Updated September 2012.
p xiii CONTENTS: PART I.
Delete first "e" from full title of 116 Written at Shurton Bars. Viz.
Correct spelling to Bridgwater,
p xvii CONTENTS: PART I.
Emend title-component in 251 To Delia 602 to:
251 [cancelled] 602
p xix CONTENTS: PART I.
Emend title-component in 297 Sonnet Adapted from Petrarch 706 to:
297 [cancelled] 706
p xx CONTENTS: PART I.
Emend title-component in 328 Latin Lines on a Former Friendship 748 to:
328 [cancelled] 748
p xxi CONTENTS: PART I.
Insert an editorial footnote to "351 What is Life? A Metrical Experiment 767" as follows:
The correct date of this poem is 16 Aug 1805 and its correct position is following 369 Lines Connected with the Grasmere Circle.
p xxi CONTENTS: PART I.
Emend title-component in 356 Fragment: "What never is, but only is to be" 776 to:
356 [cancelled] 776
p xxi CONTENTS: PART I.
Emend title-component in 364 Curtailed Lines in Notebook 17 782 to:
364 [cancelled] 782
p xxxi CONTENTS: PART I.
Insert an editorial footnote to "667 Phantom or Fact? A Dialogue in Verse 1118" as follows:
The correct date of this poem is 1826-8? and its correct position is following 652 The Garden of Boccaccio.
p xxvii CONTENTS: PART I.
Emend title-component in 539 To a Young Lady Complaining of a Corn 941 to:
539 The Tender Corn 941
p xxx CONTENTS: PART I.
Emend title-component in 653 To Baby Bates 1096 to:
653 A Somnulent Extempore, Eyes half-closed and the Head Nodding Time: To an American Lady 1096
p xxxi CONTENTS: PART I.
Insert following 664 "King Solomon knew all things" 1116:
664A The Joy of Age
p xxxii CONTENTS: PART I.
(a) Emend ADDENDUM to ADDENDA
and (b) following 433A insert:
658A Lover's Reverie
658B. The Young Tanner: A Shenstoniad
659C. Lines on the Improvement of Verse by Music
p xxxix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS: PART I, no.7
Correct spelling to Lynton
p xlv FOREWORD, line 18.
Correct spelling to Bridgwater;
p lxvii CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES
Insert in LH column, under last entry for 1800:
(14 Sept) Birth of DC
p ci EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION, penultimate line.
Read "J. G. Raymond" (or "James Grant Raymond") -- not William
p cxxvi EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION, footnote 53.
Read "E. A. Heawood" -- viz. insert second initial, "A." see also 352)
p 33 Translation of Euclid (24)
Revise last two lines as follows:
; but a copy of the 5th ed (Edinburgh 1775), sold with J. B. Clemens's library in New York in 1945 as annotated by C, is of questionable authenticity (see CM --CC--VI 334).
p 84 A Simile; Written after a Walk Before Supper (49)
Insert into the headnote, between the first and second sentences:
Smerdon succeeded John Coleridge as vicar in Nov 1781, but not as schoolmaster and chaplain priest until 1787. While John Warren, one of the four church-governors, occupied the latter two positions, Smerdon opened a boys' boarding school in the Broad Street premises vacated some years previously by the Presbyterian Western Academy.
Also, in the headnote, second sentence (line 2), emend "it" to A Simile
p 99 Absence: A Poem (60)
Insert into the headnote, para 3, following "[6 Nov 1794])":
-- or perhaps a suppressed sense of obligation to the description of connubial bliss enjoyed by Lomond and Levina in Michael Bruce's Lochleven (1770), which he misleadingly accused Rogers of being indebted to.
p 114 Domestic Peace (66 )
In first para, delete "Mrs Radcliffe's heroine Adeline." and substitute: contemporary novels.
p 125 To a Beautiful Spring (74)
Add to the headnote, at the close of para 1:
Elements of the poem, dating from eighteen months and maybe longer before, might reflect feelings STC expressed about the River Cam (see VAR lines 28.1.1-6 commentary).
p 139 Monody on Chatterton (82)
Insert in second para, following close of second sentence ("with melancholy lament."):
A contemporary example in the same mode is furnished by Hannah Cowley's Monody to the Memory of Chatterton, collected in The Wreath: or, Miscellaneous Poetical Gleanings ed C. Earnshaw (Huddersfield [c 1801]) 227-8.
p 146 To a Young Ass (84)
Add to end of para 2:
For another example, see the anonymous lines To an Ass, Seen Grazing at Night in a Country Church-Yard ("Poor victim of oppression! and is this, | This all the choice thy tyrant master leaves thee?" collected in The Wreath: or, Miscellaneous Poetical Gleanings ed C. Earnshaw (Huddersfield [c 1801]) 71.
p 203 Brockley Coomb (108)
In the headnote, sentence 4, correct the date to "31 Oct 1830"; and, in the reference following the quotation, substitute "CN V 6498 f 38v".
(Graham Davidson)
(a) In para 2, replace first sentence with:
Only two versions of the poem are known: what appears to be early copy for publication in Poems (1796) in C's hand and publication in that volume.
(b) And add to end of para 2:
The ms version shows particular care over the pattern of line-indentation.
(c) Insert as editorial footnote to line 9:
C added a stress mark in the ms: viz. "cóncentrate".
(d) Insert as editorial footnote to lines 15-6:
The ms gives double underlines to "undivided", "Toil", "Health" and "Love", suggesting they should be given the same typographical treatment. If the words are going to be treated differently, "undivided" should probably be in italics and the remaining three words in caps.
p 231 The Eolian Harp (115)
Para 2, line 8: insert The (the correct title is The Castle of Indolence)
p 232 The Eolian Harp (115)
Insert as editorial footnote to line 15:
15. The most obvious of several deliberate echoes of Milton's description of Adam and Eve's wedding bower, which is also clad in jasmine and myrtle: see PL IV 310-11. (The description from which C draws also contains the ambiguous Mount Amara, alluded to in 178 Kubla Khan 141.)
p 235 Written at Shurton Bars (116)
In line 3 of title, read BRIDGWATER, (one "e")
p 279 The Destiny of Nations (139)
In line 5 of headnote, correct "almost 450" to "about 360"
(Paul Magnuson)
p 306 Ode on the Departing Year (142)
In the right-hand editorial note on line 43, substitute the following for "Source untraced":
Edward Young The Complaint; or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-5) IV 765.
(Paul Magnuson)
p 336 Continuation of "The Three Graves" (155)
Mid-page, read "Maria Eleonora Schoning" -- each of the second and third parts of the name need to be corrected.
p 350 This Lime-tree Bower my Prison (156)
Concluding word of first line Read "Bridgewater" -- viz insert "e" following "g".
p 366 The Ancient Mariner (161)
Eight lines up from bottom, read "Aubrey De Vere" -- with capital "D"
p 427 To a Musical Critic (166)
Delete "Burney reviewed for the Monthly . . . slight, circumstantial evidence" and substitute as follows.
Charles Burney's son, the classical critic, Charles Burney Jr, reviewed for the Monthly Review during the 1790s, while C reviewed for its rival, the more Whiggish Critical, during 1796-7. It is possible that Charles Jr discovered C's authorship of the present poem and also understood it as a satire on his father. When he reviewed the anonymous LB in the Monthly Review NS XXIX (Jun 1799) 202-10, he singled out 161 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, condemning it as "the strangest story of a cock and a bull that we ever saw on paper" (204). The identification of Charles Burney Sr as the butt of the present poem none the less rests on circumstantial evidence.
p 445 The Old Man of the Alps (168)
Insert at end of the final para of the headnote, following "extremely small."
Album verses have come to light, however, that combine lines 48-50 of the poem with an additional line under a new title, signed and dated 12 Apr 1830: see 664A The Joy of Age at p 1117. The adaptation could be held to increase the likelihood that C thought the present poem was his own.
p 454 Frost at Midnight (171 )
Insert in left-hand editorial footnote line 5, following first sentence, as follows; and begin new paragraph with present second sentence ("A more immediate literary source . . ."):
C's use of "stranger" in this sense is the first recorded by the OED (s.v. "stranger" n. --and a.-- #3b). Curiously, a proportion of the remaining examples cited by the OED are from Northern/Border usage. Did C pick up the word from WW or DW?
p 485 Christabel (176 )
Insert editorial footnote on line 54 as follows:
54. Jesu Maria] As e.g. Friar Laurence swears in Romeo & Juliet II iii 65.
(Paul Magnuson)
Revise line 2 of the headnote to read:
two most likely possibilities are Sept-Nov 1797 and May 1798,
p 516 The Nightingale (180)
Insert following at end of first paragraph:
Anne Tibble (John Clare: The Journals, Essays, and the Journey from Essex --Manchester 1980-- 21) compares lines 83-5 with Clare's The Nightingale's Nest and suggests that C's bird "is rather likely to have been a blackcap."
p 517 The Nightingale (180)
In right-hand editorial footnote, line 7, substitute "2nd Earl" for "Lord Granville"
p 518 The Nightingale (180)
In line 47 of text, correct spelling to "utter"
(Graham Davidson)
p 522 The Ballad of the Dark Ladiè (182)
Insert into the editorial footnote on the title (before present footnote on subtitle):
title. LADIÈ] The emphasis on the second syllable undoubtedly derives from an observation by Percy in his Reliques I liii -- a book C was reading at the time the poem was conceived --, although in writing the word out later C consistently and characteristically postponed the position of the stress mark so that it appears over the final letter.
p 546 Extempore Couplet on German Roads and Woods (198)
Revise last line of headnote to read:
Greenough, Charles Parry and Carlyon.
p 547 Lines Written in the Album at Elbingerode, in the Harz Forest (200)
Revise line 2 of the headnote to read:
party left Elbingerode. Three of the party, Charles Parry, Carlyon and Greenough, made copies,
Revise line 6 of the headnote to read:
Ten texts survive: C's holograph, the versions reported by Parry and Carlyon, and seven
p 552 On Mr Ross, Usually Cognominated "Nosy" (205)
Insert in line 3 of headnote, following "not known":
-- unless he is fancifully "Albert Ross", the invented name of some Home Office spy who dogged C while he composed his poem about the albatross, the first name linking with the villainous Albert of Osorio.
pp 554-5 etc Epigram on a Reader of his Own Verses, Inspired by Wernicke (208)
The surname "Wernike" should be spelled thus -- without a "c" -- here and elsewhere with respect to the following thirteen poems: nos. 230, 305-06, 308-312, 314, 316-9.
(Heidi Thomson)
p viii CONTENTS: PART II.
Emend title-component in 251 To Delia 602 to:
251 [cancelled] 602
Emend title-component in 297 Sonnet Adapted from Petrarch 706 to:
297 [cancelled] 706
p xi CONTENTS: PART II.
Insert an editorial footnote to "351 What is Life? A Metrical Experiment 767" as follows:
The correct date of this poem is 16 Aug 1805 and its correct position is following 369 Lines Connected with the Grasmere Circle.
p xi CONTENTS: PART II.
Emend title-component in 328 Latin Lines on a Former Friendship 748 to:
328 [cancelled] 748
p xi CONTENTS: PART II.
Emend title-component in 356 Fragment: "What never is, but only is to be" 776 to:
356 [cancelled] 776
p xiii CONTENTS: PART II.
Emend title-component in 364 :Curtailed Lines in Notebook 17 782 to:
364 [cancelled] 782
p xvii CONTENTS: PART II.
Emend title-component in 539 To a Young Lady Complaining of a Corn 941 to:
539 The Tender Corn 941
p xxi CONTENTS: PART II.
Emend title-component in 653 To Baby Bates 1096 to:
653 A Somnulent Extempore, Eyes half-closed and the Head Nodding Time: To an American Lady 1096
p xxi CONTENTS: PART II.
Insert following 664 "King Solomon knew all things" 1116:
664A The Joy of Age
p xxi CONTENTS: PART II.
Add footnote indicator to title "667 Phantom or Fact? A Dialogue in Verse" and insert following footnote at bottom of page:
The correct date of this poem is 1826-8? and its correct position is following 652 The Garden of Boccaccio.
p xxiii CONTENTS: PART II.
(a) Emend ADDENDUM to ADDENDA
(b) following 433A insert:
658A Lover's Reverie
658B. The Young Tanner: A Shenstoniad
659C. Lines on the Improvement of Verse by Music
pp 602-3 To Delia (251)
Replace with:
Cancelled. The author was John Wolcot (1738-1819), who published the lines under his pseudonym Peter Pindar, the person addressed being the painter, Ozias Humphry (1742-1810). The present ms surfaced at auctions in the earlier 20th century, when it was ascribed to Dr Johnson. It was afterwards lost to public view for more than fifty years but resurfaced in the 1970s, when it was re-ascribed to Coleridge and sold as such to the Houghton Library at Harvard. Full details are supplied by Marianne Van Remoortel "A Poem Wrongly Ascribed to Johnson and to Coleridge" Notes and Queries N.S. LVII (2010) 211-3.
The grounds for connecting the ms to STC so far remain unknown: the evidence of the handwriting alone is certainly insufficient. In the meantime, one might note that Humphry was born and schooled in Honiton, and was a good friend of William Jackson of Exeter (1730-1803), of whom he painted a miniature. If the ms ever did pass through STC's hands, it was probably at the time when he and RS visited the Ottery (Honiton)-Exeter area, and were in touch with literary-artistic circles that included Jackson and Exeter friends of Wolcot, during Sept 1799.
p 635 Tallyrand to Lord Grenville (262)
Right-hand editorial footnote on line 93:
Read "Sieyès" -- viz. with grave accent on second "e", only
pp 706-7 Sonnet Adapted from Petrarch (297 )
Replace with:
Cancelled. Mrs C's attribution is incorrect and the author is SC. There is an autograph copy in SC's hand at HRC, subjoined "August 3d. | 1819 | Translated by S.C.": MS | (Coleridge, S) | Works. "Sonnet from Petrarch [1 page]". Incidentally, the HRC also has a second Petrarch sonnet in signed holograph translation by SC ("When the fair star that marks the flying hours") dated 4 Aug 1819.
p 738 Epigram to my Candle, after Wernike (316)
Correct the opening lines of the Wernike text as follows:
Licht, du erleuchtest mir mein Blatt und meine Sinne:
Indem du abnimmst, werd' ich dass ich abnehm' inne,
(Heidi Thomson)
p 741 Epigram on Virgil's "Obscuri sub luce maligna", after Wernike (319)
In line 1 of the Wernike text, read "ist" (insert "t"); and in line 6, read "Finsterniss" (double "s" at close).
(Heidi Thomson)
p 748 Latin Lines on a Former Friendship (328)
These lines have been found not to be by Coleridge. Entry moved to Volume 2 Part 2.
p 767 What is Life? A Metrical Experiment (351)
(a) In headnote following title, correct date in brackets to "16 Aug 1805"
(b) In headnote line 1, delete "immediately"
(c) In headnote line 2, replace "headed" with "preceded by the question"
(d) In headnote line 4, replace "afterwards" with "at the same time"
p 776 Fragment: "What never is, but only is to be" (356)
Cancelled. EHC took the lines from a draft in Notebook 19, the full extent of which is given below as Imitations of Du Bartas Etc (416).
(Paul Magnuson)
These lines have been found not to be by Coleridge. Entry moved to Volume 2 Part 2.
pp 791-2 Lines Written in a Dream (379)
In opening sentence of headnote, emend lines 1-4 to read as follows:
. . . (CN II 2799), but line 4 is quoted from Osorio V ii 154. The immediately preceding lines in the notebook are a recollected version of 296 Lines Composed during a Night Ramble behind Skiddaw; and see below on 380 A Single Line on Revenge and 381 Lines on a Death. On the subject of dreams . . . etc
(Paul Magnuson)
p 792 A Single Line on Revenge (380)
In last line of headnote, substitute:
could be a reworking of Alhadra's exclamation in Osorio V ii 193-4.
Substitute for last sentence of headnote ( = lines 4-5) as follows:
An alternative possibility, suggested by surrounding notebook fragments, is that the lines expand on the death of Alhadra's husband, Ferdinand, at Osorio V ii 168.
p 820 Psyche (402)
In para 1, revise the opening of the third sentence to read:
Five of the six extant ms versions
p 830 Imitations of Du Bartas Etc (416)
Insert at close of first paragraph:
; and II 999#12 gave lines 27-30 alone, untitled, among a gathering of "Fragments".
pp 941-2 To a Young Lady Complaining of a Corn (539)
Replace with:
539. THE TENDER CORN
[Jun-Jul 1817?]
A fair copy in the hand of JG's assistant, J.H.B.Williams, alongside the evidence of other material in the same ms suggests that it might date from early in C's sojourn at Highgate. A slightly different two-stanza version in LR is dated 1825; and the version given here is from among a group of poems C sent to, or left for, Mrs Aders on 30 Sept 1829. He introduces it as one of two "flower-buds, Or rather peeping Daisies plucked at the foot of Parnassus by his Juvenile hand for an offering to the Lack-a-daisy Muse."
The Rose that blushes like the Morn
Bedecks the valleys low:
And so dost thou, O tender Corn,
My Angelina's Toe.
But on the Rose there grows a Thorn, 5
That breeds disastrous Woe:
Ah! so wilt thou, too tender Corn!
To Angelina's Toe.
Insert the following into the note on line 64, after the first sentence of the note:
Alternatively, during the period of post-war social, political and economic unrest, Lord Liverpool and Frederick Robinson, Prime Minister and President of the Board of Trade in the current liberal Tory administration. Robinson was known as "Goody" long before he was ennobled as Viscount Goderich (see the letter dated 1 June 1821 by [Mrs W. Bradford] More Letters from Martha Wilmot: Impressions of Vienna, 1819-1829 --ed Marchioness of Londonderry and H. M. Hyde, 1935-- 111); while "Goose", a soubriquet encouraged by alliteration, describes Liverpool's public persona well enough. C sent a copy of BL to Liverpool with a long letter in Jul 1817 (CL IV 757-63 and cf. TT (CC) I 43-4. "The Coward Whine . . . of th' other side" then refers to the attacks on RS following the unauthorized publication of Wat Tyler (1817) and Hazlitt's attacks on LS, as well as to mob-orators like Orator Hunt and Cobbett (see the cartoons described by M. Dorothy George English Political Caricature, 1793-1832: A Study of Opinion and Propaganda --2 vols, Oxford 1959-- 182-3).
Begin a second para with the next sentence (Beginning "Other identifications --")
p 984 The Tears of a Grateful People (565)
Insert the following at the close of the introductory commentary:
Stephen C. Behrendt Royal Mourning and Regency Culture: Elegies and Memorials of Princess Charlotte (1997) supplies a larger literary-historical context -- though, oddly, Hurwitz's poem and C's version of it are not mentioned.
Expand and revise third sentence of the headnote (after "(CN IV 4996).") as follows:
The theme is perennial, but C's lines almost certainly contain a backward glance at RS's Youth and Age, which appeared anonymously in Annual Anthology I (1799) 17-8, and their deeply personal application is evident in such notebook entries as CN IV 5184.
Add second sentence to EC12-14, as follows:
Allan Clayson Wish You Were Here: Coleridge's Holidays at Ramsgate, 1819-1833 (Ramsgate, 2001) 64-70, etc. illustrates C's enthusiasm for the steam-packets he knew at first hand.
p 1024 The Delinquent Travellers (599)
Add to close of EC81:
Clayson Wish You Were Here (2001) 6, 8 supplies illustrations.
p 1055 The Alternative (622)
Revise footnote 3 to read:
An unusual name for a woman -- it is the name of the town in Sicily where Proserpine was carried away by Pluto -- but it makes "Anne" in reverse and could therefore point to AG, with whom relations were tricky at about this time.
(Graham Davidson)
pp 1088-9 The Netherlands (651)
In the first sentence of the headnote on p 1088, read: "Notebook 40 f 27r (CN V 5922),"
And insert editorial footnote on p 1089:
5. fly-transfixing] EHC, followed by several twentieth-century editors, read "fog-transfixing", but the word looks more like "sky-transfixing" or "fly-transfixing". Kathleen Coburn The Self Conscious Imagination (Oxford 1974) 52 independently read "fly-transfixing".
(a) Replace title with:
653 A SOMNULENT EXTEMPORE,
EYES HALF-CLOSED AND THE HEAD NODDING TIME:
TO AN AMERICAN LADY
[1828-9]
(b) In first para, revise first sentence to read:
There are three known versions of the lines: a transcript in a contemporary album, a transcript of a transcript reported in 1888, and a version copied out by STC about a year after the lines were composed.
(c) And in first para, revise final sentence to read:
The version given here is from STC's holograph where it is
followed by a retrospective "NOTE": "The
judicious choice of the Metrical Feet in the last lulling strain of the
preceeding elaborate composition, the first and second third Lines
consisting of two Amphimacers (-- u -- |, the second of an Amphimacer with an
Iambic (u --), and the fourth of two trochees (-- u | -- u) and a long syllable
(--), cannot in the Authors' opinion be sufficiently admired."
(d) Revise/Replace text as follows:
You came from o'er the Waters,
From famed Columbia's land;
And you have Sons and Daughters
And Money to command:
And I live in an Island, 5
Great Britain is its' name;
With money none to buy land,
The more it is the shame!
But we are all the Children
Of one great Lord of Love; 10
Whose Mercy, like a Mill-drain,
Runs over from above.
Lullaby! Lullaby!
Sugar-plum and Cates!
Close your lids, peeping Eye! 15
Bonny Baby B-----
p 1117 Insert following text of "King Solomon knew all things" (664):
664A. THE JOY OF AGE
[Apr 1830]
The verses were inscribed by C in an album, over his signature dated Highgate 12 Apr 1830. They combine lines 48-50 of 168 The Old Man of the Alps, first published in M Post 8 Mar 1798, and now preceded by a line written for the occasion and with a new title. The album belonged to Elizabeth Green, only child of William Green, a wealthy Jamaican planter, and his wife Ann Rose, née Hall and later Wood, also daughter of a Jamaica planter. William Green died in Feb 1814, a few months after the birth of his daughter. Elizabeth died 24 Dec 1898.
C wrote the words "Daughter's Wedding-day" here in larger letters. His own daughter, Sara, had been married on 3 Sept 1829, and he might here be looking forward to the young Elizabeth Green's marriage in Apr 1831 to the fifth earl of Harrington, Leicester Stanhope (1784-1862). However, see variorum corrections below for a version of 402 Psyche that C copied into the same album. It is possible that he copied out a version of Psyche first, as he did for his friend Mrs Samuel Carter Hall, on 30 April 1830; then decided it was unsuited for a recipient so young and fashioned the present poem as a counter to its mood. If 12 April does not refer to the date of Sarah Green's engagement, it might be the date when the album was left with him.
One Joy I have, tho' Age my eyes bedims:
For O! you know not, on an Old Man's limbs
How thrillingly the pleasant sun-beams play
That shine upon a Daughter's Wedding-day.
pp 1118-9 Phantom or Fact? (667)
Replace both headnote and text as follows.
667. PHANTOM OR FACT?
A DIALOGUE IN VERSE
[1826-8?]
A rather self-conscious archaism inflects the lines with the quality of an exercise. “Sate” (line 1) often recurs in contexts like the present one: cf 155 Continuation of “The Three Graves” VAR 284, 299, 311, 317; 253 Love VAR -1.1.28/7.1, 7; 299 The Keepsake 29; 652 The Garden of Boccaccio 4, 8; 655 Alice du Clós 60, 121; 688 Love’s Apparition and Evanishment 12. “Unnethe” (line 4), meaning “not easily, scarcely”, is recorded in common use by OED from c 1300 to c 1600. Walter Scott used it in The Lay of the Last Minstrel canto 6 st 30 (1805) 190 (later editions supply an explanatory note). “Fain” (line 8) is a word also connected with the late 18th-century ballad revival.
Themes, images and mood connect with several poems written by C in the 1820s; and this as good as place as any to remark the coincidence between C’s long-time awareness of “That weary, wandering, disavowing Look!” (line10) and Heine’s poem, Der Asra. Heine tells the story of a young slave who is doomed to waste and die as he gazes on the unattainable daughter of the Sultan. Heine acknowledges Stendhal De l’amour (1822) ch 53 for the legend, who in turn cites an Arabic manuscript. Is it possible that C picked up the same legend from RS at the time Thalaba was being written, and he came to meet SH? The lines were included in C’s last three collections but, oddly, no manuscript version has come to light. The present text reproduces PW (1828).
AUTHOR.
A lovely form there sate beside my bed,
And such a feeding calm its presence shed,
A tender Love so pure from earthly leaven
That I unnethe the fancy might control,
Twas my own spirit newly come from heaven 5
Wooing its gentle way into my soul!
But ah! the change—It had not stirr’d, and yet
Alas! that change how fain would I forget?
That shrinking back, like one that had mistook!
That weary, wandering, disavowing Look! 10
Twas all another, feature, look, and frame,
And still, methought, I knew, it was the same!
FRIEND.
This riddling Tale, to what does it belong?
Is’t History? Vision? or an idle Song?
Or rather say at once, within what space 15
Of Time this wild disastrous change took place?
AUTHOR.
Call it a moment’s work (and such it seems)
This Tale’s a Fragment from the Life of Dreams;
But say, that years matur’d the silent strife,
And ’tis a Record from the Dream of Life. 20
(John Beer drew my attention to Heine's Der Asra many years ago.)
p 1126 The Three Patriots (676 )
Insert following at close of editorial headnote:
; but his lines go back further in time, echoing a passage in the most famous tract written for the Society for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers, namely Hannah More's Village Politics; Addressed to all the Mechanics, Journeymen, and Day Labourers, in Great Britain, by Will Chip, a Country Carpenter (Canterbury 1793; often reprinted, e.g. in The Weekly Entertainer --Sherborne-- XXI --11 Feb and 18 Feb 1793 -- 121-5, 145-51). In More's dialogue, a blacksmith, Jack Anvil, asserts patriotic self-improvement against a mason, Tom Hood, who wants "Liberty and Equality, and the Rights of Man" (4). He invokes "Neighbour Snip" (6) in support:
Tom. I'm a friend to the people. I want a reform.
Jack. Then the shortest way is to mend thyself.
Tom. But I want a general reform.
Jack. Then let every one mend one. (4)
C caps More's "roast beef of Old England" argument against parliamentary reform by celebrating instead the conditions for a creative union of opposites.
p 1180 Annex A §8 Rugby Manuscript.
Under "f 27 (p 33)", transpose "; facsimile in Autograph Poetry . . . II 97" to follow "continued" (viz. first page of Croft's facsimile is actually f 27v).
p 1195n Annex B §1 Poems (1796 )
Replace right-hand editorial footnote on lines 29-30 as follows:
-- unless Bowles's Sonnet XXI: To the River Cherwell, lines 6-8:
and that sad lay
Whose musick on my melancholy way
I woo'd (Sonnets --2nd ed Bath 1789-- 31)
C added Shaw's name to the preceding quotation only in 1797 and either forgot where this one came from or decided the derivation was too modified to acknowledge.
(Paul Magnuson)
p 1289 Annex C §6C Poems (1797 )
Delete second sentence and insert at the beginning:
Charles Lloyd's copy, with his signature on the title-page and a contemporary 2-line Latin inscription on front free endpaper (only), was sold at Hodgson's, 20 Feb 1930 (lot 539 to Stonehill for £42); purchased by Halsted B. Vander Poel from James F. Drake, New York, 11 Mar 1941 (for $300); and sold at the Vander Poel Sale, Christie's (London), 3 Mar 2004 (lot 82 to Christopher Johnson for £900).
p 1299 Annex C §10 Fears in Solitude ... (1798 )
Insert the following at the end of the penultimate line:
WW had not seen a copy by 27 Jul 1799 and had to request Cottle to send him one: James Butler "Wordsworth, Cottle, and the Lyrical Ballads: Five Letters" Journal of English and Germanic Philology LXXV (1976) 139-53 at 149-50.
p 1303 Annex C §11.2 Piccolomini/Wallenstein (1800 )
In John Chubb's copy, beginning of third para, spell Bridgwater, (one "e").
p 1308 Annex C §12 Annual Anthology (1800 )
At the close of the second sentence of the headnote, emend period to semi-colon and insert:
a large part of RS's own copy for Vol.I, collected in an album once belonging to John Payne Collier, was sold in the Halsted B. Vander Poel Sale, Christie's (London), 3 Mar 2004 (lot 116 for £10,000).
p 1310 Annex C §12.2 Annual Anthology (1800 )
(a) Revise details of location as follows:
Sold in the Vander Poel Sale, Christie's (London), 3 Mar 2004 (lot 84 to Bernard Quaritch on behalf of a British collector for £8,000).
(b) Emend the final paragraph to include the following details:
The price fetched at the Clemens sale was $160. The volumes were sold again at the Chrysler Sale, Parke-Bernet, 26 Feb 1952 (lot 80 for $130).
p 1336 Annex C §17E Sibylline Leaves (1817 )
Substitute the following revised description:
Charles Lamb's copy, containing his transcript of 540 Fancy in Nubibus
A copy bound in green morocco gilt by Rivière, carrying a transcription in CL's hand of "Fancy in the Clouds: A Marine Sonnet" on the blank verso of the section "Meditative Poems in Blank Verse" [p 214], and small corrections and annotations in CL's hand on pp18-187. The title page carries the autograph initials "JHP." and the inscription "the gift of Chas Lamb | 1828", both in ink. JHP is identified in pencil as John Howard Payne (1791-1852), the American-born actor-dramatist friend of CL and author of "Home, Sweet Home", and there are some pencil annotations in the text.
When the copy was still bound in half-calf, it was offered for sale by Bertram Dobell (undated clipping--perhaps from the London Times--sent to me by Carl Woodring). It was sold in the Rivière binding by Anderson Galleries 14 Dec 1909 (lot 387 for $70), who oddly chose to describe Fancy in Nubibus as "inscribed in Coleridge's hand." It subsequently passed into the possession of Major S. Butterworth, who correctly described the inserted poem as in CL's handwriting: see his "Coleridge's 'Marine Sonnet'" The Bookman LVIII (Jul 1920) 134-6 at 135. It was sold by Henkel's of Philadelphia, 26 Jan 1921 (lot 295 for $360), in the Gribbel Sale, Freeman's of Philadelphia, 16-17 Apr 1945 (lot 208 for $410), and in the Vander Poel Sale, Christie's (London), 3 Mar 2004 (lot 89 to an American collector for £4,800). Butterworth's article and the Vander Poel catalogue contain illustrations.
CL liked to transcribe ms poems by C into copies of books of C's works--both his own copies and those he presented to others. A copy of BL is also extant in which he transcribed 592 Youth and Age (see VAR TEXT PR 1). It is possible that Dobell's copy listed above is a second copy of SL owned by CL, into which he transcribed the same poem.
p 1325 Annex C §16 Christabel . . . (1816)
Insert in para 1, following the end of the second sentence, and begin new para with "The copies inscribed or corrected . . . ":
Paul Cheshire has discovered details of the printing in John Murray's Albermarle Street records. "Caution was evident even in the first edition which appears from the ledger to have been run off in two batches: 1000 followed by 500 both of which are described as the first edition. Two further editions of 500 each then followed. The starting price had been 3s 6d per copy but 517 copies were sold in December [1817] at the knock down price of 1s each, perhaps to sell off all the remaining stock." ("'I lay too many Eggs': Coleridge's 'Ostrich Carelessness'" The Coleridge Bulletin NS No.23 --Spring 2004-- 1-21 at 18 (amended); and see Cheshire's correction to Variorum Christabel 176 = Vol.II, p 623, §a.)
p 1337 Annex C §17H Sibylline Leaves (1817 )
Insert:
Clement Carlyon's copy
A copy containing his ownership inscription on front pastedown, dated 1823; his initialled 5-line note on p 170 (200 Lines Written at Elbingerode), and corrections following the errata page; further notes in other hands, including a manuscript list of contents and tipped-in newspaper clippings. It is now bound in late nineteenth-century brown morocco, preserving the original blue wrappers, and carries the bookplate of George Livingston Nichols.
Sold at the Vander Poel Sale, Christie's (London), 3 Mar 2004 (lot 87 to Christopher Edwards for £700).
p 1342 Annex C §17.6 Sibylline Leaves (1817 )
Emend the description to include the following additional details:
The number of pages is 1-208 (viz. sigs B-O), bound in brown morocco by Rivière for Stuart M. Samuel and carrying his bookplate, signed and dated 1892. Page [1], the Ancient Mariner half-title, carries an additional note in C's hand, "Vol.3."
The complete version of C's annotation of the half-title connects not only with C's 1815 plans to write an essay on the supernatural in poetry but also with a letter by J. J. Morgan to Mathew Gutch sent on 6 May 1816 (quoted in BL--CC--II 286-7). Morgan reports C's enthusiasm for John Murray's suggestion of a three-volume work: vol.I to end with the distinction between Fancy and Imagination, vol.III to open with "an essay on the imaginative in Poetry" to introduce the collection of poems which are still in process of being recovered. C's annotation looks back to a time before Morgan's letter, when thoughts that Christabel was to be included in SL were more recent. It repeats the promise at the close of BL vol.I (CC I 306), written before Jul 1815 and in printed form before May 1816, that readers will find a "critical essay on the uses of the Supernatural in poetry" prefixed to the Ancient Mariner. Sig O proofs of SL were sent to C on 24 Feb 1816, and the present group of pages surely dates from soon after. In the following months, up to Jun 1816, six--not four--further signatures (sigs P-U) were added. Annex B §5 Sibylline Leaves (1817) supplies references.
Sold at the Vander Poel Sale, Christie's (London), 3 Mar 2004 (lot 86 to an American collector for £7,800); the catalogue contains an illustration of page [1]. An examination of the original in relation to other proof copies is likely to confirm the existence of Morgan's hand in the corrections and notes, and possibly Gutch's, too. The material is better described as marking a stage in the evolution of the interconnected SL-BL proofs than "a sort of mock-up for the essay on supernatural poetry", as I described it before.
Insert:
658A. LOVER'S REVERIE
[30 Sept 1829, or before]
C copied out the lines for Mrs Aders describing them as one of "two flower-buds, Or rather peeping Daisies plucked at the foot of Parnassus by his Juvenile hand for an offering to the Lack-a-daisy Muse." Though the small group of jeux-d'esprit was copied in late Sept 1829, some of them date from an earlier time.
Inly thinking,
Dimly winking,
Flat I fell upon the Ground --
Dire Disaster!
Sticking-plaister 5
Heal'd the softly-flowing Wound.
Little Cupid!
Why so stupid?
Cheer thy spirits very soon.
Gen'tle Breezes 10
Fan the *Treeses!
Nightingales salute the Morn!
* a double plural, to let the reader know that it was a whole Grove of Trees.
N.B. There is always some recondite beauty in what might at first sight pass for defects in a work of true Genius.
658B. THE YOUNG TANNER: A SHENSTONIAD
[30 Sept 1829, or before]
C copied out the lines for Mrs Aders in 1829, along with other jeux d'esprit, prefaced by a prose-explanation: "The following is by an uncertain Hand. But I think, the Authors' name was Anon. -- At least, it has been attributed to that Gentleman, whose numerous productions are familiar to all readers of Poetry, particularly of Knox's elegant Extracts in verse, and Dodsley's Collection. I grieve to say, that the first Stanza or two are lost." The lines are not to be found in Vicesimus Knox Elegant Extracts or Robert Dodsley Miscellanies in Verse and, if they do derive from C's recollection of a previous poem, are likely to have been modified by that process.
* * * * *
Her Mama had forbid her to roam --
For the Stockings to darn was her Care
So she stay'd all the day at her home,
And sate by the fire in a Chair,
Fair Sempstress! says He -- How d'ye do! 5
As soon as she heard the Youth speak --
Kind Tanner! says She -- How are You?
And the Blushes they cover'd her Cheek.
I have found you a Gift, O my Fair!
Yes! I found a dead Foal on the Road -- 10
Yet did I from skinning forbear,
Lest you'd call me a barbarous Toad!
For he ne'er could be true, you averr'd,
Who could rob a poor Foal of her Hide!
And I lov'd you the more when I heard 15
From your lips such filly-anthropy glide.
-- Cætera desunt.
title. A Shenstoniad] The coinage signifies mid-eighteenth century pastoral of a kind made popular by William Shenstone (1714-63), though C's lines are more pastiche than imitation.
658C. LINES ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF VERSE BY MUSIC
[30 Sept 1829, or before]
C prefaced the lines by a prose-explanation: "O that the Songs and Songlets here collected were but set to charming Music by some modern Haydn -- I might then exclaim --". They form the conclusion to a package of jeux d'esprit he copied for Mrs Aders.
Blest be the Man that set these Lays!
He claims our thanks as well as praise!
Since had it not been for the Music
The Words had made both me
and you sick.
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