Chapter C: Preface

Poems on various subjects written at different times and prompted by very different feelings; but which will be read at one time and under the influence of one set of feelings--this is an heavy disadvantage: for we love or admire a poet in proportion as he developes our own sentiments and emotions, or reminds us of our own knowledge.

Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not unfrequently condemned for their querulous egotism. But egotism is to be condemned then only when it offends against time and place, as in an History or an Epic Poem. To censure it in a Monody or Sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write Sonnets or Monodies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps nothing else could. After the more violent emotions of Sorrow, the mind demands solace and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings it can endure no employment not connected with those sufferings. Forcibly to turn away our attention to other subjects is a painful and in general an unavailing effort.

"But O how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of misery to impart;
From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow
And raise esteem upon the base of woe!"[1136:1]

The communicativeness of our nature leads us to describe our own sorrows; in the endeavor to describe them intellectual activity is exerted; and by a benevolent law of our nature from intellectual activity a pleasure results which is gradually associated and mingles as a corrective with the painful subject of the description. True! it may be answered, but how are the PUBLIC interested in your sorrows or your description? We are for ever attributing a personal unity to imaginary aggregates. What is the PUBLIC but a term for a number of scattered individuals of whom as many will be interested in these sorrows as have experienced the same or similar?

"Holy be the Lay,
Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way!"

There is one species of egotism which is truly disgusting; not that which leads us to communicate our feelings to others, but that which would reduce the feelings of others to an identity with our own. The Atheist, who exclaims "pshaw!" when he glances his eye on the praises of Deity, is an Egotist; an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of love-verses, is an Egotist; and your sleek favourites of Fortune are Egotists, when they condemn all "melancholy discontented" verses.

Surely it would be candid not merely to ask whether the Poem pleases ourselves, but to consider whether or no there may not be others to whom it is well-calculated to give an innocent pleasure. With what anxiety every fashionable author avoids the word _I_!--now he transforms himself into a third person,--"the present writer"--now multiplies himself and swells into "_we_"--and all this is the watchfulness of guilt. Conscious that this said _I_ is perpetually intruding on his mind and that it monopolizes his heart, he is prudishly solicitous that it may not escape from his lips.

This disinterestedness of phrase is in general commensurate with selfishness of feeling: men old and hackneyed in the ways of the world are scrupulous avoiders of Egotism.

Of the following Poems a considerable number are styled "Effusions," in defiance of Churchill's line

"Effusion on Effusion _pour_ away."[1136:2]

I could recollect no title more descriptive of the manner and matter of the Poems--I might indeed have called the majority of them Sonnets--but they do not possess that _oneness_ of thought which I deem indispensible (sic) in a Sonnet--and (not a very honorable motive perhaps) I was fearful that the title "Sonnet" might have reminded my reader of the Poems of the Rev. W. L. Bowles--a comparison with whom would have sunk me below that mediocrity, on the surface of which I am at present enabled to float.

Some of the verses allude to an intended emigration to America on the scheme of an abandonment of individual property.

The Effusions signed C. L. were written by Mr. CHARLES LAMB, of the India House--independently of the signature their superior merit would have sufficiently distinguished them. For the rough sketch of Effusion XVI, I am indebted to Mr. FAVELL. And the first half of Effusion XV was written by the Author of "Joan of Arc", an Epic Poem.

NOTES ATTACHED TO A FIRST DRAFT OF THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION [_MS. R_]

(i)

I cannot conclude the Preface without expressing my grateful acknowledgments to Mr. Cottle, Bristol, for the liberality with which (with little probability I know of remuneration from the sale) he purchased the poems, and the typographical elegance by which he endeavoured to recommend them, (or)--the liberal assistance which he afforded me, by the purchase of the copyright with little probability of remuneration from the sale of the Poems.

[This acknowledgement, which was omitted from the Preface to the First Edition, was rewritten and included in the 'Advertisement' to the 'Supplement' to the Second Edition.]

(ii)

To EARL STANHOPE

A man beloved of Science and of Freedom, these Poems are
respectfully inscribed by
The Author.

[In a letter to Miss Cruikshank (? 1807) (_Early Recollections_, 1837, i. 201), Coleridge maintains that the 'Sonnet to Earl Stanhope', which was published in _Poems_, 1796 (vide _ante_, pp. 89, 90), 'was inserted by the fool of a publisher [Cottle prints 'inserted by Biggs, the fool of a printer'] in order, forsooth, that he might send the book and a letter to Earl Stanhope; who (to prove that he is not _mad_ in all things) treated both book and letter with silent contempt.' In a note Cottle denies this statement, and maintains that the 'book (handsomely bound) and the letter were sent to Lord S. by Mr. C. himself'. It is possible that before the book was published Coleridge had repented of Sonnet, Dedication, and Letter, and that the 'handsomely bound' volume was sent by Cottle and not by Coleridge, but the 'Dedication' is in his own handwriting and proves that he was, in the first instance at least, _particeps criminis_. See Note by J. D. Campbell, _P. W._, 1893, pp. 575, 576.]

CONTENTS

PAGE
Monody to Chatterton 1
To the Rev. W. J. H. 12
Songs of the Pixies 15
Lines on the Man of Ross 26
Lines to a beautiful Spring 28
Epitaph on an Infant 31
Lines on a Friend 32
To a Young Lady with a Poem 36
Absence, a Farewell Ode 40
Effusion 1, to Bowles 45
Effusion 2, to Burke 46
Effusion 3, to Mercy 47
Effusion 4, to Priestley 48
Effusion 5, to Erskine 49
Effusion 6, to Sheridan 50
Effusion 7, to Siddons [signed 'C. L.'] 51
Effusion 8, to Kosciusco 52
Effusion 9, to Fayette 53
Effusion 10, to Earl Stanhope 54
Effusion 11 ['Was it some sweet device'--'C. L.'] 55
Effusion 12 ['Methinks how dainty sweet'--'C. L.'] 56
Effusion 13, written at Midnight ['C. L.'] 57
Effusion 14 59
Effusion 15 60
Effusion 16, to an Old Man 61
Effusion 17, to Genevieve 62
Effusion 18, to the Autumnal Moon 63
Effusion 19, to my own heart 64
Effusion 20, to Schiller 65
Effusion 21, on Brockley Coomb 66
[Effusion 22,] To a Friend with an unfinished Poem 68
Effusion 23, to the Nightingale 71
Effusion 24, in the manner of Spencer 73
Effusion 25, to Domestic Peace 77
Effusion 26, on a Kiss 78
Effusion 27 80
Effusion 28 82
Effusion 29, Imitated from Ossian 84
Effusion 30, Complaint of Ninathoma 86
Effusion 31, from the Welsh 88
Effusion 32, The Sigh 89
Effusion 33, to a Young Ass 91
Effusion 34, to an Infant 94
Effusion 35, written at Clevedon 96
Effusion 36, written in Early Youth 101
Epistle 1, written at Shurton Bars 111
Epistle 2, to a Friend in answer to a Melancholy Letter 119
Epistle 3, written after a Walk 122
Epistle 4, to the Author of Poems published in Bristol 125
Epistle 5, from a Young Lady 129
Religious Musings 139

III

[A SHEET OF SONNETS.]

_Collation._--No title; Introduction, pp. [1]-2; Text (of Sonnets Nos. i-xxviii), pp. 3-16. Signatures A. B. B{2}. [1796.] [8{o}.

[There is no imprint. In a letter to John Thelwall, dated December 17, 1796 (_Letters of S. T. C._, 1895, i, 206), Coleridge writes, 'I have sent you . . . Item, a sheet of sonnets collected by me, for the use of a few friends, who payed the printing.' The 'sheet' is bound up with a copy of 'Sonnets and Other poems, by The Rev. W. L. Bowles A. M. Bath, printed by R. Cruttwell: and sold by C. Dilly, Poultry, London, MDCCXCVI. _Fourth Edition_,' which was presented to Mrs. Thelwall, Dec. 18, 1796. At the end of the 'Sonnets' a printed slip (probably a cutting from a newspaper) is inserted, which contains the lines 'To a FRIEND who had declared his intention of Writing no more Poetry' (vide _ante_, pp. 158, 159). This volume is now in the Dyce Collection, which forms part of the Victoria and Albert Museum. See _P. and D. W._, 1877, ii, pp. 375-9, and _P. W._, 1893, p. 544.]

_Contents._--

[INTRODUCTION]

The composition of the Sonnet has been regulated by Boileau in his Art / of Poetry, and since Boileau, by William Preston, in the elegant preface / to his Amatory Poems: the rules, which they would establish, are founded / on the practice of Petrarch. I have never yet been able to discover either / sense, nature, or poetic fancy in Petrarch's poems; they appear to me all / one cold glitter of heavy conceits and metaphysical abstractions. How/ever, Petrarch, although not the inventor of the Sonnet, was the first / who made it popular; and _his_ countrymen have taken his poems as the / model. Charlotte Smith and Bowles are they who first made the Sonnet / popular among the present English: I am justified therefore by analogy / in deducing its laws from _their_ compositions.

The Sonnet then is a small poem, in which some lonely feeling is de/veloped. It is limited to a _particular_ number of lines, in order that the / reader's mind having expected the close at the place in which he finds it, / may rest satisfied; and that so the poem may acquire, as it were, a _Totality_,/--in 15 plainer phrase, may become a _Whole_. It is confined to fourteen lines, / because as some particular number is necessary, and that particular / number must be a small one, it may as well be fourteen as any other / number. When no reason can be adduced against a thing, Custom is a / sufficient reason for it. Perhaps, if the Sonnet were comprized in less / than fourteen lines, it would become a serious Epigram; if it extended to / more, it would encroach on the province of the Elegy. Poems, in which / no lonely feeling is developed, are not Sonnets because the Author has / chosen to write them in fourteen lines; they should rather be entitled / Odes, or Songs, or Inscriptions. The greater part of Warton's Sonnets are / severe and masterly likenesses of the style of the Greek επιγραμματα.

In a Sonnet then we require a developement of some lonely feeling, by / whatever cause it may have been excited; but those Sonnets appear to me / the most exquisite, in which moral Sentiments, Affections, or Feelings, / are deduced from, and associated with, the scenery of Nature. Such / compositions generate a habit of thought highly favourable to delicacy of / character. They create a sweet and indissoluble union between the / intellectual and the material world. Easily remembered from their briefness, / and interesting alike to the eye and the affections, these are the poems / which we can "lay up in our heart, and our soul," and repeat them "when / we walk by the way, and when we lie down, and when we rise up". / Hence the Sonnets of _Bowles_ derive their marked superiority over all / other Sonnets; hence they domesticate with the heart, and become, as it / were, a part of our identity.

Respecting the metre of a Sonnet, the Writer should consult his own / convenience.--Rhymes, many or few, or no rhymes at all--whatever the / chastity of his ear may prefer, whatever the rapid expression of his / feelings will permit;--all these things are left at his own disposal. A same/ness in the final sound of its words is the great and grievous defect of the / Italian language. That rule, therefore, which the Italians have estab/lished, of exactly _four_ different sounds in the Sonnet, seems to have arisen / from their wish to have _as many_, not from any dread of finding _more_. But / surely it is ridiculous to make the _defect_ of a foreign language a reason for / our not availing ourselves of one of the marked excellencies of our own. / "The Sonnet (says Preston,) will ever be cultivated by those who write on / tender, pathetic subjects. It is peculiarly adapted to the state of a man / violently agitated by a real passion, and wanting composure and vigor of / mind to methodize his thought. It is fitted to express a momentary burst / of Passion" etc. Now, if there be one species of composition more difficult / and artificial than another, it is an English Sonnet on the Italian Model. / Adapted to the agitations of a real passion! Express momentary bursts / of feeling in it! I should sooner expect to write pathetic _Axes_ or _pour / forth Extempore Eggs_ and _Altars_![1140:1] But the best confutation of such idle rules / is to be found in the Sonnets of those who have observed them, in their / inverted sentences, their quaint phrases, and incongruous mixture of / obsolete and Spenserian words: and when, at last, the thing is toiled and / hammered into fit shape, it is in general racked and tortured Prose rather / than any thing resembling Poetry. Miss Seward, who has perhaps / succeeded the best in these laborious trifles and who most dogmatically / insists on what she calls "the sonnet-claim," has written a very in/genious although unintentional burlesque on her own system, in the / following lines prefixed to the Poems of a Mr. Carey.

"Prais'd be the Poet, who the sonnet-claim,
Severest of the orders that belong
Distinct and separate to the Delphic song 70
Shall reverence, nor its appropriate name
Lawless assume: peculiar is its frame--
From him derived, who spurn'd the city throng,
And warbled sweet the rocks and woods among,
Lonely Valclusa! and that heir of Fame, 75
Our greater Milton, hath in many a lay
Woven on this arduous model, clearly shewn
That English verse may happily display
Those strict energic measures which alone
Deserve the name of Sonnet, and convey 80
A spirit, force, and grandeur, all their own!
"ANNE SEWARD."

"_A spirit, force, and grandeur, all their own!!_"--EDITOR.[1140:2]

[SONNETS]

SONNET

I. TO A FRIEND

'Bereave me not of these delightful Dreams.'--W. L. BOWLES.[1141:1]

II. 'With many a weary step at length I gain.'--R. SOUTHEY.

III. TO SCOTLAND

'Scotland! when thinking on each heathy hill.'--C. LLOYD.

IV. TO CRAIG-MILLAR CASTLE IN WHICH MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS WAS
CONFINED.

'This hoary labyrinth, the wreck of Time.'--C. LLOYD.

V. TO THE RIVER OTTER

'Dear native Brook! wild Streamlet of the West.'--S. T. COLERIDGE.

VI. 'O Harmony! thou tenderest Nurse of Pain.'--W. L. BOWLES.

VII. TO EVENING

'What numerous tribes beneath thy shadowy wing.'--BAMFIELD.

VIII. ON BATHING

'When late the trees were stript by winter pale'.--T. WARTON.

IX. 'When eddying Leaves begun in whirls to fly.'--HENRY BROOKS,
(_the Author of the Fool of Quality_.)

X. 'We were two pretty Babes, the younger she'.--CHARLES LAMB.

[_Note_]. Innocence which while we possess it is playful as a babe, becomes AWFUL, when it departs from us. That is the sentiment of the line, a fine sentiment, and nobly expressed.--THE EDITOR.

XI. 'I knew a gentle maid I ne'er shall view.'--W. SOTHEBY.

XII. 'Was it some sweet device of faery land.'--CHARLES LAMB.

XIII. 'When last I rov'd these winding wood-walks green.'--CHARLES
LAMB.

XIV. ON A DISCOVERY MADE TOO LATE.

'Thou bleedest, my poor HEART! and thy distress.'--S. T. COLERIDGE.

XV. 'Hard by the road, where on that little mound.'--ROBERT SOUTHEY.

XVI. THE NEGRO SLAVE

'Oh he is worn with toil! the big drops run.'--ROBERT SOUTHEY.

XVII. 'Sweet Mercy! how my very heart has bled.'--S. T. COLERIDGE.

XVIII. 'Could then the babes from yon unshelter'd cot.'--THOMAS RUSSEL.

XIX. 'Mild arch of promise on the evening sky.'--ROBERT SOUTHEY.

XX. 'Oh! She was almost speechless nor could hold.'--CHARLES LLOYD.

XXI. 'When from my dreary Home I first mov'd on'--CHARLES LLOYD.

XXII. 'In this tumultuous sphere for thee unfit.'--CHARLOTTE SMITH.

XXIII. 'I love the mournful sober-suited NIGHT.'--CHARLOTTE SMITH.

XXIV. 'Lonely I sit upon the silent shore.'--THOMAS DERMODY.

XXV. 'Oh! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind.'--CHARLES LAMB.

XXVI. 'Thou whose stern spirit loves the awful storm.'--W. L. BOWLES.

XXVII. 'INGRATITUDE, how deadly is thy smart.'--ANNA SEWARD.

XXVIII. TO THE AUTHOR OF THE "ROBBERS"

'That fearful voice, a famish'd Father's cry.'--S. T. COLERIDGE.

[At the foot of l. 14. S. T. C. writes--

'I affirm, John Thelwall! that the six last lines of this
Sonnet to Schiller are strong and fiery; and you are the only
one who thinks otherwise.--There's! a _spurt_ of Author-like
Vanity for you!']

IV

ODE / ON THE / DEPARTING YEAR. / BY S. T. COLERIDGE. / Ιου, ιου, ω ω κακα, Υπ' αυ με δεινος ορθομαντειας πονος / Στροβει, ταρασσων φροιμιοις εφημιοις, / . . . . . / το μελλον ηξει· και συ μην ταχει παρων / Αγαν γ' αληθομαντιν μ' ερεις. / ÆSCHYL. AGAMEM. 1225. / BRISTOL; Printed by N. Biggs, / and sold by J. Parsons, Paternoster Row, London. / 1796. / [4{o}.

_Collation._--Title, one leaf, p. [1]; Dedication, To Thomas Poole of Stowey, pp. [3]-4; Text, pp. [5]-15; LINES Addressed to a Young Man of Fortune who abandoned himself to an indolent and causeless Melancholy (signed) [=S. T. Coleridge=], p. 16. [Signatures--B (p. 5)--D (p. 13).]

V

POEMS, / By / S. T. COLERIDGE, / Second Edition. / To which are now added / POEMS / _By_ CHARLES LAMB, / And / CHARLES LLOYD. / Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitiae et similium / junctarumque Camœnarum; quod utinam neque mors / solvat, neque temporis longinquitas! / _Groscoll. Epist. ad Car. Utenhov. et Ptol. Lux. Tast._ / Printed by N. Biggs, / For J. Cottle, BRISTOL, and Messrs. / Robinsons, London. / 1797. / [8{o}.

_Collation._--Title-page, one leaf, p. [i]; Half-title, one leaf, [=Poems=] / by / [=S. T. Coleridge=] / [followed by Motto as in No. II], pp. [iii]-[iv]; Contents, pp. [v]-vi; DEDICATION, _To the Reverend_ GEORGE COLERIDGE of OTTERY St. MARY, / DEVON. Notus in frates animi paterni. _Hor. Carm. Lib._ II. 2. /, pp. [vii]-xii; Preface to the First Edition, pp. [xiii]-xvi; Preface to the Second Edition, pp. [xvii]-xx; Half-title, [=Ode=] / _on the_ / [=Departing Year=] [with motto (5 lines) from Aeschy. Agamem. 1225], one leaf, pp. [1]-[2]; Argument, pp. [3]-[4]; Text, pp. [5]-278; Errata (four lines) at the foot of p. 278.

[Carolus Utenhovius (Utenhove, or Uyttenhove) and Ptolomœus Luxius Tasteus were scholar friends of the Scottish poet and historian George Buchanan (1506-1582), who prefixes some Iambics 'Carolo Utenhovio F. S.' to his Hexameters 'Franciscanus et Fratres'. In some Elegiacs addressed to Tasteus and Tevius, in which he complains of his sufferings from gout and kindred maladies, he tells them that Groscollius (Professor of Medicine at the University of Paris) was doctoring him with herbs and by suggestion:--'Et spe languentem consilioque juvat'. Hence the three names. In another set of Iambics entitled 'Mutuus Amor' in which he celebrates the alliance between Scotland and England he writes:--

Non mortis hoc propinquitas
Non temporis longinquitas
Solvet, fides quod nexuit
Intaminata vinculum.

Hence the wording of the motto. Groscollius is, of course, a _mot à double entente_. It is a name and a nickname. The interpretation of the names and the reference to Buchanan's Hexameters were first pointed out by Mr. T. Hutchinson in the _Athenaeum_, Dec. 10, 1898.]

CONTENTS

[Titles of poems not in 1796 are printed in italics.]

POEMS by S. T. COLERIDGE.

PAGE
_Dedication_ vii
Preface to the First Edition xiii
Preface to the Second Edition xvii
_Ode to the New Year_ 1
Monody on Chatterton 17
Songs of the Pixies 29
The Rose 41
The Kiss 43
To a young Ass 45
Domestic Peace 48
The Sigh 49
Epitaph on an Infant 51
Lines on the Man of Ross 52
---- to a beautiful Spring 54
---- on the Death of a Friend 57
To a Young Lady 61
To a Friend, with an unfinished Poem 65

SONNETS.

[_Introduction to the Sonnets_ 71-74]
To W. L. Bowles 75
On a Discovery made too late 76
On Hope 77
_To the River Otter_ 78
On Brockly Comb 79
To an old Man 81
Sonnet 82
To Schiller 83
_On the Birth of a Son_ 85
_On first seeing my Infant_ 87
Ode to Sara 88
Composed at Clevedon 96
_On leaving a Place of Residence_ 100
_On an unfortunate Woman_ 105
_On observing a Blossom_ 107
_The Hour when we shall meet again_ 109
_Lines to C. Lloyd_ 110
Religious Musings 117

[=Poems=] by CHARLES LLOYD. pp. [151]-189. Second Edition.
[=Poems=] _on The Death_ of PRISCILLA FARMER, By her GRANDSON
CHARLES LLOYD, pp. [191]-213.
Sonnet ['The piteous sobs that choak the Virgin's breath', signed S.
T. Coleridge], p. 193.
[=Poems=] by CHARLES LAMB _of the India-House_. pp. [215]-240.

SUPPLEMENT.

_Advertisement_ 243
Lines to Joseph Cottle, by S. T. Coleridge 246
On an Autumnal Evening, by ditto, 249
In the manner of Spencer (_sic_), by ditto, 256
The Composition of a Kiss, by ditto, 260
To an Infant, by Ditto 264
_On the Christening of a Friend's Child_, by ditto, 264
To the Genius of Shakespeare, by Charles Lloyd, 267
Written after a Journey into North Wales, by ditto, 270
A Vision of Repentance, by Charles Lamb, 273