of the magnificent productions of the maturity and manhood of Coleridge's genius, and indeed contained no entire new piece of his of any kind or period whatever. Nevertheless the edition is interesting for the sake of its various readings; the fine taste of Lamb having frequently extorted from Coleridge a delicate and happy revision, as in the last two lines of the fourth Miscellaneous Sonnet,* and in the last two lines of the Sonnet to Bowles.† In the summer of this year (1803), Coleridge was induced to join Wordsworth and his sister in a tour in Scotland, where Coleridge had never before set foot. They left Keswick on Monday morning, *See p. 148 infra, note. + Second version, p. 139 infra. It must be borne in mind that the majority of these Juvenile Poems did not re-appear again until 1828, when Coleridge's Poetical Works were first collected (very few of them being included in the collection published in 1817 under the title of Sibylline Leaves). When they did so re-appear, the text was in most of the cases alluded to above restored to the original reading, possibly from deliberate preference; but more probably from want of access to a copy of the third edition, and absolute or partial forgetfulness of the improvements made in it. My reasons for this supposition will be better understood by referring to a note in the Appendix to vol. ii. p. 379. |