Chapter LXVII: Letter 60: To Cottle

Stowey (June), 1797.

My dear Cottle,

I deeply regret, that my anxieties and my slothfulness, acting in a combined ratio, prevented me from finishing my "Progress of Liberty, or Visions of the Maid of Orleans", with that Poem at the head of the volume, with the "Ode" in the middle, and the "Religious Musings" at the end. * * *

In the "Lines on the Man of Ross", immediately after these lines,

He heard the widow's heaven-breathed prayer of praise,
He mark'd the shelter'd orphan's tearful gaze.

Please to add these two lines.

And o'er the portion'd maiden's snowy cheek,
Bade bridal love suffuse its blushes meek.

And for the line,

Beneath this roof, if thy cheer'd moments pass.

I should be glad to substitute this,

If near this roof thy wine-cheer'd moments pass.

"These emendations," Cottle adds, "came too late for admission in the second edition; nor have they appeared in the last edition. They will remain therefore for insertion in any future edition of Mr. Coleridge's Poems."

The exact date on which Coleridge and Wordsworth met in the year 1796 has not been ascertained; but Coleridge speaks in the next letter as if he was now well acquainted with Wordsworth. Coleridge had been at Taunton early in June ('Letters, 220). On the 8th of June he wrote to Cottle.