om. MS. S. T. C.
While—on whom] While—on whom 1828, 1829.
object] Body MS. S. T. C.
are] are 1828, 1829.
thee—were] thee—were 1828, 1829.
1826.
[460:1] First published in the Literary Magnet, January, 1827, p. 71. First collected in 1893. A transcript, possibly in Mrs. Gillman's handwriting, is inscribed on the fly-leaf of a copy of Bartram's Travels in South Carolina which Coleridge purchased in April 1818. J. D. Campbell prefixed the title 'Homeless', and assigned 1810 as a conjectural date. Attention was first called to publication in the Literary Magnet by Mr. Bertram Dobell in the Athenaeum.
Title] An Impromptu on Christmas Day L. M. 1827.
from] for L. M. 1827.
? 1826.
[460:2] First published in the Literary Souvenir, 1827. The Epitaphium Testamentarium (vide post, p. 462) is printed in a footnote to the word 'Berengarius'. Included in 1828, 1829, and 1834.
learned] learned L. S.
recreant] recreant L. S., 1828, 1829.
his] his L. S.
shall] will L. S., 1828, 1829.
th' approaching] the coming L. S.
Τὸ τοῦ ἜΣΤΗΣΕ τοῦ ἐπιθανοῦς Epitaphium testamentarium αὐτόγραφον.
1826.
Ἔρως ἀεὶ λάληθρος ἑταῖρος[462:2]
1826.
[462:1] First published in Literary Souvenir of 1827, as footnote to title of the Lines Suggested by the Last Words of Berengarius: included in Literary Remains, 1836, i. 60: first collected in 1844.
[462:2] This quatrain was prefixed as a motto to 'Prose in Rhyme; and Epigrams, Moralities, and Things without a Name', the concluding section of 'Poems' in the edition of 1828, 1829, vol. ii, pp. 75-117. It was prefixed to 'Miscellaneous Poems' in 1834, vol. ii, pp. 55-152, and to 'Poems written in Later Life', 1852, pp. 319-78.
Title] ΕΠΙΤΑΦΙΟΝ ΑΥΤΟΓΡΑΠΤΟΝ L. R., 1844: ἐπιθανοῦς] ἐπιδανοὺς L. S.
The emendation ἐπιθανοῦς (i. e. moribund) was suggested by the Reader of Macmillan's edition of 1893. Other alternatives, e. g. ἐπιδευοῦς (the lacking), to the word as misprinted in the Literary Souvenir have been suggested, but there can be no doubt that what Coleridge intended to imply was that he was near his end.
Greek motto: Ἔρως ἀεὶ λάλος MS. S. T. C.
Scene—A spacious drawing-room, with music-room adjoining.
Katharine. What are the words?
Eliza. Ask our friend, the Improvisatore; here he comes. Kate has a favour to ask of you, Sir; it is that you will repeat the ballad[463:1] that Mr. —— sang so sweetly.
Friend. It is in Moore's Irish Melodies; but I do not recollect the words distinctly. The moral of them, however, I take to be this:—
Eliz. What are the lines you repeated from Beaumont and Fletcher, which my mother admired so much? It begins with something about two vines so close that their tendrils intermingle.
Fri. You mean Charles' speech to Angelina, in The Elder Brother[463:2].
Kath. A precious boon, that would go far to reconcile one to old age—this love—if true! But is there any such true love?
Fri. I hope so.
Kath. But do you believe it?
Eliz. (eagerly). I am sure he does.
Fri. From a man turned of fifty, Katharine, I imagine, expects a less confident answer.
Kath. A more sincere one, perhaps.
Fri. Even though he should have obtained the nick-name of Improvisatore, by perpetrating charades and extempore verses at Christmas times?
Eliz. Nay, but be serious.
Fri. Serious! Doubtless. A grave personage of my years giving a Love-lecture to two young ladies, cannot well be otherwise. The difficulty, I suspect, would be for them to remain so. It will be asked whether I am not the 'elderly gentleman' who sate 'despairing beside a clear stream', with a willow for his wig-block.
Eliz. Say another word, and we will call it downright affectation.
Kath. No! we will be affronted, drop a courtesy, and ask pardon for our presumption in expecting that Mr. —— would waste his sense on two insignificant girls.
Fri. Well, well, I will be serious. Hem! Now then commences the discourse; Mr. Moore's song being the text. Love, as distinguished from Friendship, on the one hand, and from the passion that too often usurps its name, on the other—
Lucius (Eliza's brother, who had just joined the trio, in a whisper to the Friend). But is not Love the union of both?
Fri. (aside to Lucius). He never loved who thinks so.
Eliz. Brother, we don't want you. There! Mrs. H. cannot arrange the flower vase without you. Thank you, Mrs. Hartman.
Luc. I'll have my revenge! I know what I will say!
Eliz. Off! Off! Now, dear Sir,—Love, you were saying—
Fri. Hush! Preaching, you mean, Eliza.
Eliz. (impatiently). Pshaw!
Fri. Well then, I was saying that Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the world: and mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-known ballad, 'John Anderson, my Jo, John,' in addition to a depth and constancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes a peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature; a constitutional communicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul; a delight in the detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament within—to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life—even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away and which, in all our lovings, is the Love;—
Eliz. There is something here (pointing to her heart) that seems to understand you, but wants the word that would make it understand itself.
Kath. I, too, seem to feel what you mean. Interpret the feeling for us.
Fri. —— I mean that willing sense of the insufficingness of the self for itself, which predisposes a generous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and completion of its own;—that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved object modulates, not suspends, where the heart momently finds, and, finding, again seeks on;—lastly, when 'life's changeful orb has pass'd the full', a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly experience; it supposes, I say, a heartfelt reverence for worth, not the less deep because divested of its solemnity by habit, by familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling of modesty which will arise in delicate minds, when they are conscious of possessing the same or the correspondent excellence in their own characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of love appropriates it, can call Goodness its Playfellow; and dares make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged Virtue the caressing fondness that belongs to the Innocence of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies which had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty.
Eliz. What a soothing—what an elevating idea!
Kath. If it be not only an idea.
Fri. At all events, these qualities which I have enumerated, are rarely found united in a single individual. How much more rare must it be, that two such individuals should meet together in this wide world under circumstances that admit of their union as Husband and Wife. A person may be highly estimable on the whole, nay, amiable as neighbour, friend, housemate—in short, in all the concentric circles of attachment save only the last and inmost; and yet from how many causes be estranged from the highest perfection in this! Pride, coldness, or fastidiousness of nature, worldly cares, an anxious or ambitious disposition, a passion for display, a sullen temper,—one or the other—too often proves 'the dead fly in the compost of spices', and any one is enough to unfit it for the precious balm of unction. For some mighty good sort of people, too, there is not seldom a sort of solemn saturnine, or, if you will, ursine vanity, that keeps itself alive by sucking the paws of its own self-importance. And as this high sense, or rather sensation of their own value is, for the most part, grounded on negative qualities, so they have no better means of preserving the same but by negatives—that is, by not doing or saying any thing, that might be put down for fond, silly, or nonsensical;—or (to use their own phrase) by never forgetting themselves, which some of their acquaintance are uncharitable enough to think the most worthless object they could be employed in remembering.
Eliz. (in answer to a whisper from Katharine). To a hair! He must have sate for it himself. Save me from such folks! But they are out of the question.
Fri. True! but the same effect is produced in thousands by the too general insensibility to a very important truth; this, namely, that the Misery of human life is made up of large masses, each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year, the death of a child; years after, a failure in trade; after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have married unhappily;—in all but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum total of the unhappiness of a man's life, are easily counted, and distinctly remembered. The Happiness of life, on the contrary, is made up of minute fractions—the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.
Kath. Well, Sir; you have said quite enough to make me despair of finding a 'John Anderson, my Jo, John', with whom to totter down the hill of life.
Fri. Not so! Good men are not, I trust, so much scarcer than good women, but that what another would find in you, you may hope to find in another. But well, however, may that boon be rare, the possession of which would be more than an adequate reward for the rarest virtue.
Eliz. Surely, he, who has described it so well, must have possessed it?
Fri. If he were worthy to have possessed it, and had believingly anticipated and not found it, how bitter the disappointment!
(Then, after a pause of a few minutes).
1827.
[462:3] First published in the Amulet for 1828 (with a prose introduction entitled 'New Thoughts on Old Subjects; or Conversational Dialogues on Interests and Events of Common Life.' By S. T. Coleridge): included in 1829 and 1834. The text of 1834 is identical with that of the Amulet, 1828, but the italics in the prose dialogue were not reproduced. They have been replaced in the text of the present issue. The title may have been suggested by L. E. L.'s Improvisatrice published in 1824.
[463:1] 'Believe me if all those endearing young charms.'
[463:2] See Beaumont and Fletcher, The Elder Brother, Act III, Scene v. In the original the lines are printed as prose. In line 1 of the quotation Coleridge has substituted 'neighbour' for 'wanton', and in line 6, 'close' for 'shut'.
16th October 1827.
[468:1] First published in 1893. Lines 7-10 are borrowed from lines 5-8 of the 'Answer ex improviso', which forms part of the Improvisatore (ll. 7, 8 are transposed). An original MS. is inscribed on the first page of an album presented to Mrs. Derwent Coleridge on her marriage, by her husband's friend, the Reverend John Moultrie. The editor of P. W., 1893, printed from another MS. dated Grove, Highgate, 15th October, 1827.
Title]: To Mary S. Pridham MS. S. T. C.
his] the MS. S. T. C. his] the MS. S. T. C.
'One word with two meanings is the traitor's shield and shaft: and a slit tongue be his blazon!'—Caucasian Proverb.
? 1828.