My dear Gillman—The ground and matériel of this division of one's friends into ac, con and inquaintance, was given by Hartley Coleridge when he was scarcely five years old [1801]. On some one asking him if Anny Sealy (a little girl he went to school with) was an acquaintance of his, he replied, very fervently pressing his right hand on his heart, 'No, she is an inquaintance!' 'Well! 'tis a father's tale'; and the recollection soothes your old friend and inquaintance,
Undated. First published in Fraser's Magazine for Jan. 1835, Art. Coleridgeiana, p. 54. First collected 1893.
Now first published from an MS.
1826. Now first published from an MS.
Undated. Now first published from an MS.
Undated. Now first published from an MS.
[996:1] The following 'Fragments', numbered 1-63, consist of a few translations and versicles inserted by Coleridge in his various prose works, and a larger number of fragments, properly so called, which were published from MS. sources in 1893, or are now published for the first time. These fragments are taken exclusively from Coleridge's Notebooks (the source of Anima Poetæ, 1895), and were collected, transcribed, and dated by the present Editor for publication in 1893. The fragments now published for the first time were either not used by J. D. Campbell in 1893, or had not been discovered or transcribed. The very slight emendations of the text are due to the fact that Mr. Campbell printed from copies, and that the collection as a whole has now for the second time been collated with the original MSS. Fragments numbered 64, 96, 98, 111, 113, in P. W., 1893, are quotations from the plays and poems of William Cartwright (1611-1643). They are not included in the present issue. Fragments 56, 58, 59, 61, 63, 67, 80, 81, 83, 88, 91, 93, 94, 117-120, are inserted in the text or among 'Jeux d'Esprit', or under other headings. The chronological order is for the most part conjectural, and differs from that suggested in 1893. It must be borne in mind that the entries in Coleridge's Notebooks are not continuous, and that the additional matter in prose or verse was inserted from time to time, wherever a page or half a page was not filled up. It follows that the context is an uncertain guide to the date of any given entry. Pains have been taken to exclude quotations from older writers, which Coleridge neither claimed nor intended to claim for his own, but it is possible that two or three of these fragments of verse are not original.
[996:2] This quatrain, described as 'The concluding stanza of an Elegy on a Lady who died in Early Youth', is from part of a memorandum in S. T. C.'s handwriting headed 'Relics of my School-boy Muse; i. e. fragments of poems composed before my fifteenth year'. It follows First Advent of Love, 'O fair is Love's first hope,' &c. (vide ante, p. 443), and is compared with Age—a stanza written forty years later than the preceding—'Dewdrops are the gems of morning,' &c. (p. 440).
Another Version.
Unpublished Letter to Thomas Poole, Feb. 1. 1801, on the death of Mrs. Robinson ('Perdita').
[997:1] These two lines, slightly altered, were afterwards included in Alice du Clos (ll. 111, 112), ante, p. 473.
[998:1] The lines are an attempt to reduce to blank verse one of many minute descriptions of natural objects and scenic effects. The concluding lines are illegible.
[1001:1] These lines, 'slip torn from some old letter,' are endorsed by Poole, 'Reply of Coleridge on my urging him to exert himself.' First collected in 1893.
[1007:1] The translation is embodied in a marginal note on the following quotation from The Select Discourses by John Smith, 1660:—
'So the Sibyl was noted by Heraclitus as μαινομένῳ στόματι γελαστὰ καὶ ἀκαλλώπιστα φθεγγομένη, as one speaking ridiculous and unseemly speeches with her furious mouth.' The fragment is misquoted and misunderstood: for γελαστά, etc. should be ἀμύριστα unperfumed, inornate lays, not redolent of art.—Render it thus:
J. D. Campbell in a note to this Fragment (P. W., 1893, pp. 464-5) quotes the 'following prose translation of the same passage', from Coleridge's Statesman's Manual (1816, p. 132); 'Multiscience (or a variety and quantity of acquired knowledge) does not test intelligence. But the Sibyll with wild enthusiastic mirth shrilling forth unmirthful, inornate and unperfumed truths, reaches to a thousand years with her voice through the power of God.'
The prose translation is an amalgam of two fragments. The first sentence is quoted by Diogenes Laertius, ix. 1: the second by Plutarch, de Pyth. orac. 6, p. 377.
[1009:1] These rhymes were addressed to a Miss Eliza Nixon, who supplied S. T. C. with books from a lending library.
1. Amphibrach tetrameter catalectic ˘ ¯ ˘ | ˘ ¯ ˘ | ˘ ¯ ˘ | ˘ ¯
2. Ditto.
3. Three pseudo amphimacers, and one long syllable.
4. Two dactyls, and one perfect Amphimacer.
5. = 1 and 2.
6. ¯ ˘ ¯ | ¯ ˘ ¯ ˘ |
7. ¯ ˘ ¯ | ¯ ˘ ¯ ˘ |
8. ¯ ˘ ¯ | ¯ ˘ ¯, ¯ ˘ ¯, ¯ ˘ ¯
1801. Now first published from an MS.
1801. Now first published from an MS.
(i. e. antispastic Catalectic)
or
1801. Now first published from an MS.
1801. Now first published from an MS.
Now first published from an MS.
(?) October. 1814.
[It would be better to alter this metre—
10´ 6` 6´ 10` | 11´ 4` 11´ 4`:
and still more plaintive if the 1st and 4th were 11´ 11´ as well as the 5th and 7th.]
Now first published from an MS.
| ˘ ˘ ¯, ˘ ˘ ¯ | |||
| ˘ ˘ ¯, ˘ ˘ ¯ | |||
| ˘ ¯ ¯ ˘ ¯ |
|
˘ ˘ ¯; ˘ ˘ ¯, ˘ ˘ ¯ | |
| ˘ ¯ ¯ ˘ ¯ |
|
˘ ˘ ¯, ˘ ˘ ¯, ˘ ˘ ¯ | |
| ˘ ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ |
|
˘ ˘ ¯, ˘ ˘ ¯ | |
Now first published from an MS.
Now first published from an MS.
| I wish on earth to sing | ||
| Of Jove the bounteous store, | ||
| That all the Earth may ring | ||
| With Tale of Wrong no more. | ||
| I fear no foe in field or tent, | ||
| Tho' weak our cause yet strong his Grace: | ||
| As Polar roamers clad in Fur, | ||
| Unweeting whither we were bent | ||
| We found as 'twere a native place, | ||
| Where not a Blast could stir: | ||
|
For Jove had his Almighty Presence lent: Each eye beheld, in each transfigured Face, The radiant light of Joy, and Hope's forgotten Trace. |
|
| or | ||
|
O then I sing Jove's bounteous store— On rushing wing while sea-mews roar, And raking Tides roll Thunder on the shore. |
|
Now first published from an MS.
First published from an MS. in 1893.
1. Four Trochees /.
2. One spondee, Iambic \.
3. Four Trochees 1.
4. Repeated from 2.
5, 6, 7. A triplet of 4 Trochees—8 repeated.
First published from an MS. in 1893.
Now first published from an MS.
Curious instance of casual metre and rhyme in a prose narrative (The Life of Jerome of Prague). The metre is Amphibrach dimeter Catalectic ˘ ¯ ˘ | ˘ ¯, and the rhymes antistrophic.
July 7, 1826. Now first published from an MS.
1. I think most ears would take these as anapaestic throughout. But the introduction of Milton's
as a leit-motiv is of the first interest.
Description of it, l. 4, very curious. I should have thought no one could have run 'drunk with wine' together as one foot.
2. Admirable! I hardly know better trochaics.
3. Very interesting: but the terminology odd. The dochmius, a five-syllabled foot, is (in one form—there are about thirty!) an antispast ˘ ¯ ¯ ˘ plus a syllable. Catalectic means (properly) minus a syllable. But the verses as quantified are really dochmiac, and the only attempts I have seen. Shall I own I can't get any English Rhythm on them?
4. More ordinary: but a good arrangement and wonderful for the date.
5. Not nonsense at all: but, metrically, really his usual elegiac.
6. This, if early, is almost priceless. It is not only lovely in itself, but an obvious attempt to recover the zig-zag outline and varied cadence of seventeenth century born—the things that Shelley to some extent, Beddoes and Darley more, and Tennyson and Browning most were to master. I subscribe (most humbly) to his suggestions, especially his second.
7. Very like some late seventeenth-century (Dryden time) motives and a leetle 'Moorish'.
8. Like 6, and charming.
9. A sort of recurrence to Pindaric—again pioneer, as the soul of S. T. C. had to be always.
10 and 11. Ditto.
13. Again, I should say, anapaestic—but this anapaest and amphibrach quarrel is ἄσπονδος.
[1014:1] 'He attributed in part, his writing so little, to the extreme care and labour which he applied in elaborating his metres. He said that when he was intent on a new experiment in metre, the time and labour he bestowed were inconceivable; that he was quite an epicure in sound.'—Wordsworth on Coleridge (as reported by Mr. Justice Coleridge), Memoirs of W. Wordsworth, 1851, ii. 306.
In a letter to Poole dated March 16, 1801, Coleridge writes: 'I shall . . . immediately publish my Christabel, with the Essays on the "Preternatural", and on Metre' (Letters of S. T. C., 1895, i. 349). Something had been done towards the collection of materials for the first 'Essay', a great deal for the second. In a notebook (No. 22) which contains dated entries of 1805, 1815, &c., but of which the greater portion, as the context and various handwritings indicate, belongs to a much earlier date, there are some forty-eight numbered specimens of various metres derived from German and Italian sources. To some of these stanzas or strophes a metrical scheme with original variants is attached, whilst other schemes are exemplified by metrical experiments in English, headed 'Nonsense Verses'. Two specimens of these experiments, headed 'A Sunset' and 'What is Life', are included in the text of P. W., 1893 (pp. 172, 178), and in that of the present issue, pp. 393, 394. They are dated 1805 in accordance with the dates of Coleridge's own comments or afterthoughts, but it is almost certain that both sets of verses were composed in 1801. The stanza entitled 'An Angel Visitant' belongs to the same period. Ten other sets of 'Nonsense Verses' of uncertain but early date are now printed for the first time.
[1014:2] Sumptuous Tyranny floating this way. [MS.] On p. 17 of Notebook 22 Coleridge writes:—
A noble metre if I can find a metre to precede or follow.
Both lines are from Milton's Samson Agonistes.
[Vide ante, p. 100]
Clevedon, August 20th, 1795.[1021:1]
(First Draft)
(Second Draft)
[1021:1] Now first published from Cottle's MSS. preserved in the Library of Rugby School.