Chapter XIX: Remorse at Drury Lane46

By what I _have_ effected, am I to be judged by my fellow-men; what I _could_ have done is a question for my own conscience.--S. T. C.

As the _Biographia Literaria_ does not mention all Mr. Coleridge's writings, it will be proper to give some account of them here.

The Poetical Works in three volumes include the _Juvenile Poems_, _Sibylline Leaves_, _Ancient Mariner_, _Christabel_, _Remorse_, _Zapolya_, and _Wallenstein_.

The first volume of _Juvenile Poems_ was published in the Spring of 1796. It contains three sonnets by Charles Lamb, and a poetical Epistle which he called "Sara's," but of which my Mother told me she wrote but little. Indeed it is not very like some simple affecting verses, which were wholly by herself, on the death of her beautiful infant, Berkeley, in 1799. In May, 1797, Mr. C. put forth a collection of poems, containing all that were in his first edition, with the exception of twenty pieces and the addition of ten new ones and a considerable number by his friends, Lloyd and Lamb. _The Ancient Mariner_, _Love_,[47] _The Nightingale_, _The Foster Mother's Tale_ first appeared with the _Lyrical Ballads_ of Mr. Wordsworth in the summer of 1798. There was a third edition of the _Juvenile Poems_ by themselves in 1803, with the original motto from Statius, _Felix curarum_, etc. _Silo. Lib._ iv. A spirit of almost child-like sociability seemed to reign among these young poets--they were fond of joint publications.

_Wallenstein_, a Play translated from the German of Schiller, appeared in 1800. _Christabel_ was not published till April 1816, but written, the first part at Stowey in 1797, the second at Keswick in 1800. It went into a third edition in the first year. The fragment called _Kubla Khan_, composed in 1797,[48] and the _Pains of Sleep_, which was annexed to the former by way of contrast, were published with the first edition of _Christabel_, in 1816.

The Tragedy called _Remorse_ was written in the summer and autumn of 1797, but not represented on the stage till 1813, when it was performed at Drury Lane--on the authority of an old play-bill of the Calne Theatre, "with unbounded applause thirty successive nights." On "the success of the _Remorse_," Mr. Coleridge wrote thus to his friend Mr. Poole, on the 14th of February, 1813: