Earl Henry. Take heed, Don Curio! lest with greater right They scoff my Brother for a choleric boy. What insult then?

Don Curio. Our Friend, the Chancellor, Welcomes you home, and shares the common joy In the most happy tidings of your Victory: 180 But as to your demand of instant audience From the Queen's Royal Person,—'tis rejected!

Sandoval. Rejected?

Barnard (making a deep obeisance). May it please the Earl!

Earl Henry. Speak, Barnard.

Barnard. The noble Youth, your very valiant brother, And wise as valiant (bowing to DON CURIO who puffs at him) rightly doth insinuate 185 Fortune deals nothing singly—whether Honors Or Insults, whether it be Joys or Sorrows, They crowd together on us, or at best Drop in in quick succession.

Fernandez (mocking him). 'Ne'er rains it, but it pours,' or, at the best, 190 'More sacks upon the mill.' This fellow's a Perpetual plagiarist from his Grandmother, and How slily in the parcel wraps [he] up The stolen goods!

Earl Henry. Be somewhat briefer, Barnard.

Barnard. But could I dare insinuate to your Brother 195 A fearless Truth, Earl Henry—it were this: Even Lucifer, Prince of the Air, hath claims Upon our justice.

Fernandez. Give the Devil his Due! Why, thou base Lacquerer of worm-eaten proverbs, [And] wherefore dost thou not tell us at once 200 What the Chancellor said to thee?

Barnard (looking round superciliously at FERNANDEZ). The Queen hath left the Capital affecting Rural retirement, but 'I will hasten' (Thus said the Chancellor) 'I myself will hasten And lay before her Majesty the Tidings 205 Both of Earl Henry's Victory and return. She will vouchsafe, I doubt not, to re-enter Her Capital, without delay, and grant The wish'd for Audience with all public honour.'

Don Curio. A mere Device, I say, to pass a slight on us. 210

Fernandez (to himself). To think on't. Pshaw! A fellow, that must needs Have been decreed an Ass by acclamation, Had he not looked so very like an Owl. And he to—— (turns suddenly round, and faces BARNARD who had even then come close beside him). Boo!——Ah! is it you, Sieur Barnard!

Barnard. No other, Sir!

Fernandez. And is it not reported, 215 That you once sav'd the General's life?

Barnard. 'Tis certain!

Fernandez. Was he asleep? And were the hunters coming And did you bite him on the nose?

Barnard. What mean you?

Fernandez. That was the way in which the Flea i' th' Fable Once sav'd the Lion's life.

Earl Henry. 'Tis well. 220 The Sun hath almost finish'd his Day's Travels; We too will finish ours. Go, gallant Comrades, And at the neighbouring Mansion, for us all, Claim entertainment in your General's name.

Exeunt Soldiers, &c. As they are leaving the Stage.

Fernandez (to BARNARD). A word with you! You act the Chancellor 225 Incomparably well.

Barnard. Most valiant Captain, Vouchsafe a manual union.

Fernandez (griping [sic] his hand with affected fervor). 'Tis no wonder, Don Curio should mistook [sic] you for him.

Barnard. Truly, The Chancellor, and I, it hath been notic'd Are of one stature.

Fernandez. And Don Curio's Gripe too 230 Had lent a guttural Music to your voice, A sort of bagpipe Buz, that suited well Your dignity of utterance.

Barnard (simpering courteously). Don Fernandez, Few are the storms that bring unmingled evil.

Fernandez (mocking him). 'Tis an ill wind, that blows no good, Sieur Barnard! [Exeunt. 235

DON CURIO lingering behind.

Don Curio. I have offended you, my brother.

Earl H. Yes! For you've not learnt the noblest part of valour, To suffer and obey. Drums put in cases, Colours wound up—what means this Mummery? We are sunk low indeed, if wrongs like our's 240 Must seek redress in impotent Freaks of Anger. (This way, Don Sandoval) of boyish anger——

(Walks with SANDOVAL to the back of the Stage.)

Don Curio (to himself). Freaks! freaks! But what if they have sav'd from bursting The swelling heart of one, whose Cup of Hope Was savagely dash'd down—even from his lips?— 245 Permitted just to see the face of War, Then like a truant boy, scourgd home again One Field my whole Campaign! One glorious Battle To madden one with Hope!—Did he not pause Twice in the fight, and press me to his breastplate, 250 And cry, that all might hear him, Well done, brother! No blessed Soul, just naturalized in Heaven, Pac'd ever by the side of an Immortal More proudly, Henry! than I fought by thine— Shame on these tears!—this, too, is boyish anger! [Exit. 255

EARL HENRY and SANDOVAL return to the front of the stage.

Earl Henry. I spake more harshly to him, than need was.

Sandoval. Observ'd you how he pull'd his beaver down— Doubtless to hide the tears, he could not check.

Earl Henry. Go, sooth [sic] him, Friend!—And having reach'd the Castle Gain Oropeza's private ear, and tell her 260 Where you have left me.

(As SANDOVAL is going)

Nay, stay awhile with me. I am too full of dreams to meet her now.

Sandoval. You lov'd the daughter of Don Manrique?

Earl Henry. Loved?

Sandoval. Did you not say, you woo'd her?

Earl Henry. Once I lov'd Her whom I dar'd not woo!——

Sandoval. And woo'd perchance 265 One whom you lov'd not!

Earl Henry. O I were most base Not loving Oropeza. True, I woo'd her Hoping to heal a deeper wound: but she Met my advances with an empassion'd Pride That kindled Love with Love. And when her Sire 270 Who in his dream of Hope already grasp'd The golden circlet in his hand, rejected My suit, with Insult, and in memory Of ancient Feuds, pour'd Curses on my head, Her Blessings overtook and baffled them. 275 But thou art stern, and with unkindling Countenance Art inly reasoning whilst thou listenest to me.

Sandoval. Anxiously, Henry! reasoning anxiously. But Oropeza—

Earl Henry. Blessings gather round her! Within this wood there winds a secret passage, 280 Beneath the walls, which open out at length Into the gloomiest covert of the Garden.— The night ere my departure to the Army, She, nothing trembling, led me through that gloom, And to the covert by a silent stream, 285 Which, with one star reflected near its marge, Was the sole object visible around me. The night so dark, so close, the umbrage o'er us! No leaflet stirr'd;—yet pleasure hung upon us, The gloom and stillness of the balmy night-air. 290 A little further on an arbor stood, Fragrant with flowering Trees—I well remember What an uncertain glimmer in the Darkness Their snow-white Blossoms made—thither she led me, To that sweet bower! Then Oropeza trembled— 295 I heard her heart beat—if 'twere not my own.

Sandoval. A rude and searing note, my friend!

Earl Henry. Oh! no! I have small memory of aught but pleasure. The inquietudes of fear, like lesser Streams Still flowing, still were lost in those of Love: 300 So Love grew mightier from the Pear, and Nature, Fleeing from Pain, shelter'd herself in Joy. The stars above our heads were dim and steady, Like eyes suffus'd with rapture. Life was in us: We were all life, each atom of our Frames 305 A living soul—I vow'd to die for her: With the faint voice of one who, having spoken, Relapses into blessedness, I vow'd it: That solemn Vow, a whisper scarcely heard, A murmur breath'd against a lady's Cheek. 310 Oh! there is Joy above the name of Pleasure, Deep self-possession, an intense Repose. No other than as Eastern Sages feign, The God, who floats upon a Lotos Leaf, Dreams for a thousand ages; then awaking, 315 Creates a world, and smiling at the bubble, Relapses into bliss. Ah! was that bliss Fear'd as an alien, and too vast for man? For suddenly, intolerant of its silence, Did Oropeza, starting, grasp my forehead. 320 I caught her arms; the veins were swelling on them. Thro' the dark Bower she sent a hollow voice;— 'Oh! what if all betray me? what if thou?' I swore, and with an inward thought that seemed The unity and substance of my Being, 325 I swore to her, that were she red with guilt, I would exchange my unblench'd state with hers.— Friend! by that winding passage, to the Bower I now will go—all objects there will teach me Unwavering Love, and singleness of Heart. 330 Go, Sandoval! I am prepar'd to meet her— Say nothing of me—I myself will seek her— Nay, leave me, friend! I cannot bear the torment And Inquisition of that scanning eye.—

[Earl Henry retires into the wood.

Sandoval (alone). O Henry! always striv'st thou to be great 335 By thine own act—yet art thou never great But by the Inspiration of great Passion. The Whirl-blast comes, the desert-sands rise up And shape themselves; from Heaven to Earth they stand, As though they were the Pillars of a Temple, 340 Built by Omnipotence in its own honour! But the Blast pauses, and their shaping spirit Is fled: the mighty Columns were but sand, And lazy Snakes trail o'er the level ruins! I know, he loves the Queen. I know she is 345 His Soul's first love, and this is ever his nature— To his first purpose, his soul toiling back Like the poor storm-wreck'd [sailor] to his Boat, Still swept away, still struggling to regain it. [Exit.

* * * * *

Herreras. He dies, that stirs! Follow me this instant. 350

(First Conspirator takes his arrow, snaps it, and throws it on the ground. The two others do the same.)

Herreras. Accursed cowards! I'll go myself, and make sure work (drawing his Dagger).

(HERRERAS strides towards the arbor, before he reaches it, stops and listens and then returns hastily to the front of the stage, as he turns his Back to the Arbor, EARL HENRY appears, watching the Conspirators, and enters the Arbor unseen.)

First Conspirator. Has she seen us think you?

The Mask. No! she has not seen us; but she heard us distinctly.

Herreras. There was a rustling in the wood—go, all of 355 you, stand on the watch—towards the passage.

A Voice from the Arbor. Mercy! Mercy! Tell me, why you murder me.

Herreras. I'll do it first. (Strides towards the Arbor, EARL HENRY rushes out of it.) 360

The Mask. Jesu Maria. (They all three fly, EARL HENRY attempts to seize HERRERAS, who defending himself retreats into the Covert follow'd by the EARL. THE QUEEN comes from out the arbor, veiled—stands listening a moment, then lifts up her veil, with folded hands assumes the attitude of Prayer, and after a momentary silence breaks into audible soliloquy.)

The Queen. I pray'd to thee, All-wonderful! And thou Didst make my very Prayer the Instrument, By which thy Providence sav'd me. Th' armed Murderer Who with suspended breath stood listening to me, Groan'd as I spake thy name. In that same moment, 365 O God! thy Mercy shot the swift Remorse That pierc'd his Heart. And like an Elephant Gor'd as he rushes to the first assault, He turn'd at once and trampled his Employers. But hark! (drops her veil)—O God in Heaven! they come again. 370

(EARL HENRY returns with the Dagger in his hand.)

Earl Henry (as he is entering). The violent pull with which I seiz'd his Dagger Unpois'd me and I fell.

[END OF THE FRAGMENT.]

LINENOTES:

[After 88] in which all her wrongs will appear twofold—(or) in a mist of which her Wrongs will wander, magnified into giant shapes. MS. erased.

[110] After General! And yet I have not stirred from his side. That is to say— MS. erased.

[Before 211]

Fortune! Plague take her for a blind old Baggage! That such a patch as Barnard should have had The Honour to have sav'd our General's life. That Barnard! that mock-man! that clumsy forgery Of Heaven's Image. Any other heart But mine own would have turn'd splenetic to think of it.

MS. erased.

[269] an empassion'd S. L.: empassioned 1834.

[276] unkindling] unkindly S. L., 1834.

[281] open] opens S. L.

[285] the] that. a] that S. L. (corr. in Errata, p. [xi]) S. L.

[288] o'er] near S. L. (corr. in Errata, p. [xi]) S. L.

[289-290]

No leaflet stirr'd; the air was almost sultry; So deep, so dark, so close, the umbrage o'er us! No leaflet stirr'd, yet pleasure hung upon

S. L.

[310] Cheek] Ear S. L.

[After 312]

Deep repose of bliss we lay No other than as Eastern Sages gloss, The God who floats upon a Lotos leaf Dreams for a thousand ages, then awaking Creates a World, then loathing the dull task Relapses into blessedness, when an omen Screamed from the Watch-tower—'twas the Watchman's cry, And Oropeza starting.

MS. (alternative reading).

[313] feign] paint S. L.

[Before 314] Sandoval (with a sarcastic smile) S. L.

[314-16] Compare Letter to Thelwall, Oct. 16, 1797, Letters of S. T. C., 1895, i. 229.]

[317]

bliss.—

Earl Henry. Ah! was that bliss

S. L.

[319] intolerant] impatient S. L.

[325] unity and] purpose and the S. L.

[After 327]

Even as a Herdsboy mutely plighting troth Gives his true Love a Lily for a Rose.

MS. erased.

[334] Inquisition] keen inquiry S. L.

[Before 335]

Earl Henry thou art dear to me—perchance For these follies; since the Health of Reason, Our would-be Sages teach, engenders not The Whelks and Tumours of particular Friendship.

MS. erased.

[339] Heaven to Earth] Earth to Heaven S. L.



J

CHAMOUNY; THE HOUR BEFORE SUNRISE

A HYMN

[Vide ante, p. 376.]

[As published in The Morning Post, Sept. 11, 1802]

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star In his steep course—so long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, O Chamouny! The Arv and Arveiron at thy base Eave ceaselessly; but thou, dread mountain form, 5 Resist from forth thy silent sea of pines How silently! Around thee, and above, Deep is the sky, and black: transpicuous, deep, An ebon mass! Methinks thou piercest it As with a wedge! But when I look again, 10 It seems thy own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity. O dread and silent form! I gaz'd upon thee, Till thou, still present to my bodily eye, Did'st vanish from my thought. Entranc'd in pray'r, 15 I worshipp'd the INVISIBLE alone. Yet thou, meantime, wast working on my soul, E'en like some deep enchanting melody, So sweet, we know not, we are list'ning to it. But I awoke, and with a busier mind, 20 And active will self-conscious, offer now Not, as before, involuntary pray'r And passive adoration!— Hand and voice, Awake, awake! and thou, my heart, awake! Awake ye rocks! Ye forest pines, awake! 25 Green fields, and icy cliffs! All join my hymn! And thou, O silent mountain, sole and bare, O blacker, than the darkness, all the night, And visited, all night, by troops of stars, Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink— 30 Companion of the morning star at dawn, Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn Co-herald! Wake, O wake, and utter praise! Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth? Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light? 35 Who made thee father of perpetual streams? And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad, Who call'd you forth from Night and utter Death? From darkness let you loose, and icy dens, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks 40 For ever shatter'd, and the same for ever! Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam! And who commanded, and the silence came— 45 'Here shall the billows stiffen, and have rest?'

Ye ice-falls! ye that from yon dizzy heights Adown enormous ravines steeply slope, Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopp'd at once amid their maddest plunge! 50 Motionless torrents! silent cataracts! Who made you glorious, as the gates of Heav'n, Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who with lovely flow'rs Of living blue spread garlands at your feet? 55 GOD! GOD! The torrents like a shout of nations, Utter! The ice-plain bursts, and answers GOD! GOD, sing the meadow-streams with gladsome voice, And pine groves with their soft, and soul-like sound, The silent snow-mass, loos'ning, thunders GOD! 60 Ye dreadless flow'rs! that fringe th' eternal frost! Ye wild goats, bounding by the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain blast! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the element, 65 Utter forth, GOD! and fill the hills with praise!

And thou, O silent Form, alone and bare, Whom, as I lift again my head bow'd low In adoration, I again behold, And to thy summit upward from thy base 70 Sweep slowly with dim eyes suffus'd by tears, Awake, thou mountain form! rise, like a cloud! Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth! Thou kingly spirit thron'd among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heav'n— 75 Great hierarch, tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell the rising sun, Earth with her thousand voices calls on God! ESTSE.



K

DEJECTION: AN ODE[1076:1]

[Vide ante, p. 362.]

[As first printed in the Morning Post, October 4, 1802.]

"Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon With the Old Moon in her arms; And I fear, I fear, my Master dear, We shall have a deadly storm."[1076:2] BALLAD OF SIR PATRICK SPENCE.

LINENOTES:

Motto_—2 Moon] one Letter to S.

[4] There will be, &c. Letter to S.

DEJECTION:

AN ODE, WRITTEN APRIL 4, 1802.

I

Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made The grand Old ballad of SIR PATRICK SPENCE, This night; so tranquil now, will not go hence Unrous'd by winds, that ply a busier trade Than those, which mould yon cloud, in lazy flakes, 5 Or the dull sobbing draft, that drones and rakes Upon the strings of this Oeolian lute, Which better far were mute. For lo! the New Moon, winter-bright! And overspread with phantom light, 10 (With swimming phantom light o'erspread, But rimm'd and circled by a silver thread) I see the Old Moon in her lap, foretelling The coming on of rain and squally blast: And O! that even now the gust were swelling, 15 And the slant night-show'r driving loud and fast! Those sounds which oft have rais'd me, while they aw'd, And sent my soul abroad, Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give, Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live! 20

II

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion'd grief, Which finds no nat'ral outlet, no relief, In word, or sigh, or tear— O EDMUND! in this wan and heartless mood, 25 To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd, All this long eve, so balmy and serene, Have I been gazing on the Western sky, And its peculiar tint of yellow-green: And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye! 30 And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars; Those stars, that glide behind them, or between, Now sparkling, now bedimm'd, but always seen; Yon crescent moon, as fix'd as if it grew, 35 In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue, A boat becalm'd! a lovely sky-canoe! I see them all so excellently fair— I see, not feel how beautiful they are!

III

My genial spirits fail; 40 And what can these avail, To lift the smoth'ring weight from off my breast? It were a vain endeavour, Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the west: 45 I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

IV

O EDMUND! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live: Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud! 50 And would we aught behold, of higher worth, Than that inanimate cold world, allow'd To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth, A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud 55 Enveloping the earth— And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, Of all sweet sounds the life and element! O pure of heart! Thou need'st not ask of me 60 What this strong music in the soul may be? What, and wherein it doth exist, This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, This beautiful and beauty-making pow'r? Joy, virtuous EDMUND! joy that ne'er was given, 65 Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, Joy, EDMUND! is the spirit and the pow'r, Which wedding Nature to us gives in dow'r, A new Earth and new Heaven, Undream'd of by the sensual and the proud— 70 JOY is the sweet voice, JOY the luminous cloud— We, we ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light. 75

Yes, dearest EDMUND, yes! There was a time that, tho' my path was rough, This joy within me dallied with distress, And all misfortunes were but as the stuff Whence fancy made me dreams of happiness: 80 For hope grew round me, like the twining vine, And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seem'd mine. But now afflictions bow me down to earth: Nor care I, that they rob me of my mirth, But oh! each visitation 85 Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, My shaping spirit of imagination.

[The Sixth and Seventh Stanzas omitted.]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

VIII

O wherefore did I let it haunt my mind This dark distressful dream? I turn from it, and listen to the wind 90 Which long has rav'd unnotic'd. What a scream Of agony, by torture, lengthen'd out, That lute sent forth! O wind, that rav'st without, Bare crag, or mountain-tairn[1079:1], or blasted tree, Or pine-grove, whither woodman never clomb, 95 Or lonely house, long held the witches' home, Methinks were fitter instruments for thee, Mad Lutanist! who, in this month of show'rs, Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flow'rs, Mak'st devil's yule, with worse than wintry song, 100 The blossoms, buds, and tim'rous leaves among. Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds! Thou mighty Poet, ev'n to frenzy bold! What tell'st thou now about? 'Tis of the rushing of a host in rout, 105 With many groans of men, with smarting wounds— At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold! But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence! And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd, With groans, and tremulous shudderings—all is over! 110 It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud— A tale of less affright. And temper'd with delight, As EDMUND'S self had fram'd the tender lay— 'Tis of a little child, 115 Upon a lonesome wild Not far from home; but she hath lost her way— And now moans low, in utter grief and fear; And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear!

IX

'Tis midnight, and small thoughts have I of sleep; 120 Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep! Visit him, gentle Sleep, with wings of healing, And may this storm be but a mountain-birth, May all the stars hang bright above his dwelling, Silent, as though they watch'd the sleeping Earth! 125 With light heart may he rise, Gay fancy, cheerful eyes, And sing his lofty song, and teach me to rejoice! O EDMUND, friend of my devoutest choice, O rais'd from anxious dread and busy care, 130 By the immenseness of the good and fair Which thou see'st everywhere, Joy lifts thy spirit, joy attunes thy voice, To thee do all things live from pole to pole, Their life the eddying of thy living soul! 135 O simple spirit, guided from above, O lofty Poet, full of life and love, Brother and friend of my devoutest choice, Thus may'st thou ever, evermore rejoice! ESTSE.

FOOTNOTES:

[1076:1] Collated with the text of the poem as sent to W. Sotheby in a letter dated July 19, 1802 (Letters of S. T. C., 1895, i. 379-84).

[1076:2] In the letter of July 19, 1802, the Ode is broken up and quoted in parts or fragments, illustrative of the mind and feelings of the writer. 'Sickness,' he explains, 'first forced me into downright metaphysics. For I believe that by nature I have more of the poet in me. In a poem written during that dejection, to Wordsworth, I thus expressed the thought in language more forcible than harmonious.' Then follow lines 76-87 of the text, followed by lines 87-98 of the text first published in Sibylline Leaves ('For not to think of what I needs must feel,' &c.). He then reverts to the 'introduction of the poem':—'The first lines allude to a stanza in the Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence: "Late, late yestreen I saw the new moon with the old one in her arms: and I fear, I fear, my master dear, there will be a deadly Storm."' This serves as a motto to lines 1-75 and 129-39 of the first draft of the text. Finally he 'annexes as a fragment a few lines (ll. 88-119) on the "Oeolian Lute", it having been introduced in its dronings in the first stanzas.'

[1079:1] Tairn, a small lake, generally, if not always, applied to the lakes up in the mountains, and which are the feeders of those in the vallies. This address to the wind will not appear extravagant to those who have heard it at night, in a mountainous country. [Note in M. P.]

LINENOTES:

[2] grand] dear Letter to S.

[5] those] that Letter to S. cloud] clouds Letter to S.

[12] by] with Letter to S.

[17-20] om. Letter to S.

[22] stifled] stifling Letter to S.

[Between 24 and 25]

This William, well thou knowest, Is that sore evil which I dread the most, And oftnest suffer. In this heartless mood, To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd, That pipes within the larch-tree, not unseen, The larch, that pushes out in tassels green Its bundled leafits, woo'd to mild delights, By all the tender sounds and gentle sights, Of this sweet primrose-month, and vainly woo'd O dearest Poet, in this heartless mood.

Letter to S.

[37] a lovely sky-canoe] thy own sweet sky-canoe Letter to S. [Note. The reference is to the Prologue to 'Peter Bell'.]

[48] Edmund] Wordsworth Letter to S.

[58] potent] powerful Letter to S.

[65] virtuous Edmund] blameless poet Letter to S.

[67] Edmund] William Letter to S.

[71] om. Letter to S.

[74] the echoes] an echo Letter to S.

[76] Edmund] poet Letter to S.

[77] that] when Letter to S.

[78] This] The Letter to S.

[82] fruits] fruit Letter to S.

After 87 six lines 'For not to think', &c., are inserted after a row of asterisks. The direction as to the omission of the Sixth and Seventh Stanzas is only found in the M. P.

[88] O] Nay Letter to S.

[93] That lute sent out! O thou wild storm without Letter to S.

[98] who] that Letter to S.

[106] of] from Letter to S.

[109] Again! but all that noise Letter to S.

[111] And it has other sounds, less fearful and less loud Letter to S.

[114] Edmund's self] thou thyself Letter to S.

[120-8] om. Letter to S.

[129-39]

Calm steadfast spirit, guided from above, O Wordsworth! friend of my devoutest choice, Great son of genius! full of light and love, Thus, thus, dost thou rejoice. To thee do all things live, from pole to pole, Their life the eddying of thy living Soul! Brother and friend of my devoutest choice, Thus may'st thou ever, evermore rejoice!

Letter to S.

[Note. In the letter these lines follow line 75 of the text of the M. P.]



L

TO W. WORDSWORTH[1081:1]

(Vide ante, p. 403.)

LINES COMPOSED, FOR THE GREATER PART ON THE NIGHT, ON WHICH HE FINISHED THE RECITATION OF HIS POEM (IN THIRTEEN BOOKS) CONCERNING THE GROWTH AND HISTORY OF HIS OWN MIND

JAN{RY}, 1807. COLE-ORTON, NEAR ASHBY DE LA ZOUCH.

O friend! O Teacher! God's great Gift to me! Into my heart have I receiv'd that Lay, More than historic, that prophetic Lay, Wherein (high theme by Thee first sung aright) Of the Foundations and the Building-up 5 Of thy own Spirit, thou hast lov'd to tell What may be told, to th' understanding mind Revealable; and what within the mind May rise enkindled. Theme as hard as high! Of Smiles spontaneous, and mysterious Feard; 10 (The First-born they of Reason, and Twin-birth) Of Tides obedient to external Force, And currents self-determin'd, as might seem, Or by interior Power: of Moments aweful, Now in thy hidden Life; and now abroad, 15 Mid festive Crowds, thy Brows too garlanded, A Brother of the Feast: of Fancies fair, Hyblan Murmurs of poetic Thought, Industrious in its Joy, by lilied Streams Native or outland, Lakes and famous Hills! 20 Of more than Fancy, of the Hope of Man Amid the tremor of a Realm aglow— Where France in all her Towns lay vibrating, Ev'n as a Bark becalm'd on sultry seas Beneath the voice from Heaven, the bursting Crash 25 Of Heaven's immediate thunder! when no Cloud Is visible, or Shadow on the Main! Ah! soon night roll'd on night, and every Cloud Open'd its eye of Fire: and Hope aloft Now flutter'd, and now toss'd upon the Storm 30 Floating! Of Hope afflicted, and struck down, Thence summon'd homeward—homeward to thy Heart, Oft from the Watch-tower of Man's absolute Self, With Light unwaning on her eyes, to look Far on—herself a Glory to behold, 35 The Angel of the Vision! Then (last strain!) Of Duty, chosen Laws controlling choice, Virtue and Love! An Orphic Tale indeed, A Tale divine of high and passionate Thoughts To their own music chaunted!

Ah great Bard! 40 Ere yet that last Swell dying aw'd the Air, With stedfast ken I view'd thee in the Choir Of ever-enduring Men. The truly Great Have all one Age, and from one visible space Shed influence: for they, both power and act, 45 Are permanent, and Time is not with them, Save as it worketh for them, they in it. Nor less a sacred Roll, than those of old, And to be plac'd, as they, with gradual fame Among the Archives of mankind, thy Work 50 Makes audible a linked Song of Truth, Of Truth profound a sweet continuous Song Not learnt, but native, her own natural Notes! Dear shall it be to every human Heart. To me how more than dearest! Me, on whom 55 Comfort from Thee and utterance of thy Love Came with such heights and depths of Harmony Such sense of Wings uplifting, that the Storm Scatter'd and whirl'd me, till my Thoughts became A bodily Tumult! and thy faithful Hopes, 60 Thy Hopes of me, dear Friend! by me unfelt Were troublous to me, almost as a Voice Familiar once and more than musical To one cast forth, whose hope had seem'd to die, A Wanderer with a worn-out heart, [sic] 65 Mid Strangers pining with untended Wounds!

O Friend! too well thou know'st, of what sad years The long suppression had benumb'd my soul, That even as Life returns upon the Drown'd, Th' unusual Joy awoke a throng of Pains— 70 Keen Pangs of LOVE, awakening, as a Babe, Turbulent, with an outcry in the Heart: And Fears self-will'd, that shunn'd the eye of Hope, And Hope, that would not know itself from Fear: Sense of pass'd Youth, and Manhood come in vain; 75 And Genius given, and knowledge won in vain; And all, which I had cull'd in Wood-walks wild, And all, which patient Toil had rear'd, and all, Commune with Thee had open'd out, but Flowers Strew'd on my Corse, and borne upon my Bier, 80 In the same Coffin, for the self-same Grave!

That way no more! and ill beseems it me, Who came a Welcomer in Herald's guise Singing of Glory and Futurity, To wander back on such unhealthful Road 85 Plucking the Poisons of Self-harm! and ill Such Intertwine beseems triumphal wreaths Strew'd before thy Advancing! Thou too, Friend! O injure not the memory of that Hour Of thy communion with my nobler mind 90 By pity or grief, already felt too long! Nor let my words import more blame than needs. The Tumult rose and ceas'd: for Peace is nigh Where Wisdom's Voice has found a list'ning Heart. Amid the howl of more than wintry Storms 95 The Halcyon hears the voice of vernal Hours, Already on the wing! Eve following eve, Dear tranquil Time, when the sweet sense of Home Becomes most sweet! hours for their own sake hail'd, And more desir'd, more precious, for thy song! 100 In silence list'ning, like a devout Child, My soul lay passive; by thy various strain Driven as in surges now, beneath the stars, With momentary Stars of my own Birth, Fair constellated Foam still darting off 105 Into the darkness! now a tranquil Sea Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the Moon!

And when O Friend! my Comforter! my Guide! Strong in thyself and powerful to give strength! Thy long sustained Lay finally clos'd, 110 And thy deep Voice had ceas'd (yet thou thyself Wert still before mine eyes, and round us both That happy Vision of beloved Faces! All, whom I deepliest love, in one room all!), Scarce conscious and yet conscious of it's Close, 115 I sate, my Being blended in one Thought, (Thought was it? or aspiration? or Resolve?) Absorb'd, yet hanging still upon the sound: And when I rose, I found myself in Prayer! S. T. COLERIDGE.

FOOTNOTES:

[1081:1] Now first printed from an original MS. in the possession of Mr. Gordon Wordsworth.

LINENOTES:

[37] controlling] ? impelling, ? directing.



M

YOUTH AND AGE

[Vide ante, p. 439.]

MS. I

10 SEPT. 1823. WEDNESDAY MORNING, 10 O'CLOCK

On the Tenth Day of September, Eighteen hundred Twenty Three, Wednesday morn, and I remember Ten on the Clock the Hour to be [The Watch and Clock do both agree] 5

An Air that whizzed dia enkephalou (right across the diameter of my Brain) exactly like a Hummel Bee, alias Dumbeldore, the gentleman with Rappee Spenser (sic), with bands of Red, and Orange Plush Breeches, close by my ear, at once sharp and burry, right over the summit of Quantock [item of Skiddaw 10 (erased)] at earliest Dawn just between the Nightingale that I stopt to hear in the Copse at the Foot of Quantock, and the first Sky-Lark that was a Song-Fountain, dashing up and sparkling to the Ear's eye, in full column, or ornamented Shaft of sound in the order of Gothic Extravaganza, out of Sight, over 15 the Cornfields on the Descent of the Mountain on the other side—out of sight, tho' twice I beheld its mute shoot downward in the sunshine like a falling star of silver:—

ARIA SPONTANEA

Flowers are lovely, Love is flower-like, Friendship is a shelt'ring tree— 20 O the Joys, that came down shower-like, Of Beauty, Truth, and Liberty, When I was young, ere I was old! [O Youth that wert so glad, so bold, What quaint disguise hast thou put on? 25 Would'st make-believe that thou art gone? O Youth! thy Vesper Bell] has not yet toll'd.

Thou always were a Masker bold— What quaint Disguise hast now put on? To make believe that thou art gone! 30

O Youth, so true, so fair, so free, Thy Vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd, Thou always, &c.

* * * * *

Ah! was it not enough, that Thou In Thy eternal Glory should outgo me? 35 Would'st thou not Grief's sad Victory allow

* * * * *

Hope's a Breeze that robs the Blossoms Fancy feeds, and murmurs the Bee——

* * * * *

MS. II

1

Verse, that Breeze mid blossoms straying Where Hope clings feeding like a Bee. Both were mine: Life went a Maying With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, When I was young. When I was young! ah woeful When! Ah for the Change twixt now and then! This House of Life, not built with hands Where now I sigh, where once I sung.

Or [This snail-like House, not built with hands, This Body that does me grievous wrong.]

O'er Hill and dale and sounding Sands. How lightly then it flash'd along— Like those trim Boats, unknown of yore, On Winding Lakes and Rivers wide, That ask no aid of Sail or Oar, That fear no spite of Wind or Tide. Pencil { Nought car'd this Body for wind or weather, { When youth and I liv'd in't together.

2

Flowers are lovely, Love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering Tree; O the joys that came down shower-like Of Beauty, Truth and Liberty When I was young 5 When I was young, [*ah woeful when*] [*Ah for the change twixt now and then*] In Heat or Frost we car'd not whether Night and day we lodged together woeful when When I was young—ah [*words of agony*] 10 Ah for the change 'twixt now and then [*O youth my Home-Mate dear so long, so long:*] I thought that thou and I were one I scarce believe that thou art gone Thou always wert a Masker bold I [*mark that change,*] in garb and size 15 heave the Breath Those grisled Locks I well behold But still thy Heart is in thine eyes What strange disguise hast now put on To make believe that thou art gone

Or [O youth for years so many so sweet 20 It seem'd that Thou and I were one That still I nurse the fond deceit And scarce believe that thou art gone]

When I was young—ere I was old Ah! happy ere, ah! woeful When 25 When I was young, ah woeful when Which says that Youth and I are twain! O Youth! for years so many and sweet 'Tis known that Thou and I were one I'll think it but a false conceit 30 [*Tis but a gloomy*] It cannot be, [*I'll not believe*] that thou art gone Thy Vesper Bell has not yet toll'd always [*And*] thou wert [*still*] a masker bold What hast [*Some*] strange disguise [*thou'st*] now put on To make believe that thou art gone? 35 I see these Locks in silvery slips, This dragging gait, this alter'd size But spring-tide blossoms on thy Lips And [*the young Heart*] is in thy eyes tears take sunshine from Life is but Thought so think I will 40 That Youth and I are Housemates still.

Ere I was old Ere I was old! ah woeful ere Which tells me youth's no longer here! O Youth, &c. 45 Dewdrops are the Gems of Morning, But the Tears of mournful Eve: Where no Hope is Life's a Warning me That only serves to make [*us*] grieve, Now I am old. 50



N

LOVE'S APPARITION AND EVANISHMENT[1087:1]

[Vide ante, p. 488.]

[FIRST DRAFT]

In vain I supplicate the Powers above; There is no Resurrection for the Love That, nursed with tenderest care, yet fades away In the chilled heart by inward self-decay. Like a lorn Arab old and blind 5 Some caravan had left behind That sits beside a ruined Well, And hangs his wistful head aslant, Some sound he fain would catch— Suspended there, as it befell, 10 O'er my own vacancy, And while I seemed to watch The sickly calm, as were of heart A place where Hope lay dead, The spirit of departed Love 15 Stood close beside my bed. She bent methought to kiss my lips As she was wont to do. Alas! 'twas with a chilling breath That awoke just enough of life in death 20 To make it die anew.

FOOTNOTES:

[1087:1] Now first published from an MS.



O

TWO VERSIONS OF THE EPITAPH[1088:1]

INSCRIBED IN A COPY OF GREW'S Cosmologia Sacra (1701)

[Vide ante, p. 491.]

1

Epitaph in Hornsey Church yard Hic Jacet S. T. C.

Stop, Christian Passer-by! Stop, Child of God! And read with gentle heart. Beneath this sod There lies a Poet: or what once was He. [Up] O lift thy soul in prayer for S. T. C. That He who many a year with toil of breath 5 Found death in life, may here find life in death. Mercy for praise, to be forgiven for fame He ask'd, and hoped thro' Christ. Do thou the same.

2

ETESI'S [for Estesi's] Epitaph.

Stop, Christian Visitor! Stop, Child of God, Here lies a Poet: or what once was He! [O] Pause, Traveller, pause and pray for S. T. C. That He who many a year with toil of Breath Found Death in Life, may here find Life in Death. 5

And read with gentle heart! Beneath this sod There lies a Poet, etc.

'Inscription on the Tomb-stone of one not unknown; yet more commonly known by the Initials of his Name than by the Name itself.'

ESTEESE'S autoepitaphion[1089:1]

(From a copy of the Todten-Tanz which belonged to Thomas Poole.)

Here lies a Poet; or what once was he: Pray, gentle Reader, pray for S. T. C. That he who threescore years, with toilsome breath, Found Death in Life, may now find Life in Death.

FOOTNOTES:

[1088:1] First published in The Athenaeum, April 7, 1888: included in the Notes to 1893 (p. 645).

[1089:1] First published in the Notes to 1893 (p. 646).



P

[HABENT SUA FATA—POETAE][1089:2]

The Fox, and Statesman subtile wiles ensure, The Cit, and Polecat stink and are secure; Toads with their venom, doctors with their drug, The Priest, and Hedgehog, in their robes are snug! Oh, Nature! cruel step-mother, and hard, 5 To thy poor, naked, fenceless child the Bard! No Horns but those by luckless Hymen worn, And those (alas! alas!) not Plenty's Horn! With naked feelings, and with aching pride, He hears th' unbroken blast on every side! 10 Vampire Booksellers drain him to the heart, And Scorpion Critics cureless venom dart!

FOOTNOTES:

[1089:2] First published in Cottle's Early Recollections, 1839, i. 172. Now collected for the first time. These lines, according to Cottle, were included in a letter written from Lichfield in January, 1796. They illustrate the following sentence: 'The present hour I seem in a quickset hedge of embarrassments! For shame! I ought not to mistrust God! but, indeed, to hope is far more difficult than to fear. Bulls have horns, Lions have talons.'—They are signed 'S. T. C.' and are presumably his composition.



Q

TO JOHN THELWALL[1090:1]

Some, Thelwall! to the Patriot's meed aspire, Who, in safe rage, without or rent or scar, Bound pictur'd strongholds sketching mimic war Closet their valour—Thou mid thickest fire Leapst on the wall: therefore shall Freedom choose 5 Ungaudy flowers that chastest odours breathe, And weave for thy young locks a Mural wreath; Nor there my song of grateful praise refuse. My ill-adventur'd youth by Cam's slow stream Pin'd for a woman's love in slothful ease: 10 First by thy fair example [taught] to glow With patriot zeal; from Passion's feverish dream Starting I tore disdainful from my brow A Myrtle Crown inwove with Cyprian bough— Blest if to me in manhood's years belong 15 Thy stern simplicity and vigorous Song.

FOOTNOTES:

[1090:1] Now first published from Cottle's MSS. in the Library of Rugby School.



R[1090:2]

'Relative to a Friend remarkable for Georgoepiscopal Meanderings, and the combination of the utile dulci during his walks to and from any given place, composed, together with a book and a half of an Epic Poem, during one of the Halts:—

'Lest after this life it should prove my sad story That my soul must needs go to the Pope's Purgatory, Many prayers have I sighed, May T. P. * * * * be my guide, For so often he'll halt, and so lead me about, That e'er we get there, thro' earth, sea, or air, The last Day will have come, and the Fires have burnt out.

'JOB JUNIOR. 'circumbendiborum patientissimus.'

FOOTNOTES:

[1090:2] Endorsed by T. P.: 'On my Walks. Written by Coleridge, September, 1807.' First published Thomas Poole and His Friends, by Mrs. Henry Sandford, 1888, ii. 196.



APPENDIX II

ALLEGORIC VISION[1091:1]

A feeling of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, is wont to take possession of me alike in Spring and in Autumn. But in Spring it is the melancholy of Hope: in Autumn it is the melancholy of Resignation. As I was journeying on foot through the Appennine, I fell in with a pilgrim in whom the Spring and 5 the Autumn and the Melancholy of both seemed to have combined. In his discourse there were the freshness and the colours of April:

Qual ramicel a ramo, Tal da pensier pensiero 10 In lui germogliava.

But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I bethought me of the not unlovely decays, both of age and of the late season, in the stately elm, after the clusters have been plucked from its entwining vines, and the vines are as bands of dried withies 15 around its trunk and branches. Even so there was a memory on his smooth and ample forehead, which blended with the dedication of his steady eyes, that still looked—I know not, whether upward, or far onward, or rather to the line of meeting where the sky rests upon the distance. But how may I express 20 that dimness of abstraction which lay on the lustre of the pilgrim's eyes like the flitting tarnish from the breath of a sigh on a silver mirror! and which accorded with their slow and reluctant movement, whenever he turned them to any object on the right hand or on the left? It seemed, methought, as 25 if there lay upon the brightness a shadowy presence of disappointments now unfelt, but never forgotten. It was at once the melancholy of hope and of resignation.

We had not long been fellow-travellers, ere a sudden tempest of wind and rain forced us to seek protection in the vaulted 30 door-way of a lone chapelry; and we sate face to face each on the stone bench alongside the low, weather-stained wall, and as close as possible to the massy door.

After a pause of silence: even thus, said he, like two strangers that have fled to the same shelter from the same storm, not 35 seldom do Despair and Hope meet for the first time in the porch of Death! All extremes meet, I answered; but yours was a strange and visionary thought. The better then doth it beseem both the place and me, he replied. From a Visionary wilt thou hear a Vision? Mark that vivid flash through this 40 torrent of rain! Fire and water. Even here thy adage holds true, and its truth is the moral of my Vision. I entreated him to proceed. Sloping his face toward the arch and yet averting his eye from it, he seemed to seek and prepare his words: till listening to the wind that echoed within the hollow edifice, 45 and to the rain without,

Which stole on his thoughts with its two-fold sound, The clash hard by and the murmur all round,[1092:1]

he gradually sank away, alike from me and from his own purpose, and amid the gloom of the storm and in the duskiness of that 50 place, he sate like an emblem on a rich man's sepulchre, or like a mourner on the sodded grave of an only one—an aged mourner, who is watching the waned moon and sorroweth not. Starting at length from his brief trance of abstraction, with courtesy and an atoning smile he renewed his discourse, and commenced his 55 parable.

During one of those short furloughs from the service of the body, which the soul may sometimes obtain even in this its militant state, I found myself in a vast plain, which I immediately knew to be the Valley of Life. It possessed an 60 astonishing diversity of soils: here was a sunny spot, and there a dark one, forming just such a mixture of sunshine and shade, as we may have observed on the mountains' side in an April day, when the thin broken clouds are scattered over heaven. Almost in the very entrance of the valley stood 65 a large and gloomy pile, into which I seemed constrained to enter. Every part of the building was crowded with tawdry ornaments and fantastic deformity. On every window was portrayed, in glaring and inelegant colours, some horrible tale, or preternatural incident, so that not a ray of light could enter, 70 untinged by the medium through which it passed. The body of the building was full of people, some of them dancing, in and out, in unintelligible figures, with strange ceremonies and antic merriment, while others seemed convulsed with horror, or pining in mad melancholy. Intermingled with these, I observed 75 a number of men, clothed in ceremonial robes, who appeared now to marshal the various groups, and to direct their movements; and now with menacing countenances, to drag some reluctant victim to a vast idol, framed of iron bars intercrossed, which formed at the same time an immense cage, and the shape 80 of a human Colossus.

I stood for a while lost in wonder what these things might mean; when lo! one of the directors came up to me, and with a stern and reproachful look bade me uncover my head, for that the place into which I had entered was the temple of 85 the only true Religion, in the holier recesses of which the great Goddess personally resided. Himself too he bade me reverence, as the consecrated minister of her rites. Awestruck by the name of Religion, I bowed before the priest, and humbly and earnestly intreated him to conduct me into her presence. 90 He assented. Offerings he took from me, with mystic sprinklings of water and with salt he purified, and with strange sufflations he exorcised me; and then led me through many a dark and winding alley, the dew-damps of which chilled my flesh, and the hollow echoes under my feet, mingled, methought, 95 with moanings, affrighted me. At length we entered a large hall, without window, or spiracle, or lamp. The asylum and dormitory it seemed of perennial night—only that the walls were brought to the eye by a number of self-luminous inscriptions in letters of a pale sepulchral light, which held strange neutrality 100 with the darkness, on the verge of which it kept its rayless vigil. I could read them, methought; but though each of the words taken separately I seemed to understand, yet when I took them in sentences, they were riddles and incomprehensible. As I stood meditating on these hard sayings, my guide thus addressed 105 me—'Read and believe: these are mysteries!'—At the extremity of the vast hall the Goddess was placed. Her features, blended with darkness, rose out to my view, terrible, yet vacant. I prostrated myself before her, and then retired with my guide, soul-withered, and wondering, and dissatisfied. 110

As I re-entered the body of the temple I heard a deep buzz as of discontent. A few whose eyes were bright, and either piercing or steady, and whose ample foreheads, with the weighty bar, ridge-like, above the eyebrows, bespoke observation followed by meditative thought; and a much larger number, who were 115 enraged by the severity and insolence of the priests in exacting their offerings, had collected in one tumultuous group, and with a confused outcry of 'This is the Temple of Superstition!' after much contumely, and turmoil, and cruel maltreatment on all sides, rushed out of the pile: and I, methought, joined them. 120

We speeded from the Temple with hasty steps, and had now nearly gone round half the valley, when we were addressed by a woman, tall beyond the stature of mortals, and with a something more than human in her countenance and mien, which yet could by mortals be only felt, not conveyed by words or 125 intelligibly distinguished. Deep reflection, animated by ardent feelings, was displayed in them: and hope, without its uncertainty, and a something more than all these, which I understood not, but which yet seemed to blend all these into a divine unity of expression. Her garments were white and matronly, and of 130 the simplest texture. We inquired her name. 'My name,' she replied, 'is Religion.'

The more numerous part of our company, affrighted by the very sound, and sore from recent impostures or sorceries, hurried onwards and examined no farther. A few of us, struck 135 by the manifest opposition of her form and manners to those of the living Idol, whom we had so recently abjured, agreed to follow her, though with cautious circumspection. She led us to an eminence in the midst of the valley, from the top of which we could command the whole plain, and observe the relation of 140 the different parts to each other, and of each to the whole, and of all to each. She then gave us an optic glass which assisted without contradicting our natural vision, and enabled us to see far beyond the limits of the Valley of Life; though our eye even thus assisted permitted us only to behold a light and 145 a glory, but what we could not descry, save only that it was, and that it was most glorious.

And now with the rapid transition of a dream, I had overtaken and rejoined the more numerous party, who had abruptly left us, indignant at the very name of religion. They journied 150 on, goading each other with remembrances of past oppressions, and never looking back, till in the eagerness to recede from the Temple of Superstition they had rounded the whole circle of the valley. And lo! there faced us the mouth of a vast cavern, at the base of a lofty and almost perpendicular rock, the interior 155 side of which, unknown to them and unsuspected, formed the extreme and backward wall of the Temple. An impatient crowd, we entered the vast and dusky cave, which was the only perforation of the precipice. At the mouth of the cave sate two figures; the first, by her dress and gestures, I knew to be 160 Sensuality; the second form, from the fierceness of his demeanour, and the brutal scornfulness of his looks, declared himself to be the monster Blasphemy. He uttered big words, and yet ever and anon I observed that he turned pale at his own courage. We entered. Some remained in the opening of the 165 cave, with the one or the other of its guardians. The rest, and I among them, pressed on, till we reached an ample chamber, that seemed the centre of the rock. The climate of the place was unnaturally cold.

In the furthest distance of the chamber sate an old dim-eyed 170 man, poring with a microscope over the torso of a statue which had neither basis, nor feet, nor head; but on its breast was carved Nature! To this he continually applied his glass, and seemed enraptured with the various inequalities which it rendered visible on the seemingly polished surface of the 175 marble.—Yet evermore was this delight and triumph followed by expressions of hatred, and vehement railing against a Being, who yet, he assured us, had no existence. This mystery suddenly recalled to me what I had read in the holiest recess of the temple of Superstition. The old man spake in divers 180 tongues, and continued to utter other and most strange mysteries. Among the rest he talked much and vehemently concerning an infinite series of causes and effects, which he explained to be a string of blind men, the last of whom caught hold of the skirt of the one before him, he of the next, 185 and so on till they were all out of sight; and that they all walked infallibly straight, without making one false step though all were alike blind. Methought I borrowed courage from surprise, and asked him—Who then is at the head to guide them? He looked at me with ineffable contempt, not 190 unmixed with an angry suspicion, and then replied, 'No one.' The string of blind men went on for ever without any beginning; for although one blind man could not move without stumbling, yet infinite blindness supplied the want of sight. I burst into laughter, which instantly turned to terror—for as he started 195 forward in rage, I caught a glimpse of him from behind; and lo! I beheld a monster bi-form and Janus-headed, in the hinder face and shape of which I instantly recognised the dread countenance of Superstition—and in the terror I awoke.

FOOTNOTES:

[1091:1] First published in The Courier, Saturday, August 31, 1811: included in 1829, 1834-5, &c. (3 vols.), and in 1844 (1 vol.). Lines 1-56 were first published as part of the 'Introduction' to A Lay Sermon, &c., 1817, pp. xix-xxxi.

The 'Allegoric Vision' dates from August, 1795. It served as a kind of preface or prologue to Coleridge's first Theological Lecture on 'The Origin of Evil. The Necessity of Revelation deduced from the Nature of Man. An Examination and Defence of the Mosaic Dispensation' (see Cottle's Early Recollections, 1837, i. 27). The purport of these Lectures was to uphold the golden mean of Unitarian orthodoxy as opposed to the Church on the one hand, and infidelity or materialism on the other. 'Superstition' stood for and symbolized the Church of England. Sixteen years later this opening portion of an unpublished Lecture was rewritten and printed in The Courier (Aug. 31, 1811), with the heading 'An Allegoric Vision: Superstition, Religion, Atheism'. The attack was now diverted from the Church of England to the Church of Rome. 'Men clad in black robes,' intent on gathering in their Tenths, become 'men clothed in ceremonial robes, who with menacing countenances drag some reluctant victim to a vast idol, framed of iron bars intercrossed which formed at the same time an immense cage, and yet represented the form of a human Colossus. At the base of the Statue I saw engraved the words "To Dominic holy and merciful, the preventer and avenger of soul-murder".' The vision was turned into a political jeu d'esprit levelled at the aiders and abettors of Catholic Emancipation, a measure to which Coleridge was more or less opposed as long as he lived. See Constitution of Church and State, 1830, passim. A third adaptation of the 'Allegorical Vision' was affixed to the Introduction to A Lay Sermon: Addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes, which was published in 1817. The first fifty-six lines, which contain a description of Italian mountain scenery, were entirely new, but the rest of the 'Vision' is an amended and softened reproduction of the preface to the Lecture of 1795. The moral he desires to point is the 'falsehood of extremes'. As Religion is the golden mean between Superstition and Atheism, so the righteous government of a righteous people is the mean between a selfish and oppressive aristocracy, and seditious and unbridled mob-rule. A probable 'Source' of the first draft of the 'Vision' is John Aikin's Hill of Science, A Vision, which was included in Elegant Extracts, 1794, ii. 801. In the present issue the text of 1834 has been collated with that of 1817 and 1829, but not (exhaustively) with the MS. (1795), or at all with the Courier version of 1811.

[1092:1] From the Ode to the Rain, 1802, ll. 15-16:—

O Rain! with your dull two-fold sound, The clash hard by, and the murmur all round!

LINENOTES:

[21-3] —the breathed tarnish, shall I name it?—on the lustre of the pilgrim's eyes? Yet had it not a sort of strange accordance with 1817.

[37] Compare:

like strangers shelt'ring from a storm, Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!

Constancy to an Ideal Object, p. 456.

[39] VISIONARY 1817, 1829.

[40] VISION 1817, 1829.

[49] sank] sunk 1817.

[51-2] or like an aged mourner on the sodden grave of an only one—a mourner, who 1817.

[57-9] It was towards morning when the Brain begins to reassume its waking state, and our dreams approach to the regular trains of Reality, that I found MS. 1795.

[60] VALLEY OF LIFE 1817, 1829.

[61] and here was 1817, 1829.

[63] mountains' side] Hills MS. 1795.

[75-86] intermingled with all these I observed a great number of men in Black Robes who appeared now marshalling the various Groups and now collecting with scrupulous care the Tenths of everything that grew within their reach. I stood wondering a while what these Things might be when one of these men approached me and with a reproachful Look bade me uncover my Head for the Place into which I had entered was the Temple of Religion. MS. 1795.

[80] shape] form 1817.

[92-3] of water he purified me, and then led MS. 1795.

[94-9] chilled and its hollow echoes beneath my feet affrighted me, till at last we entered a large Hall where not even a Lamp glimmered. Around its walls I observed a number of phosphoric Inscriptions MS. 1795.

[96-102] large hall where not even a single lamp glimmered. It was made half visible by the wan phosphoric rays which proceeded from inscriptions on the walls, in letters of the same pale and sepulchral light. I could read them, methought; but though each one of the words 1817.

[106] me. The fallible becomes infallible, and the infallible remains fallible. Read and believe: these are MYSTERIES! In the middle of the vast 1817.

[106] MYSTERIES 1829.

[108] vacant. No definite thought, no distinct image was afforded me: all was uneasy and obscure feeling. I prostrated 1817.

[118] SUPERSTITION 1817.

[132] RELIGION 1817, 1829.

[141] parts of each to the other, and of 1817, 1829.

[146] was 1817, 1829.

[161] SENSUALITY 1817, 1829.

[163] BLASPHEMY 1817, 1829.

[173] NATURE 1817, 1829.

[180] Superstition 1817, 1829. spake] spoke 1817, 1829.

[196] glimpse] glance 1817, 1829.

[199] SUPERSTITION 1817, 1829.



APPENDIX III

[Vide ante p. 237.]

APOLOGETIC PREFACE TO 'FIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER'[1097:1]

At the house of a gentleman[1097:2] who by the principles and corresponding virtues of a sincere Christian consecrates a cultivated genius and the favourable accidents of birth, opulence, and splendid connexions, it was my good fortune to meet, in a dinner-party, with more men of celebrity in science or polite 5 literature than are commonly found collected round the same table. In the course of conversation, one of the party reminded an illustrious poet [Scott], then present, of some verses which he had recited that morning, and which had appeared in a newspaper under the name of a War-Eclogue, in which Fire, 10 Famine, and Slaughter were introduced as the speakers. The gentleman so addressed replied, that he was rather surprised that none of us should have noticed or heard of the poem, as it had been, at the time, a good deal talked of in Scotland. It may be easily supposed that my feelings were at this moment 15 not of the most comfortable kind. Of all present, one only [Sir H. Davy] knew, or suspected me to be the author; a man who would have established himself in the first rank of England's living poets[1097:3], if the Genius of our country had not decreed that he should rather be the first in the first rank of its philosophers 20 and scientific benefactors. It appeared the general wish to hear the lines. As my friend chose to remain silent, I chose to follow his example, and Mr. . . . . [Scott] recited the poem. This he could do with the better grace, being known to have ever been not only a firm and active Anti-Jacobin and 25 Anti-Gallican, but likewise a zealous admirer of Mr. Pitt, both as a good man and a great statesman. As a poet exclusively, he had been amused with the Eclogue; as a poet he recited it; and in a spirit which made it evident that he would have read and repeated it with the same pleasure had his own name been 30 attached to the imaginary object or agent.

After the recitation our amiable host observed that in his opinion Mr. . . . . had over-rated the merits of the poetry; but had they been tenfold greater, they could not have compensated for that malignity of heart which could alone have 35 prompted sentiments so atrocious. I perceived that my illustrious friend became greatly distressed on my account; but fortunately I was able to preserve fortitude and presence of mind enough to take up the subject without exciting even a suspicion how nearly and painfully it interested me. 40

What follows is the substance of what I then replied, but dilated and in language less colloquial. It was not my intention, I said, to justify the publication, whatever its author's feelings might have been at the time of composing it. That they are calculated to call forth so severe a reprobation from a good man, 45 is not the worst feature of such poems. Their moral deformity is aggravated in proportion to the pleasure which they are capable of affording to vindictive, turbulent, and unprincipled readers. Could it be supposed, though for a moment, that the author seriously wished what he had thus wildly imagined, 50 even the attempt to palliate an inhumanity so monstrous would be an insult to the hearers. But it seemed to me worthy of consideration, whether the mood of mind and the general state of sensations in which a poet produces such vivid and fantastic images, is likely to co-exist, or is even compatible with, that 55 gloomy and deliberate ferocity which a serious wish to realize them would pre-suppose. It had been often observed, and all my experience tended to confirm the observation, that prospects of pain and evil to others, and in general all deep feelings of revenge, are commonly expressed in a few words, ironically tame, 60 and mild. The mind under so direful and fiend-like an influence seems to take a morbid pleasure in contrasting the intensity of its wishes and feelings with the slightness or levity of the expressions by which they are hinted; and indeed feelings so intense and solitary, if they were not precluded (as in almost 65 all cases they would be) by a constitutional activity of fancy and association, and by the specific joyousness combined with it, would assuredly themselves preclude such activity. Passion, in its own quality, is the antagonist of action; though in an ordinary and natural degree the former alternates with the latter, 70 and thereby revives and strengthens it. But the more intense and insane the passion is, the fewer and the more fixed are the correspondent forms and notions. A rooted hatred, an inveterate thirst of revenge, is a sort of madness, and still eddies round its favourite object, and exercises as it were a perpetual tautology 75 of mind in thoughts and words which admit of no adequate substitutes. Like a fish in a globe of glass, it moves restlessly round and round the scanty circumference, which it cannot leave without losing its vital element.

There is a second character of such imaginary representations 80 as spring from a real and earnest desire of evil to another, which we often see in real life, and might even anticipate from the nature of the mind. The images, I mean, that a vindictive man places before his imagination, will most often be taken from the realities of life: they will be images of pain and 85 suffering which he has himself seen inflicted on other men, and which he can fancy himself as inflicting on the object of his hatred. I will suppose that we had heard at different times two common sailors, each speaking of some one who had wronged or offended him: that the first with apparent violence 90 had devoted every part of his adversary's body and soul to all the horrid phantoms and fantastic places that ever Quevedo dreamt of, and this in a rapid flow of those outrageous and wildly combined execrations, which too often with our lower classes serve for escape-valves to carry off the excess of their passions, 95 as so much superfluous steam that would endanger the vessel if it were retained. The other, on the contrary, with that sort of calmness of tone which is to the ear what the paleness of anger is to the eye, shall simply say, 'If I chance to be made boatswain, as I hope I soon shall, and can but once get that 100 fellow under my hand (and I shall be upon the watch for him), I'll tickle his pretty skin! I won't hurt him! oh no! I'll only cut the — — to the liver!' I dare appeal to all present, which of the two they would regard as the least deceptive symptom of deliberate malignity? nay, whether it would surprise them 105 to see the first fellow, an hour or two afterwards, cordially shaking hands with the very man the fractional parts of whose body and soul he had been so charitably disposing of; or even perhaps risking his life for him? What language Shakespeare considered characteristic of malignant disposition we see in the 110 speech of the good-natured Gratiano, who spoke 'an infinite deal of nothing more than any man in all Venice';

——Too wild, too rude and bold of voice!

the skipping spirit, whose thoughts and words reciprocally ran away with each other; 115

——O be them damn'd, inexorable dog! And for thy life let justice be accused!

and the wild fancies that follow, contrasted with Shylock's tranquil 'I stand here for Law'.

Or, to take a case more analogous to the present subject, 120 should we hold it either fair or charitable to believe it to have been Dante's serious wish that all the persons mentioned by him (many recently departed, and some even alive at the time,) should actually suffer the fantastic and horrible punishments to which he has sentenced them in his Hell and Purgatory? 125 Or what shall we say of the passages in which Bishop Jeremy Taylor anticipates the state of those who, vicious themselves, have been the cause of vice and misery to their fellow-creatures? Could we endure for a moment to think that a spirit, like Bishop Taylor's, burning with Christian love; that a man 130 constitutionally overflowing with pleasurable kindliness; who scarcely even in a casual illustration introduces the image of woman, child, or bird, but he embalms the thought with so rich a tenderness, as makes the very words seem beauties and fragments of poetry from Euripides or Simonides;—can we 135 endure to think, that a man so natured and so disciplined, did at the time of composing this horrible picture, attach a sober feeling of reality to the phrases? or that he would have described in the same tone of justification, in the same luxuriant flow of phrases, the tortures about to be inflicted on a living 140 individual by a verdict of the Star-Chamber? or the still more atrocious sentences executed on the Scotch anti-prelatists and schismatics, at the command, and in some instances under the very eye of the Duke of Lauderdale, and of that wretched bigot who afterwards dishonoured and forfeited the throne of Great 145 Britain? Or do we not rather feel and understand, that these violent words were mere bubbles, flashes and electrical apparitions, from the magic cauldron of a fervid and ebullient fancy, constantly fuelled by an unexampled opulence of language?

Were I now to have read by myself for the first time the poem 150 in question, my conclusion, I fully believe, would be, that the writer must have been some man of warm feelings and active fancy; that he had painted to himself the circumstances that accompany war in so many vivid and yet fantastic forms, as proved that neither the images nor the feelings were the result 155 of observation, or in any way derived from realities. I should judge that they were the product of his own seething imagination, and therefore impregnated with that pleasurable exultation which is experienced in all energetic exertion of intellectual power; that in the same mood he had generalized the causes of 160 the war, and then personified the abstract and christened it by the name which he had been accustomed to hear most often associated with its management and measures. I should guess that the minister was in the author's mind at the moment of composition as completely apaths, anaimsarkos, as Anacreon's 165 grasshopper, and that he had as little notion of a real person of flesh and blood,

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, [Paradise Lost, II. 668.]

as Milton had in the grim and terrible phantom (half person, half allegory) which he has placed at the gates of Hell. I 170 concluded by observing, that the poem was not calculated to excite passion in any mind, or to make any impression except on poetic readers; and that from the culpable levity betrayed at the close of the eclogue by the grotesque union of epigrammatic wit with allegoric personification, in the allusion to the 175 most fearful of thoughts, I should conjecture that the 'rantin' Bardie', instead of really believing, much less wishing, the fate spoken of in the last line, in application to any human individual, would shrink from passing the verdict even on the Devil himself, and exclaim with poor Burns, 180

But fare ye weel, auld Nickie-ben! Oh! wad ye tak a thought an' men! Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken— Still hae a stake— I'm wae to think upon yon den, 185 Ev'n for your sake!

I need not say that these thoughts, which are here dilated, were in such a company only rapidly suggested. Our kind host smiled, and with a courteous compliment observed, that the defence was too good for the cause. My voice faltered 190 a little, for I was somewhat agitated; though not so much on my own account as for the uneasiness that so kind and friendly a man would feel from the thought that he had been the occasion of distressing me. At length I brought out these words: 'I must now confess, sir! that I am author of that poem. It 195 was written some years ago. I do not attempt to justify my past self, young as I then was; but as little as I would now write a similar poem, so far was I even then from imagining that the lines would be taken as more or less than a sport of fancy. At all events, if I know my own heart, there was 200 never a moment in my existence in which I should have been more ready, had Mr. Pitt's person been in hazard, to interpose my own body, and defend his life at the risk of my own.'

I have prefaced the poem with this anecdote, because to have printed it without any remark might well have been understood 205 as implying an unconditional approbation on my part, and this after many years' consideration. But if it be asked why I republished it at all, I answer, that the poem had been attributed at different times to different other persons; and what I had dared beget, I thought it neither manly nor honourable not to 210 dare father. From the same motives I should have published perfect copies of two poems, the one entitled The Devil's Thoughts, and the other, The Two Round Spaces on the Tombstone, but that the three first stanzas of the former, which were worth all the rest of the poem, and the best stanza of the 215 remainder, were written by a friend [Southey] of deserved celebrity; and because there are passages in both which might have given offence to the religious feelings of certain readers. I myself indeed see no reason why vulgar superstitions and absurd conceptions that deform the pure faith of a Christian 220 should possess a greater immunity from ridicule than stories of witches, or the fables of Greece and Rome. But there are those who deem it profaneness and irreverence to call an ape an ape, if it but wear a monk's cowl on its head; and I would rather reason with this weakness than offend it. 225

The passage from Jeremy Taylor to which I referred is found in his second Sermon on Christ's Advent to Judgment; which is likewise the second in his year's course of sermons. Among many remarkable passages of the same character in those discourses, I have selected this as the most so. 'But when this 230 Lion of the tribe of Judah shall appear, then Justice shall strike, and Mercy shall not hold her hands; she shall strike sore strokes, and Pity shall not break the blow. As there are treasures of good things, so hath God a treasure of wrath and fury, and scourges and scorpions; and then shall be produced the shame 235 of Lust and the malice of Envy, and the groans of the oppressed and the persecutions of the saints, and the cares of Covetousness and the troubles of Ambition, and the insolencies of traitors and the violences of rebels, and the rage of anger and the uneasiness of impatience, and the restlessness of unlawful desires; and by 240 this time the monsters and diseases will be numerous and intolerable, when God's heavy hand shall press the sanies and the intolerableness, the obliquity and the unreasonableness, the amazement and the disorder, the smart and the sorrow, the guilt and the punishment, out from all our sins, and pour them 245 into one chalice, and mingle them with an infinite wrath, and make the wicked drink off all the vengeance, and force it down their unwilling throats with the violence of devils and accursed spirits.'

That this Tartarean drench displays the imagination rather 250 than the discretion of the compounder; that, in short, this passage and others of the same kind are in a bad taste, few will deny at the present day. It would, doubtless, have more behoved the good bishop not to be wise beyond what is written on a subject in which Eternity is opposed to Time, and a Death 255 threatened, not the negative, but the positive Opposite of Life; a subject, therefore, which must of necessity be indescribable to the human understanding in our present state. But I can neither find nor believe that it ever occurred to any reader to ground on such passages a charge against Bishop Taylor's 260 humanity, or goodness of heart. I was not a little surprised therefore to find, in the Pursuits of Literature and other works, so horrible a sentence passed on Milton's moral character, for a passage in his prose writings, as nearly parallel to this of Taylor's as two passages can well be conceived to be. All his 265 merits, as a poet, forsooth—all the glory of having written the Paradise Lost, are light in the scale, nay, kick the beam, compared with the atrocious malignity of heart, expressed in the offensive paragraph. I remembered, in general, that Milton had concluded one of his works on Reformation, written in the 270 fervour of his youthful imagination, in a high poetic strain, that wanted metre only to become a lyrical poem. I remembered that in the former part he had formed to himself a perfect ideal of human virtue, a character of heroic, disinterested zeal and devotion for Truth, Religion, and public Liberty, in act and in 275 suffering, in the day of triumph and in the hour of martyrdom. Such spirits, as more excellent than others, he describes as having a more excellent reward, and as distinguished by a transcendant glory: and this reward and this glory he displays and particularizes with an energy and brilliance that announced the 280 Paradise Lost as plainly, as ever the bright purple clouds in the east announced the coming of the Sun. Milton then passes to the gloomy contrast, to such men as from motives of selfish ambition and the lust of personal aggrandizement should, against their own light, persecute truth and the true religion, and 285 wilfully abuse the powers and gifts entrusted to them, to bring vice, blindness, misery and slavery, on their native country, on the very country that had trusted, enriched and honoured them. Such beings, after that speedy and appropriate removal from their sphere of mischief which all good and humane men must 290 of course desire, will, he takes for granted by parity of reason, meet with a punishment, an ignominy, and a retaliation, as much severer than other wicked men, as their guilt and its consequences were more enormous. His description of this imaginary punishment presents more distinct pictures to the 295 fancy than the extract from Jeremy Taylor; but the thoughts in the latter are incomparably more exaggerated and horrific. All this I knew; but I neither remembered, nor by reference and careful re-perusal could discover, any other meaning, either in Milton or Taylor, but that good men will be rewarded, and 300 the impenitent wicked, punished, in proportion to their dispositions and intentional acts in this life; and that if the punishment of the least wicked be fearful beyond conception, all words and descriptions must be so far true, that they must fall short of the punishment that awaits the transcendantly wicked. Had 305 Milton stated either his ideal of virtue, or of depravity, as an individual or individuals actually existing? Certainly not! Is this representation worded historically, or only hypothetically? Assuredly the latter! Does he express it as his own wish that after death they should suffer these tortures? or as 310 a general consequence, deduced from reason and revelation, that such will be their fate? Again, the latter only! His wish is expressly confined to a speedy stop being put by Providence to their power of inflicting misery on others! But did he name or refer to any persons living or dead? No! But the 315 calumniators of Milton daresay (for what will calumny not dare say?) that he had Laud and Strafford in his mind, while writing of remorseless persecution, and the enslavement of a free country from motives of selfish ambition. Now what if a stern anti-prelatist should daresay, that in speaking of the insolencies of 320 traitors and the violences of rebels, Bishop Taylor must have individualised in his mind Hampden, Hollis, Pym, Fairfax, Ireton, and Milton? And what if he should take the liberty of concluding, that, in the after-description, the Bishop was feeding and feasting his party-hatred, and with those individuals before 325 the eyes of his imagination enjoying, trait by trait, horror after horror, the picture of their intolerable agonies? Yet this bigot would have an equal right thus to criminate the one good and great man, as these men have to criminate the other. Milton has said, and I doubt not but that Taylor with equal 330 truth could have said it, 'that in his whole life he never spake against a man even that his skin should be grazed.' He asserted this when one of his opponents (either Bishop Hall or his nephew) had called upon the women and children in the streets to take up stones and stone him (Milton). It is known that 335 Milton repeatedly used his interest to protect the royalists; but even at a time when all lies would have been meritorious against him, no charge was made, no story pretended, that he had ever directly or indirectly engaged or assisted in their persecution. Oh! methinks there are other and far better feelings 340 which should be acquired by the perusal of our great elder writers. When I have before me, on the same table, the works of Hammond and Baxter; when I reflect with what joy and dearness their blessed spirits are now loving each other; it seems a mournful thing that their names should be perverted to 345 an occasion of bitterness among us, who are enjoying that happy mean which the human too-much on both sides was perhaps necessary to produce. 'The tangle of delusions which stifled and distorted the growing tree of our well-being has been torn away; the parasite-weeds that fed on its very roots have been 350 plucked up with a salutary violence. To us there remain only quiet duties, the constant care, the gradual improvement, the cautious unhazardous labours of the industrious though contented gardener—to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and one by one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and 355 the caterpillar. But far be it from us to undervalue with light and senseless detraction the conscientious hardihood of our predecessors, or even to condemn in them that vehemence, to which the blessings it won for us leave us now neither temptation nor pretext. We antedate the feelings, in order to 360 criminate the authors, of our present liberty, light and toleration.' (The Friend, No. IV. Sept. 7, 1809.) [1818, i. 105.]

If ever two great men might seem, during their whole lives, to have moved in direct opposition, though neither of them has at any time introduced the name of the other, Milton and 365 Jeremy Taylor were they. The former commenced his career by attacking the Church-Liturgy and all set forms of prayer. The latter, but far more successfully, by defending both. Milton's next work was against the Prelacy and the then existing Church-Government—Taylor's in vindication and 370 support of them. Milton became more and more a stern republican, or rather an advocate for that religious and moral aristocracy which, in his day, was called republicanism, and which, even more than royalism itself, is the direct antipode of modern jacobinism. Taylor, as more and more sceptical concerning the fitness of 375 men in general for power, became more and more attached to the prerogatives of monarchy. From Calvinism, with a still decreasing respect for Fathers, Councils, and for Church-antiquity in general, Milton seems to have ended in an indifference, if not a dislike, to all forms of ecclesiastic government, and to 380 have retreated wholly into the inward and spiritual church-communion of his own spirit with the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Taylor, with a growing reverence for authority, an increasing sense of the insufficiency of the Scriptures without the aids of tradition and the consent of 385 authorized interpreters, advanced as far in his approaches (not indeed to Popery, but) to Roman-Catholicism, as a conscientious minister of the English Church could well venture. Milton would be and would utter the same to all on all occasions: he would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 390 truth. Taylor would become all things to all men, if by any means he might benefit any; hence he availed himself, in his popular writings, of opinions and representations which stand often in striking contrast with the doubts and convictions expressed in his more philosophical works. He appears, indeed, 395 not too severely to have blamed that management of truth (istam falsitatem dispensativam) authorized and exemplified by almost all the fathers: Integrum omnino doctoribus et coetus Christiani antistitibus esse, ut dolos versent, falsa veris intermisceant et imprimis religionis hostes fallant, dummodo 400 veritatis commodis et utilitati inserviant.

The same antithesis might be carried on with the elements of their several intellectual powers. Milton, austere, condensed, imaginative, supporting his truth by direct enunciation of lofty moral sentiment and by distinct visual representations, and in 405 the same spirit overwhelming what he deemed falsehood by moral denunciation and a succession of pictures appalling or repulsive. In his prose, so many metaphors, so many allegorical miniatures. Taylor, eminently discursive, accumulative, and (to use one of his own words) agglomerative; still more 410 rich in images than Milton himself, but images of fancy, and presented to the common and passive eye, rather than to the eye of the imagination. Whether supporting or assailing, he makes his way either by argument or by appeals to the affections, unsurpassed even by the schoolmen in subtlety, 415 agility, and logic wit, and unrivalled by the most rhetorical of the fathers in the copiousness and vividness of his expressions and illustrations. Here words that convey feelings, and words that flash images, and words of abstract notion, flow together, and whirl and rush onward like a stream, at once rapid and full 420 of eddies; and yet still interfused here and there we see a tongue or islet of smooth water, with some picture in it of earth or sky, landscape or living group of quiet beauty.

Differing then so widely and almost contrariantly, wherein did these great men agree? wherein did they resemble each 425 other? In genius, in learning, in unfeigned piety, in blameless purity of life, and in benevolent aspirations and purposes for the moral and temporal improvement of their fellow-creatures! Both of them wrote a Latin Accidence, to render education more easy and less painful to children; both of them composed 430 hymns and psalms proportioned to the capacity of common congregations; both, nearly at the same time, set the glorious example of publicly recommending and supporting general toleration, and the liberty both of the Pulpit and the press! In the writings of neither shall we find a single sentence, like 435 those meek deliverances to God's mercy, with which Laud accompanied his votes for the mutilations and loathsome dungeoning of Leighton and others!—nowhere such a pious prayer as we find in Bishop Hall's memoranda of his own life, concerning the subtle and witty atheist that so grievously perplexed 440 and gravelled him at Sir Robert Drury's till he prayed to the Lord to remove him, and behold! his prayers were heard: for shortly afterward this Philistine-combatant went to London, and there perished of the plague in great misery! In short, nowhere shall we find the least approach, in the lives and 445 writings of John Milton or Jeremy Taylor, to that guarded gentleness, to that sighing reluctance, with which the holy brethren of the Inquisition deliver over a condemned heretic to the civil magistrate, recommending him to mercy, and hoping that the magistrate will treat the erring brother with 450 all possible mildness!—the magistrate who too well knows what would be his own fate if he dared offend them by acting on their recommendation.

The opportunity of diverting the reader from myself to characters more worthy of his attention, has led me far beyond my 455 first intention; but it is not unimportant to expose the false zeal which has occasioned these attacks on our elder patriots. It has been too much the fashion first to personify the Church of England, and then to speak of different individuals, who in different ages have been rulers in that church, as if in some 460 strange way they constituted its personal identity. Why should a clergyman of the present day feel interested in the defence of Laud or Sheldon? Surely it is sufficient for the warmest partisan of our establishment that he can assert with truth,—when our Church persecuted, it was on mistaken principles 465 held in common by all Christendom; and at all events, far less culpable was this intolerance in the Bishops, who were maintaining the existing laws, than the persecuting spirit afterwards shewn by their successful opponents, who had no such excuse, and who should have been taught mercy by their own sufferings, 470 and wisdom by the utter failure of the experiment in their own case. We can say that our Church, apostolical in its faith, primitive in its ceremonies, unequalled in its liturgical forms; that our Church, which has kindled and displayed more bright and burning lights of genius and learning than all other protestant 475 churches since the reformation, was (with the single exception of the times of Laud and Sheldon) least intolerant, when all Christians unhappily deemed a species of intolerance their religious duty; that Bishops of our church were among the first that contended against this error; and finally, that since the 480 reformation, when tolerance became a fashion, the Church of England in a tolerating age, has shewn herself eminently tolerant, and far more so, both in spirit and in fact, than many of her most bitter opponents, who profess to deem toleration itself an insult on the rights of mankind! As to 485 myself, who not only know the Church-Establishment to be tolerant, but who see in it the greatest, if not the sole safe bulwark of toleration. I feel no necessity of defending or palliating oppressions under the two Charleses, in order to exclaim with a full and fervent heart, Esto perpetua! 490

FOOTNOTES:

[1097:1] First published in Sibylline Leaves in 1817: included in 1828, 1829, and 1834. The 'Apologetic Preface' must have been put together in 1815, with a view to publication in the volume afterwards named Sibylline Leaves, but the incident on which it turns most probably took place in the spring of 1803, when both Scott and Coleridge were in London. Davy writing to Poole, May 1, 1803, says that he generally met Coleridge during his stay in town, 'in the midst of large companies, where he was the image of power and activity,' and Davy, as we know, was one of Sotheby's guests. In a letter to Mrs. Fletcher dated Dec. 18, 1830 (?), Scott tells the story in his own words, but throws no light on date or period. The implied date (1809) in Morritt's report of Dr. Howley's conversation (Lockhart's Life of Scott, 1837, ii. 245) is out of the question, as Coleridge did not leave the Lake Country between Sept. 1808 and October 1810. Coleridge set great store by 'his own stately account of this lion-show' (ibid.). In a note in a MS. copy of Sibylline Leaves presented to his son Derwent he writes:—'With the exception of this slovenly sentence (ll. 109-19) I hold this preface to be my happiest effort in prose composition.'

[1097:2] William Sotheby (1756-1838), translator of Wieland's Oberon and the Georgics of Virgil. Coleridge met him for the first time at Keswick in July, 1802.

[1097:3] 'The compliment I can witness to be as just as it is handsomely recorded,' Sir W. Scott to Mrs. Fletcher, Fragmentary Remains of Sir H. Davy, 1858, p. 113.

LINENOTES:

[24] he 1817, 1829.

[41] What follows is substantially the same as I then 1817, 1829.

[56] realize 1817, 1829.

[93] outrageous] outr, 1817, 1829.

[95] escape-valves 1817, 1829. liver 1817, 1829.

[106] afterwards] afterward 1817, 1829.

[119] 'I . . . Law' 1817, 1829.

[125] Hell and Purgatory 1817, 1829.

[135] a Euripides 1817: an Euripides 1829.

[136] so natured 1817, 1829.

[172] passion . . . any 1817, 1829.

[173] poetic 1817, 1829. For betrayed in r. betrayed by, Errata, 1817, p. [xi].]

[174] in the grotesque 1817.

[195] am author] am the author 1817.

[203] my body MS. corr. 1817.

[212-3] The . . . Thoughts 1817, 1829.

[213-4] The . . . Tombstone 1817, 1829.

[238] insolencies] indolence 1829.

[238-9] and the . . . rebels 1817, 1829.

[252] in . . . taste 1817, 1829.

[256] positive 1817, 1829. Opposite] Oppositive 1829, 1893.

[264] his 1817, 1829.

[267] PARADISE LOST 1817, 1829.

[273] former] preceding MS. corr. 1817.

[278] and as] as MS. corr. 1817.

[295] pictures 1817, 1829.

[296] thoughts 1817, 1829.

[310] wish . . . should 1817, 1829.

[312] will be 1817, 1829.

[316] daresay 1817, 1829.

[320] daresay 1817, 1829.

[320-1] insolencies . . . rebels 1817, 1829.

[335] him 1817, 1829.

[346] us 1817, 1829.

[347] human TOO-MUCH 1817, 1829.

[349] has] have 1817.

[360] feelings 1817, 1829.

[361] authors 1817, 1829.

[373] called 1817, 1829.

[380] all 1817, 1829.

[387] Roman-Catholicism] Catholicism 1817, 1829.

[393] popular 1817, 1829.

[396] too severely . . . management 1817, 1829.

[397] istam . . . dispensativam 1817, 1829.

[410] agglomerative 1817, 1829.

[416] logic] logical 1817, 1829.

[420] and at once whirl 1817, 1829.

[422] islet] isle 1829. Carlyle in the Life of John Sterling, cap. viii, quotes the last two words of the Preface. Was it from the same source that he caught up the words 'Balmy sunny islets, islets of the blest and the intelligible' which he uses to illustrate the lucid intervals in Coleridge's monologue?

[436] meek . . . mercy 1817, 1829.

[441] he . . . him 1817, 1829.

[450] hoping 1817, 1829.

[461] they 1817, 1829.

[467] culpable were the Bishops 1817, 1829.

[481] reformation] Revolution in 1688 MS. corr. 1817.

[488] bulwark 1817, 1829.

[490] ESTO PERPETUA 1817, 1829.

[After 490] Braving the cry. O the Vanity and self-dotage of Authors! I, yet, after a reperusal of the preceding Apol. Preface, now some 20 years since its first publication, dare deliver it as my own judgement that both in style and thought it is a work creditable to the head and heart of the Author, tho' he happens to have been the same person, only a few stone lighter and with chesnut instead of silver hair, with his Critic and Eulogist.

S. T. Coleridge, May, 1829.

[MS. Note in a copy of the edition of 1829, vol. i, p. 353.]



APPENDIX IV

PROSE VERSIONS OF POEMS, ETC.



A

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS IN THE COURT OF LOVE

[Vide ante, p. 409.]

Why is my Love like the Sun?

1. The Dawn = the presentiment of my Love.

No voice as yet had made the air Be music with thy name: yet why That obscure [over aching] Hope: that yearning Sigh? That sense of Promise everywhere? Beloved! flew thy spirit by?

2. The Sunrise = the suddenness, the all-at-once of Love—and the first silence—the beams of Light fall first on the distance, the interspace still dark.

3. The Cheerful Morning—the established Day-light universal.

4. The Sunset—who can behold it, and think of the Sun-rise? It takes all the thought to itself. The Moon-reflected Light—soft, melancholy, warmthless—the absolute purity (nay, it is always pure, but), the incorporeity of Love in absence—Love per se is a Potassium—it can subsist by itself, tho' in presence it has a natural and necessary combination with the comburent principle. All other Lights (the fixed Stars) not borrowed from the absent Sun—Lights for other worlds, not for me. I see them and admire, but they irradiate nothing.



B

PROSE VERSION OF GLYCINE'S SONG IN ZAPOLYA

[Vide ante, pp. 426, 919, 920.]

1

On the sky with liquid openings of Blue, The slanting pillar of sun mist, Field-inward flew a little Bird. Pois'd himself on the column, Sang with a sweet and marvellous voice, 5 Adieu! adieu! I must away, Far, far away, Set off to-day.