66. Lyrical Ballads, | With | A Few Other Poems. | London: | Printed For J. & A. Arch, Gracechurch-Street. | 1798.
In Cottle, the Bristol bookseller and poet, Wordsworth and Coleridge found a friend whose appreciation of their genius took a practical form. As early as 1795 we learn from a letter of Coleridge to Thomas Poole that "Cottle has entered into an engagement to give me a guinea and a half for every hundred lines of poetry I write, which will be perfectly sufficient for my maintenance, I only amusing myself on mornings; and all my prose works he is eager to purchase." When the two poets planned to issue a book in which Coleridge should show "the dramatic treatment of supernatural incidents," while Wordsworth should try to give the charm of novelty to "things of ever[y] day," it was Cottle who bought it. He says: "A visit to Mr. Coleridge at Stowey has been the means of my introduction to Mr. Wordsworth, who read me many of his Lyrical Pieces, when I perceived in them a peculiar but decided merit. I advised him to publish them, expressing a belief that they would be well received. I further said that he should be at no risk; that I would give him the same sum which I had given Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Southey, and that it would be a gratifying circumstance to me to usher into the world, by becoming the publisher of, the first volumes of three such poets as Southey, Coleridge and Wordsworth—a distinction that might never again occur to a provincial publisher."
He gave Wordsworth thirty guineas for the copyright, and issued the book with the following imprint: Bristol: Printed by Biggs and Cottle, for T. N. Longman, Paternoster Row, London, 1798. But this imprint did not remain upon the title-page of the whole edition, for Cottle tells us that the sale was so slow, and the severity of most of the reviews so great, that its progress to oblivion seemed ordained to be as rapid as it was certain. He parted with the largest proportion of the five hundred at a loss, to Mr. Arch, a London bookseller, who bound up his copies with a new title-page bearing his name. The copies of the earlier issue are very rare.
Shortly after the transfer, Cottle retired from business, selling all his copyrights to Longman and Rees, far-sighted publishers, both of whom were also Bristol men. In the transfer the copyright of the Lyrical Ballads was down in the bill as worth nothing, whereupon Cottle begged the receipt for the thirty guineas, and presented it to Wordsworth.
The work was entirely anonymous, with nothing to show that it was a joint production. Coleridge's poem, The Nightingale, inserted at the last minute, in place of Lewti, makes an extra leaf between pages 68 and 69. It is numbered 69 (the verso is blank), but no apparent confusion results since the original page 69 is not numbered, in accordance with the printer's scheme of numbering.
We catch an interesting glimpse of this poet-publisher in a letter of Coleridge's to Robert Southey, written under date of July 22, 1801:
"Poor Joseph! he has scribbled away both head and heart. What an affecting essay I could write on that man's character! Had he gone in his quiet way on a little pony, looking about him with a sheep's-eye cast now and then at a short poem, I do verily think from many parts of the "Malvern Hill," that he would at last have become a poet better than many who have had much fame, but he would be an Epic, and so
'Victorious o'er the Danes, I Alfred, preach,
Of my own forces, Chaplain-General.'"
Duodecimo.
Collation: viii, 68 pp., 1 l., 69-210 pp., 1 l.