CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE 
 WORDSWORTH COLLECTION 
 
3 HMO :^ 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 BY EENEST HAETLEY COLEEIDGE, M.A., HON. F.E.S.L. 
 
 I ONCE had the good fortune to meet at the Authors' 
 Club the late William Morris, poet, printer, artist, 
 art furnisher, and socialist. It was towards the 
 close of his life, and the keen, vigorous spirit was 
 affected by the near approach of mortal sickness, — 
 affected, but not changed or weakened. When I 
 came up to the table where he was already seated — 
 his face buried in his hands — he looked up and 
 greeted me in this wise : " Your grandfather wrote 
 a few perfect poems, but as for that old lake-poet 
 Wordsworth, he [I will not attempt to give the 
 exact words] — he never wrote any poetry at all." 
 I hardly think he could have meant what he said 
 about Wordsworth; if so (to adapt a phrase of 
 Eobert Browning's) the less AYiUiam Morris he. 
 But he certainly did hold, as his Kelmscott edition 
 (now worth far more than its weight in silver) 
 proves, that only a few of Coleridge's poems, a few 
 gems, are worth preserving, and that the rest may be 
 allowed to perish. This is, I think, a superstition of 
 the moment— an eidolon columnarum, a ghost of the 
 book-market, formidable but unsubstantial. True 
 it is that between Coleridge in his early youth, not 
 
 1 
 
I S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 yet inspired, and Coleridge at his best, or, again, 
 between Coleridge as a lyrical and Coleridge as a 
 dramatic poet, there is a great gulf fixed ; but the 
 truth, the unrhetorical truth, is that over and above 
 the half-dozen gems of the first water there are more 
 than fifty others which have not perished in the 
 dust. Take the selections, the handiwork of critics 
 and poets. Mr. Swinburne's tale of ' Lyrical and 
 Imaginative Poems ' numbers 48 ; Mr. Andrew 
 Lang's ' Selections from Coleridge ' numbers 33 ; Mr. 
 Stopford Brooke's ' Golden Book of Coleridge ' con- 
 tains 84; and Dr. G-arnett's ' Poetry of Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge ' over 100 pieces. After — I am quoting 
 from a letter to his brother Greorge, — after he 
 had " snapped his squeaking baby-trumpet of 
 sedition " — or, as Byron put it, " let to the 
 ' Morning Post ' its aristocracy," — Coleridge used to 
 maintain that heads — that is, voters — must be 
 weighed, not counted. Here and now I will say 
 nothing about voters, but it is undoubtedly true 
 that poems must be weighed, not counted ; and 
 it is but to answer the critics according to their 
 criticism that I have laboured this question of 
 numbers — of quantity rather than quality — before 
 asserting that it is only in seven or eight poems 
 that Coleridge betrays the fact that he Avas a 
 dweller among the mountains, that, as Lamb has it, 
 " he lived in Skiddaw." And 3^et he was familiar 
 with almost the whole of the Lake District — second 
 only to Wordsworth in a general knowledge of its 
 main features. For the few years — four or five 
 at most if his long absences are omitted — which he 
 divided between Keswick and Grasmere, he read 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 3 
 
 learnt, marked, and took into liis inmost soul 
 every effect of snnsliine or of sliade, every modifica- 
 tion of outline of ridge or peak, every accentuation, 
 every undulation of foreground — tlie moss, the 
 stones, the puddles at his feet, the glimmer and 
 gloom of silver and ebon on the surface of the lakes, 
 the pageantry of mist and cloud, the light, the 
 colour, the magic, the enchantment of the hills. 
 He was fulfilled with the vision, and the record 
 remains — an unique, a marvellous record, — trans- 
 figured, indeed, by genius, but, with rare and brief 
 exceptions, untranslated into song. 
 
 But before I touch upon the Keswick poems I 
 must dwell upon one or two incidents of Coleridge's 
 earlier years before he settled at Greta Hall, before 
 the triumvirate Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge 
 were grouped together and nicknamed Lakists. I 
 can throw no pictures on the screen, I have no 
 magic lantern — only the dim and intermittent 
 lantern of speech, — but, thanks to the record, I can 
 for a few brief moments bring jou within speaking 
 distance of one who wrote as he spoke — that is, when 
 press and publisher were out of his ken, — and for 
 the sake of the text you must bear with and forgive 
 the commentary. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that a love of mountain 
 scenery, the admiration for precipitous crags and 
 wide stretches of barren hillside, was a new fashion, 
 hardly as yet a reality in Coleridge's youth. White, 
 of Selborne, describes the Sussex Downs as " a 
 chain of majestic momitains," and adds, " For my 
 own part I think there is something peculiarly 
 sweet and amusing in the shapely figured aspect of 
 
4 S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 chalk hills in preference to those of stone, which are 
 rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless." Even that was 
 a novel and daring sentiment. It was the champaign 
 — the smiling plain, rich, cultivated lands, park, and 
 forest — which appealed to the lover of the picturesque 
 in the eighteenth century. The first mountaineer 
 who climbed a dark broAv for the sake of climbing 
 was, I believe, the poet Petrarch, who ascended the 
 Mons Ventoi^us in the south of France ; and he, if I 
 remember aright, made a considerable splutter over 
 the job, and was not impressed by what he saw. 
 Mountains were by no means flattered in the brave 
 days of old ; they were miscalled cruel, savage, 
 horrible, the perilous abodes of mj^sterj^ and terror. 
 
 Even in 1807, long after " The Brothers " and 
 " Michael " had appeared in the second edition of the 
 ' Lyrical Ballads,' a learned and fashionable poetaster, 
 the Rev. Thomas Maurice, appealed successfully to the 
 public taste by his poem on "Eichmond Hill; " and it 
 was not till Scott poured forth his romantic poems 
 and poetical romances, and Byron, dosed, as he said, 
 by Shelley, imitated and interpreted AYordsworth in 
 his magnificent Third Canto of " Childe Harold," that 
 the average Briton yielded to the enchantment of 
 burn and peak, of moor and crag and fell. 
 
 Coleridge's first experience of mountain scenery 
 was in the summer of 1794, when, in company with 
 a college friend, one Joseph Hucks, he made a tour 
 on foot through the greater part of K'orth Wales. 
 His heart and head were full to overflowing with 
 thoughts and feelings of a vivid and personal nature ; 
 of republican and socialistic notions, equality and 
 fraternity ; of his lost love, Mary Evans, whom he 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 5 
 
 cauglit siglit of, lie says, accidentally at Wrexham; and 
 his letters contain one tribute, and only one, to the 
 scenery through which he was passing. He was on 
 his way from Llangunnog to Bala, and he describes 
 the last twelve miles as " sublimely beautiful." " It 
 was scorchingly hot. I applied my mouth, ever and 
 anon, to the side of the rock, and sucked in draughts 
 of water cold as ice, and clear as infant diamonds in 
 their embryo dew. The rugged and stony clefts are 
 stupendous, and in winter form cataracts most 
 astonishing ; now there is just enough sun-glittering 
 water dashed over them to ' soothe, not to disturb the 
 ear.' I slept by the side of one an hour or more." 
 Two years later, in August, 1796, he was in Derby- 
 shire, and visited the " thrice lovely vale of Ham, 
 a vale hung with woods all round, except just at its 
 entrance. It is without exception the most beautiful 
 place I ever saw." Derbyshire had supplanted 
 Wales. A year goes by, and he becomes the neigh- 
 bour and intimate friend of Wordsworth. The 
 following passage in " Osorio," the original draft of 
 " Remorse," must, I surmise, be traced to a descrip- 
 tion of Thirlmere and Lancy Beck which had been 
 given him by Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. 
 At any rate it fits that exquisite scene as it was before 
 the ancient watermarks were obliterated by the 
 Manchester Reservoir. 
 
 " You can't mistake. It is a small green dale 
 Built all around with liigli^ off-sloping hills, 
 And from its shape our peasants aptly call it 
 The Giant^s Cradle. There's a lake in the midst^ 
 And round its hanks tall wood that branches over, 
 And makes a kind of fairy forest grow 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 Down in the water. At the further end 
 
 A puny cataract falls on the lake, 
 
 And there (a curious sight) you see its shadow 
 
 For ever cui^ling, like a wreath of smoke, 
 
 Up through the foliage of those fairy trees /"* 
 
 I quote these lines because they were written by 
 Coleridge two years l^efore lie set foot in Westmore- 
 land, and tliey show that l^y this time (1797) heart 
 and eye were prepared for the revelation which 
 he was to receive himself, and, in turn, to make 
 manifest to others. Hitherto it might have been 
 said of mankind generally, with regard to the finer 
 perception of Nature in her wilder aspects, that 
 "having eyes they saw not." 
 
 Lastly, we come to that extraordinary prediction 
 which Coleridge uttered over the cradle of his first- 
 born. Hartley, a prediction which was fulfilled both 
 in the spirit and to the letter. The lines occur in 
 " Frost at Midnight," which was written in February, 
 1798, whilst he was living and likely to live in 
 Somersetshire, two years and a half before he took 
 up his quarters at Keswick. 
 
 '" I was reared 
 In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, 
 And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. 
 But thou, my babe, shalt wander like a breeze 
 By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags 
 Of ancient mountains and beneath the clouds 
 Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores 
 And mountain crags. So shalt thou see and hear 
 The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible 
 Of that eternal language which thy Grod 
 Utters, who from eternity doth teach 
 Himself in all, and all things in Himself."' 
 
S. T. COLEHIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 7 
 
 Yet one more experience of mountaineering was to 
 befall Coleridge before lie bent his steps northward. 
 In May, 1799, at the close of a nine months' residence 
 in G-ermany, he joined a party of his fellow- students 
 at the University of Gottingen on a three days' tour 
 in the Hartz mountains. He gives a detailed account 
 of the peculiar features of the scenery, of which the 
 following remarkable sentence may be taken as a 
 sample : — " The valley or basin into which we look 
 down is called the Wald Eauschenbach — that is, the 
 Valley of the Roaring Brook ; and roar it did most 
 solemnly. . . . Now again is nothing but fir and 
 pine above, below, around us ! How awful is the deep 
 unison of their undividable murmur ; what a one 
 thing it is — it is a sound that impresses the deep 
 notion of the Omnipresent. In various parts of the 
 deep vale below us we beheld little dancing water- 
 falls gleaming through the branches, and now, on our 
 left hand, from the very summit of the hill above us, 
 a powerful stream flung itself down leaping and 
 foaming, and now concealed, and now not concealed, 
 and now half-concealed by the fir-trees, till towards 
 the road it became a visible sheet of water within 
 whose immediate neighbourhood no pine could have 
 permanent abiding place. The snow lay every- 
 where on the sides of the roads, and glimmered in 
 company with the waterfall foam, snow patches and 
 water breaks glimmering through the branches on 
 the hill above, the deep basin below, and the hill 
 opposite." That is a forecast of the elaborate de- 
 scriptions of lakes and mountains, roads and walls 
 and cottages with which he filled his note-books after 
 he came to Keswick and began to take long, solitary 
 
O S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 walks. He had become by this time a minute 
 observer and careful recorder of scenic effects. Four 
 months after his return from Germany, in November, 
 1799, Coleridge, companioned and guided by Words- 
 Avorth, walked through the whole of the Lake District, 
 beginning with Haweswater and ending at Eusemere, 
 at the foot of Ulleswater, then the residence of the 
 emancipationist, Thomas Clarkson. There is an 
 especial interest in his first comments on Keswick, 
 which he passed en route for Lorton, where he saw 
 "a yew prodigious in size and complexity of number- 
 less branches. It flings itself on one side entirely over 
 the river, its brandies all verging waterwards over 
 the field — -on its branches names numberless carved; 
 some of the names, being grown wp, appear in alto 
 relievo " — perhaps the earliest mention of the " Pride 
 of Lorton Vale, Which to this day stands single in 
 the midst Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore." 
 (So wrote Wordsworth in 1803; a guide-book of 
 1780 does not mention it.) He is writing from Ouse 
 Bridge at the foot of Bassenthwaite. " From the 
 window of the inn we overlook the whole of the lake, 
 a simple majesty of water and mountain, and in the 
 distance the bank (Skiddaw Dodd) rising like a 
 wedge, and in the second distance the crags of 
 Derwentwater. What an effect of the shades in the 
 water ! On the left the conical shadow, on the right 
 a square of splendid black, all the intermediate area 
 a mirror reflecting dark and sunny cloud, — but in the 
 distance a black promontory with a circle of melted 
 silver, and a path of silver running from it. The 
 snowy Borrowdale is seen in the farthest distance." 
 Again, a few days later, on his return from 
 
S. T. COLEEIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 9 
 
 Wastdale, when lie is quitting Keswick, lie describes 
 tlie view from tlie Druidical circle : " Before nie, 
 towards Keswick, tlie mountains stand one beliind 
 the other in orderly array, as if evoked by, and 
 attentive to, the assembly of white-vested wizards." 
 That is an image which would only have occurred 
 to a poet. He assumes that the place was a 
 sanctuary, the scene of magic rites and ceremonies, 
 and as he observes the " assembly " of fantastic 
 peaks, Grrisedale Pike, and Causey Pike, and Red 
 Pike, and so on, which fall into line one behind the 
 other, he feigns to himself that these shapes and 
 forms had been summoned out of nothingness and 
 marshalled into " orderly array " by the white- 
 surpliced Druids who ministered at the central altar 
 within the circling shrine of stones. 
 
 On the same day that he turned to look at 
 Keswick Hill he made his way, via Threlkeld and 
 Matterdale, to Gowbarrow, where danced and dance 
 the daffodils. The description of the scene which 
 met his view on his descent from Ulleswater has 
 been transcribed from his MS. diary, and will be 
 new to all who are present. There were no phono- 
 graphs in 1799, and yet Coleridge spoke into his 
 note-books, and they do m a very real fashion give 
 out and give back his thoughts after many days. 
 Faint pencil scrawls though they be, they reproduce 
 the scene as it was in the eye of a beholder whose 
 eye was full of light. " I have come," he says, 
 " suddenly on Ulleswater ; a httle below Place Fell 
 there is a stretch, a large slice of silver, and above 
 this a bright ruffledness, the work of some atomic 
 sport iviculi — motes in the sunbeams, or vortices of 
 
10 S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 flies. And how shall I describe the opposite bank 
 and the waters below — a mass of fused silver ? 
 Yonder house, too, its slates rain-wet and silver in 
 the sunshine, its shadows running down into the 
 water like a column. 
 
 " But I have omitted the two island-rocks in the 
 lake ; the one seems to me like wine in the glassy 
 shadow, but far removed from the dazzle, and quite 
 conspicuous. The sun — it being past noon — hangs 
 over the lake, clouded, so that any but a weak eye 
 might gaze on it, the clouds being in part bright 
 white, and part, with islets of blue sky, dusky and 
 full of rain. Now the scene changes ; what tongues 
 of light shoot out of the banks ! We visited Aira 
 Force ; the chasm is very fine. Violet-coloured 
 beeches, and hawthorns as big as forest trees, and 
 a prickle with berries as red as red flowers, grow 
 close at hand. The higher part of the fall, where 
 the two streams run athwart each other, is a thing 
 to itself ; but where the wheel-part is broken it 
 spreads itself into a muslin apron, and the whole 
 waterfall looks like a long-waisted giantess slipping 
 down on her back. But on the bridge, where you see 
 only the wheel, it is very fine ; the waters circum- 
 volve with a complete half- wheel. ^Ye gain the road 
 that runs along by the lake, and through the branches 
 of the pine trees which grow along the margin 
 we glimpse the bare knotty cliff opposite, and its 
 shadow which lies so soft on the bosom of the lake." 
 
 Thus much the diary, but in a letter to Dorothy 
 he sums up his impressions of the Lake Country 
 generally. 
 
 " You can feel, what I cannot express for myself. 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 11 
 
 liow deeply I have been impressed by a world of 
 scenery absolutely new to me. At Rydal and Gras- 
 mere I received, I think, the deepest delight; yet 
 Haweswater, through many a varying view, kept my 
 eyes dim with tears; and, the evening approaching, 
 Derwentwater, in diversity of harmonious features, 
 in the majesty of its beauties, and the beauty of its 
 majesty, .... and the black crags close under 
 the snowy mountains, whose snows were pinkish with 
 the setting sun, and the reflections from the rich 
 clouds which floated over some and rested upon 
 others ! It was to me a vision of a fair country. 
 Why were you not with us ? " 
 
 There is something delightful and mysterious in 
 the beginning of things — the foundation of a city, a 
 society, or an institution, the birth of a race or 
 nation. " In the beginning Grod created the heavens 
 and the earth," and in all heginnings there is a sense 
 of hope and promise, a freshness as of Paradise, to 
 which, as time goes on, we look back with a kind of 
 longing wonder, of loving interest. The first years 
 of the nineteenth century brought forth, it may be, 
 greater things than a new school of poetry, a 
 heightened and a deepened sense of natural scenery ; 
 still, it is both instructive and delightful to look 
 back to and reahse the beginnings of thoughts and 
 feebno-s which have leavened and lightened the heads 
 and hearts of succeeding generations. 
 
 The walking tour with Wordsworth in 1799 was 
 no doubt a factor in Coleridge's determination to 
 follow Wordsworth's example and settle near him in 
 the Lake Country. Accordingly, in June, 1800, he 
 brought his wife and four-year-old Hartley to Words- 
 
12 S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 worth's cottage at Town End, Grrasmere, — a cottage 
 wliich had formerly been the Dove Inn, bnt was 
 not known to Wordsworth or Coleridge as Dove 
 Cottage ; and a month later he took up his quarters 
 at Greta Hall. To southern ears Greta Hall has a 
 stately sound, hut, as a matter of fact, the new 
 home was a set of half-furnished lodgings in a house 
 newly built hj a carrier named William Jackson, 
 the master of Benjamin, the hero of Wordsworth's 
 " Waggoner." It was an ideal home for a poet, and 
 at first, and for a time at least, the genius loci con- 
 strained and inspired his fitful and inconstant muse. 
 The autumn of 1800 brought forth the second part 
 of " Christabel." The first part had been written 
 more than two years before at jN^ether Stowey, where 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge wandered together over 
 the green slopes and romantic coombes of the 
 Quantocks. Unlike " The Ancient Mariner," it had 
 remained unfinished, and for that reason had not 
 been included in the first edition of the ' Lyrical 
 Ballads,' published in September, 1798. A second 
 edition was now being projected, and if only 
 " Christabel " might be kept within due limits and 
 finished in time there would be joy at Grasmere. 
 As the fates would have it, " Christabel" grew and 
 grew — but grew not to a close. It was running up 
 to 1300 lines — bid fair, that is, to be on the scale of 
 1300 lines (for it never reached more than half that 
 number) — and so remained in MS. till, in 1816, at 
 Lord Byron's suggestion and through his influence, 
 this " wild and original poem," as he was half quizzed 
 for calling it, was published as a fragment — a tale 
 half told. Half the fragment belongs to the South ; 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 13 
 
 but tlie second part bears traces, thougli superficial 
 traces only, of Coleridge's recent introduction to the 
 scenery of tlie Lake District. The opening lines of 
 Part II must have been suggested by a walk to 
 Grreat Langdale which he took with Wordsworth in 
 July, 1800. Wordsworth, no doubt, was guide. For 
 his " Idle Shepherd Boys," or " Dungeon Grhyll 
 Force," must have been conceived and written in the 
 lambing season of 1800; while Coleridge entered 
 Dungeon Grhyll in his note-book, and sketched the 
 bridge of rock in the height of summer ; and it 
 was not till the following September that " Christa- 
 bel " revisited the glimpses of the moon. 
 
 " Each matin belb the Baron saith, 
 Knells us back to a world of death. 
 These words Sir Leoline first said, 
 When he rose and found his lady dead : 
 These words Sir Leoline will say 
 Many a morn to his dying day. 
 And hence the custom and law began^ 
 That still at dawn the sacristan, 
 Who duly pulls the heavy bell, 
 Five-and-forty heads must tell 
 Between each stroke — a warning knell. 
 Which not a soul can choose but hear 
 From Bratha Head to Wyndermere. 
 
 '' Saith Bracy the bard, So let it knell ! 
 And let the drowsy sacristan 
 Still count as slowly as he can ! 
 There is no lack of such, I ween. 
 As well fill up the space between. 
 In Langdale Pike and Witch's Lair, 
 And Dungeon Grhyll so foully rent 
 With ropes of rock and bells of air, 
 Three sinful sextons' ghosts are pent, 
 
14 S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 Who all give back one after t'other 
 The death note to their living brother ; 
 And oft, too, by the knell offended, 
 Just as their one ! two ! three ! is ended. 
 The devil mocks the doleful tale 
 With a merry peal from Borrowdale/' 
 
 Here is the key in the pencilled note : " Stand to 
 the right hand close to the bellying rock, so as to 
 see the top of the waterfall, the highest of whose 
 parallelograms is faced with ferns ; daylight in the 
 wet rock ; the arch right above ; the little imitation 
 of the great waterfall (connections in nature) ; 
 between the arch and the great waterfall an arch 
 of trees — hollies, ash, and birch ; the stream widens 
 from a foot to a yard and a half, as it widens 
 varying from a vivid white to a black through all 
 the intermediate shades. The second arch divided 
 from the first by a huge natural bridge, one vast 
 boulder contignated to the two sides by rocks small 
 and pendulous. Plumy ferns on the side and over 
 the second pool ; on the left side the light umbrella 
 of a young ash." It is a thousand to one that 
 Coleridge knew best (and, as saints and theologians 
 may dare to speak lightly and gaily of sacred things 
 with a blameless audacity which would be reckoned 
 profanity in the profane, so, too, the poet may 
 sport with the muse) ; but I am half tempted to say 
 of this jocular episode of the devil and the three 
 sextons — " I would, I would it were not here." But, 
 criticism apart, the comparison of the note-book 
 with the poem is most interesting. For in a fifth 
 edition of West's first guide-book to the Lakes, dated 
 1793, only seven years before Coleridge made his 
 
S. T. COLEEIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 15 
 
 note and sketcli, there is no mention of Dnngeon 
 unyll. Think of it — an undiscovered, nnexploited, 
 untonristed Dungeon Grhyll ! And there was the 
 sacred bard to enrol it amongst famous water- 
 springs—" Siloa's brook that flowed Fast by the 
 oracles of God," and Bandusia's Fount, dear to 
 Horace, and the Streams of Dove consecrated to an 
 unknown goddess — the half-hidden violet Lucy. 
 
 Again, at the close of the second part, when Sir 
 Leoline dispatches Bard Bracy on a mission to Lord 
 Roland de Vaux, of Tryermaine : 
 
 " Ho ! Bracy the bard, the charge be thine ; 
 Gro thou, with music sweet and loud, 
 And take two steeds with trappings proud. 
 And take the youth whom thou lov^st best 
 To bear thy harp and learn thy song, 
 And clothe you both in solemn vest, 
 And over the mountains haste along. 
 And when he has crossed the Irthing Flood, 
 My merry bard ! he hastes, he hastes, 
 Up Knorren Moor, thro^ Halegarth Wood, 
 And reaches soon that castle good 
 Which stands and threatens Scotland's Avastes." 
 
 These places are not in the Lake District, but 
 away to the north in Gilsland. I am not certain 
 whether Coleridge ever was so far north, or whether 
 he picked the names out of some old map or county 
 history — Nicholson and Burns', to wit, which he 
 owned and annotated — found amongst his landlord's 
 odd volumes. Halegarth Wood I have not been 
 able to trace, but Knorren Moor and Irthing Flood 
 are certainly in or near Gilsland. Tryermaine is a 
 barony of Gilsland, and, strange to say, near the 
 
16 S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 reputed site of the castle is the Witch's Crag a 
 haunted spot which may have suggested to Coleridge 
 the assumed relationship of the witch Greraldine to 
 Lord Roland de Vaux, of Tryermaine. In the 
 first part, when Christabel had stolen from the castle 
 by midnight, and was kneeling beneath the old oak 
 tree Avrapped in prayer "for the weal of her lover 
 that's far away," the witch Geraldine, " richly clad 
 and beautiful exceedingly," approached her and 
 began to weave her spells, thinking to enmesh in 
 unholy mystery the soul of the spotless maiden. What 
 was her motive? Had she caught sight of Christabel's 
 lover, who " was far away," and thought to win him 
 for herself ? Had Christabel's lover been allured 
 by her unholy charms ; and hence it was, with the 
 clairvoyance of fear and love, that she had dreams 
 " all yesternight of her own betrothed knight " ? 
 Perhaps such curious speculations are a rash and 
 irreverent intrusion into poetic mysteries beyond our 
 ken; but it is pleasant to think that Sir Leoline 
 lived at Langdale, and that his old friend and foe. 
 Lord Roland de Vaux, lived in Gilsland, the further 
 side of the Irthing Flood ; and to guess that Greraldine 
 might still be found in the clefts of the Witch's Crao\ 
 
 And now I fear I must inflict upon you a brief 
 table of contents : 
 
 In September-October, 1802, Coleridge published 
 in the ' Morning Post ' eight of his greater poems. 
 They appeared in the following order : — (1) " The 
 Picture, or the Lover's Resolution ; " (2) " 'X'l^e 
 Hymn before Sunrise at Chamounix ; " (3) " q^i^Q 
 Keepsake;" (4) "The Grood Grreat Man;" (5) 
 " The Inscription for a Fountain on the Heath ; " 
 
S. T. COLEEIDGB AS A LAKE POET. 17 
 
 (6) ''Ode to the Ram"(?); (7) "Dejection: an Ode;" 
 (8) " Answer to a Child's Question ; " (9) " A 
 Day-dream." He had written in 1800 " The 
 Stranger Minstrel " and " The Mad Monk ; " and in 
 1 801 he wrote and pubhshed in the ' Morning Post ' 
 his " Ode to Tranqnillity " and " Lines on Revisit- 
 ing the Sea Shore ; " and, last of all, " The Pains 
 of Sleep," which was written at Edinburgh in 
 1803, but not published till 1816. These, with the 
 exception of the undated lines, " The Knight's 
 G-rave," "A Thought suggested by a View of Saddle- 
 back," " The Tombless Epitaph," and most probably 
 that late-gleaned treasure, the ballad of " Alice du 
 Clos," were all the poems which were written in the 
 Lake District between the years 1800 — 1804. The 
 exquisite trio or lyrical trilogy, " Recollection of 
 Love," " The Happy Husband," and " A Day-dream," 
 I associate, rightly or wrongly, with Stowey re- 
 visited; while the "Lines to a Grentleman," i.e. 
 Wordsworth — that pathetic poem with an unpathetic 
 or antipathetic title,— were written when he was 
 staying with the Words worths in a farmhouse not 
 a stone's throw from Sir Greorge Beaumont's then 
 unfinished mansion at Coleorton. Be not dismayed ; 
 I can only say a few words on one or two of this 
 loose-strung chaplet of jewels which " wildly ghtter 
 here and there." 
 
 Contemporary with " Christabel," there or there- 
 abouts, was " The Keepsake." It opens thus : 
 
 " The tedded haj^^, the firstfruits of the soil, 
 The tedded hay and corn-sheaves in one field 
 Show summer o-one ere come. The foxglove tall 
 
18 S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 Sheds its loose purple bells, or on the gust. 
 Or when it bends beneath the up-springing lark 
 Or mountain-finch alighting. And the rose 
 Stands like some boasted beauty of past years, 
 The thorns remaining and the flowers all gone." 
 
 The place is surely an upland valley or mountain- 
 bottom. The belated hay-crop — "tedded" (a Mil- 
 tonic word which Coleridge had already made his 
 own), tedded, spread out in thin discoloured swaths — ■ 
 would strike a Southerner, to whom hay in October 
 was strange enough; while the foxglove, which blooms 
 late in the North, and the rose-bush with its scarlet 
 haws, are familiar sights l^y " rivulet or spring or wet 
 roadside." This is the late autumn of the North, 
 "more beautiful" with lingering fruits and foliage, 
 exuberant in comparison with the drouthy and dis- 
 coloured aftergrowth of a Southern summer. 
 
 To the autumn of 1800 belong, too, "The 
 Stranger Minstrel " and " The Mad Monk," poems 
 written to and for the poetess Mary Robinson, 
 that "boasted beaut}^ of past vears," the once- 
 enchanting Perdita, now sick and dyino-. "\Ye 
 know her face, for Re3-nolds and Gainsborough 
 and Romney painted her (are not the " counterfeit 
 presentments" in the Hertford Graller}- ?), and of her 
 poor pitiful story we know more than enouo-h, ghe 
 had been telling Coleridge she would dearly love to 
 look once more on Skiddaw, and he rejoins : 
 
 " Thou ancient Skiddaw, by thy helm of cloud 
 And by thy many-coloured chasms deep, 
 And by their shadows that for ever sleep. 
 By yon small flaky mists that love to creep 
 Along the edges of those spots of light. 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 19 
 
 Those sunny islands on thy smootli green height^ — 
 
 ancient Skiddaw, by this tear^ 
 
 1 would, I would that she were here.'^ 
 
 Here, perhaps, in the "shadows that for ever sleep," 
 is a comment on, if not an anticipation of, Words- 
 worth's august image — "the sleep that is among 
 the lonely hills; " and here, jjer accidens, is an un- 
 conscious prophecy of " those sunny islets of the 
 blest and the intelligible," which Carlyle allowed 
 were now and again distinguishable and distinct 
 amid the iridescent mists of Coleridge's transcen- 
 dental monologue. 
 
 "The Mad Monk " need not detain us save for one 
 remarkable stanza which seems to have rested on 
 Wordsworth's poetic consciousness — and to have 
 given the key-note of his great harmony, — The Ode 
 to Immortality. 
 
 " There was a time when earth, and sea, and skies. 
 The bright green vale and forest's dark recess, 
 With all things lay before mine eyes 
 In steady loveliness. 
 But now," etc."^ 
 
 Here, surely, is the germ of — 
 
 " There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
 
 The earth, and every common sight, 
 
 To me did seem 
 
 ApparelFd in celestial light, 
 
 The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
 
 It is not now," etc. 
 
 * There is, too, so I am informed by my friend Mr. T. HutcLinson, 
 a remarkable conformity of tlie metrical scheme of " The Mad Monk " 
 to the metrical scheme of Wordsworth's lines, " 'Tis said that some 
 have died for love," which was written in 1800— a proof how carefully 
 " Coleridge studied "Wordsworth's metrical methods, sometimes 
 adopting, sometimes varying, and sometimes improving upon them." 
 
20 S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 In "The Picture, or the Lover's Resolution," which 
 belongs to the summer of 1802, the influence of 
 mountain scenery on the entire consciousness of the 
 writer is at its height. Here is a poetic rendering 
 of one of his sketches or word-photographs : 
 
 " And hark ! the noise of a near waterfall^ — 
 I pass forth into Hght — I find myself 
 Beneath a weeping birch (most beautiful 
 Of forest trees, the Lady of the Wood), 
 Hard by the brink of a tall weedy rock 
 That overbrows the cataract. Here bursts 
 The landscape on my sight ! Two crescent hills 
 Fold in behind each other, and so make 
 A circular vale, and land-locked, as might seem, 
 With brook and bridge, and grey stone cottages. 
 Half hid by rock and fruit-trees. At my feet 
 The whortleberries are bedewed with spray 
 Dashed upwards by the furious waterfall. 
 How solemnly the pendent ivy-mass 
 Swings in its winnow ! all the air is calm. 
 The smoke from cottage chimneys, tinged with lio-ht, 
 Eises in columns ; from this house above. 
 Close by the waterfall, the column slants, 
 And feels its ceaseless breeze." 
 
 The opening lines of this poem, " Through weeds 
 and thorns and matted underwood I force my way," 
 etc., may be cited in corroboration of Hazlitt's obser- 
 vation that the " numbers came " to Colerido-e when 
 his " path was rough," when he was " walkino- over 
 uneven ground, or breaking through the strag^din^ 
 branches of a copse; " or they may be regarded as the 
 germ of the reminiscence. Characteristic anecdotes 
 are dear to the heart of the biographer and the essayist 
 but they should be taken with two pinches of quali- 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 21 
 
 fying salt, a pincli of " perhaps " and a pinch of 
 " sometimes." 
 
 I must pass over two exquisite fragments, " The 
 Knight's Grrave," dear to Sir Waher Scott, and 
 " Lines suggested by a View of Saddleback " (" On 
 stern Blencartha's perilous height "), which were, I 
 conceive, sparks from the anvil on which Part II of 
 " Christabel " was forged; and proceed to two other 
 poems of the first magnitude written at Keswick, 
 " Dejection: an Ode " (April, 1802), and "The Hymn 
 before Sunrise" (August, 1802). Of the first and 
 greatest I will say little. The imagery is of the 
 valley and the home. " The larch that pushes out 
 in tassels green its bundled leafits" (I quote from an 
 early draft), the " peculiar tint of yellow green " in 
 the western sky, the wild storm, the " mad Lutanist 
 who in this month of showers. Of dark brown gar- 
 dens and of peeping flowers, Mak'st Devil's yule," fix 
 and present the season, but are not characteristic of 
 the place. We know, but could hardly guess, that the 
 poem was written at Grreta Hall. On the other hand, 
 " The Hymn before Sunrise," which purported to have 
 been composed at Chamouni, derived not, indeed, its 
 form, or even the whole of its substance, but its passion 
 and its power, from the enthusiasm or possession, the 
 spiritual excitement aroused by a solitary walk on 
 Scafell. It is, as De Quincey was the first to point 
 out, an expansion — here and there a translation — of 
 a striking and admirable poem by Friederike Brun. 
 Coleridge sent it, together with a fictitious preface, 
 to the 'Morning Post' in 1802, and afterwards 
 included it by way of, or for want of, copy in ' The 
 Friend' in 1809, and, finally, in 1817 pubHshed it 
 
22 S. T. COLEEIDGB AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 in ' Sibylline Leaves.' In tlie first two instances an 
 acknowledgment of the Grerman source was, per- 
 haps, naturally omitted ; but, unless he had by that 
 time forgotten that it was not all his own, he should 
 have added an explanatory note in 1817. De Quincey 
 said that Coleridge had " created the dry bones of 
 the German outline into the fulness of life," and, 
 though he is sometimes unjust to Coleridge, here, 
 I believe, he is unjust to " the German outline." 
 Be that as it may (and the ethic of plagiarism is 
 " dry" indeed), Coleridge wrote a magnificent hymn 
 of praise. His pencillings by the way, which he ex- 
 panded into a letter to Mrs. Wordsworth's sister, 
 Sara Hutchinson, and which she transcribed in her 
 delicate handwriting and left as a Kxiifia t'c a^h 
 supply the clue. Only a few sentences have been 
 published. 
 
 " Wednesday Afternoon, lialf-jxist three, 
 ''August 4th, 1802. 
 
 " Wastdale, a mile and a lialf below the foot of the lake, 
 at an alehouse without a sign^ twenty strides from the 
 door, under the shade of a huge sycamore tree, without my 
 coat — but that I will now put on in prudence^ — yes ! here 
 I am, and have been for something more than an hour, and 
 have enjoyed a good dish of tea (I carried my tea and 
 sugar with me) under this delightful tree. In the house 
 are only an old feeble woman and a Tallyeur lad upon the 
 table ; all the rest of the Wastdale world is a-haymakino- 
 rejoicing, and thanking God for this first downrio-bt summer 
 day that we have had since the beginning of May. 
 
 " On Sunday, August 1st, half -past twelve, I had a shirt 
 cravat, two pairs of stockings, a little paper and half a 
 dozen pins, a Grerman book (Voss^ Poems), and a little tea 
 and sugar, with my night-cap, packed up into my net 
 knapsack ; and the knapsack on my back, and the besom 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 23 
 
 stick in my hand, wliicli for want of a better^ and in spite 
 of Mrs. C — and Mary, who both raised their voices against 
 it, especially as I left the besom scattered on the kitchen 
 floor — off 1 sallied over the bridge^ through the hop-field, 
 along into Newlands.^^ 
 
 He passed tlirougii Buttermere and so to Enner- 
 dale, where he stayed the night at the honse of John 
 Ponsonby, the friend of his landlord, Mr. Jackson. 
 
 " On Monday evening the old man went to the head of 
 the lake with me. The mountains at the head of this lake 
 and Wastdale are the monsters of the country, — bare black 
 heads, evermore doing deeds of darkness, weather plots, 
 and storm conspiracies in the Clouds. ..." 
 
 On the 4th he reached Wastwater. 
 
 " When I first came, the lake was a perfect mirror — and 
 what must have been the glory of the reflections on it ! 
 The huge facing of rock, said to be half a mile in perpen- 
 dicular height, with deep ravines and torrent-worn, except 
 where the pink-striped Screes came in as smooth as silk — 
 all this reflected, turned into pillars, dells, and a whole 
 world of images in the water." 
 
 The next entry is dated Thnrsday, Angnst 5th. 
 
 " I ascended Scaf ell by the side of a torrent, and climbed 
 and rested, rested and climbed, till I gained the very 
 summit — believed by the shepherds here to be higher 
 than either Helvellyn or Skiddaw. . . . Oh, my God! 
 what enormous mountains there are close by me, and yet 
 below the hill I stand on. . . . G-reat Gavel, Green Crag, 
 and, behind, the Pillar, then the Steeple. . . . And here I 
 am lounded—so fully lounded that though the wind is 
 strong and the clouds are hastening hither from the sea, 
 and the whole air seaward has a lurid look, and Ave shall 
 certainly have thunder, — yet here (but that I am hungered 
 
24 S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 and provisionless) — here I could be warm and wait, 
 metliinks^ for to-morroAv's sun ; and on a nice stone table 
 I am now at this moment writing to you, between two 
 and three o'clock as I guess, — surely the first letter ever 
 written from the top of Scafell. But ! what a look down 
 just under my feet ! The frightfullest ravine — huge per- 
 pendicular precipices, and one sheep upon its only ledge. 
 
 Then came the descent into Eskdale, which afforded 
 matter for another tale. 
 
 " There is one sort of gambling," he confesses, " to which 
 I am much addicted. It is this. . . . When I turn to go down 
 a mountain^ I wander on, and Avhere it is first possible to 
 descend, there I go, relying on fortune for how far down 
 this possibility will continue. So it was yesterday after- 
 noon. I slipped down and went on for a while with 
 tolerable ease ; but now I came (it was midway down) to a 
 smooth, per]3endicular rock about seven feet high. This was 
 nothing. I put my hands on the ledge and dropped down, 
 and then another and another, but the stretching of the 
 muscles of my hands and arms, and the jolt of the fall on 
 my feet, put my whole limbs in a tremble, and I paused, 
 and looking down, saw that I had little else to encounter 
 but a succession of these little precipices. It was in 
 truth, a path that in very hard rain i^, no doubt, the 
 channel of a splendid waterfall. So I began to suspect 
 that I ought not to go on ; but then, unfortunately, thouo-h 
 I could with ease drop down a smooth rock seven feet liio-h 
 I could not climb it, so go on I must, and on I went. I 
 shook all over. Heaven knows! without the least influence 
 of fear ; and now I had only tAvo more to drop doAvn but 
 of these two the first was tremendous. It Avas tAA'ice my 
 own height, and the ledge at the bottom AA^as exceedino-ly 
 narroAA^, so if I dropped down upon it I must of necessitA^ 
 have fallen backAvard, and, of course, killed myself. I lay 
 upon my back to rest myself, and Avas beginning, accordino- 
 to my custom, to laugh at myself for a madman, Avhen the 
 
S. T. COLEEIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 25 
 
 sight of the crags above me, and the impetuous clouds 
 just over them posting so luridly and so rapidly north- 
 ward, overawed me. I lay in a state of almost prophetic 
 trance and delight, and blessed Grod aloud for the power of 
 reason and will, which remaining, no danger can over- 
 ]30wer us." 
 
 Whereupon lie contrived somehow to slip down 
 one of the so-called chimneys, and to reach Eskdale 
 in safety. That is the prose version, if prose it can be 
 called, of his Hymn to Scafell. The poetry was sug- 
 gested and started by Friederike Brun's noble Alcaics; 
 the scene is Chamouni, the garment which the moun- 
 tains wear is Alpine, but the passion which lifts the 
 poet to the height of his great argument, — that was 
 infused by the English " monarch of mountains " 
 into an English poet. And at the last he spake with 
 his tongue : 
 
 " Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star 
 In his steep course ? 
 
 Around thee and above, 
 Deep is the sky and black ! transpicuous black, 
 An ebon mass ! Methinks thou piercest it 
 As with a wedge ! But when I look again 
 It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine. 
 Thy habitation from eternity. 
 
 Hand and voice 
 Awake ! awake ! and thou, my heart, awake ! 
 Green fields and icy cliffs all join my hymn. 
 And thou, thou silent mountain, lone and bare, 
 blacker than the darkness all the night. 
 And visited all night by troops of stars. 
 Or when they climb the sky, or Avhen they sink. 
 Companion of the morning star at dawn, 
 Thyself earth^s rosy star, and of the dawn 
 Co-herald, — wake, oh wake, and utter praise. 
 
26 S. T. COLEEIDGB AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 And thou^ tliou silent mountain^ lone and bare^ 
 
 When as I lift again my liead^ bowed low 
 
 In adoration^ I again behold^ 
 
 A.nd to thy summit upward from the base 
 
 Sweep slowly with dim eyes suffused with tears^ — 
 
 Rise, mighty form ! ever as thou seem^st to rise^, 
 
 Eise like a cloud of incense from the earth ! 
 
 Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills. 
 
 Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven. 
 
 Great Hierarch ! tell thou the silent stars, 
 
 Tell the blue sky, and tell the rising sun, 
 
 Earth with her thousand voices calls on God ! " 
 
 I have endeavoured to record and to illustrate, 
 rather than to characterise or criticise, Coleridge's 
 work as a Lake Poet. The criticism of great critics 
 is itself a work of art. But when all is said and 
 done, and the expositor has played his part to 
 perfection, and summed up the whole matter in the 
 most brilliant and cogent epigrams, the poem is still 
 the thing, which, to be loved, must be known in 
 and for itself, as though there were no critics in the 
 world. Poetry is not loved because it is not read, 
 and it is not read because there are many things in 
 it which are hard to understand. To know what the 
 poet knows, to see what the poet sees, is the secret 
 of being able to feel as the poet felt, and so to 
 partake of his genius. If we have so prepared our- 
 selves we shall listen to what our betters say of 
 their betters, and we shall be able to judge between 
 the interpreter and the prophet. 
 
 One or two questions, however, which demand 
 special treatment spring out of the consideration of 
 Coleridge as a Lake Poet. I can only touch upon 
 these. It has been shown that Coleridge was a more 
 
S. T. COLEEIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 27 
 
 particular, if not a more profound and more accurate 
 observer of Nature than Wordsworth. He was for 
 ever tabulating and recording the minutids as well as 
 the sublimities of land and sky, and of the face of 
 the waters ; and yet he but seldom fused them into 
 pictures or compositions. Wordsworth was less care- 
 ful de minimis, and was observant of the spirit rather 
 than the letter of Nature. But Nature was his 
 immediate teacher — he was her constant and loyal 
 servant. It was not so with Coleridge. With him 
 Nature was a means to an end;, the companion and 
 handmaid of the imagination, the informer and 
 inspirer of the " passion, and the life whose fountains 
 are within." It follows that Wordsworth delivered 
 his message as a poet, and that Coleridge was im- 
 pelled to go for his message otherwhere, if not further 
 afield. It may have been — I do not think it was — a 
 fruitless quest, but surely it was a noble one. It is 
 often charged upon him that he forsook poetry for 
 metaphysics, as though he had deliberately turned 
 aside from the loftier and the ]3urer to a lower and 
 unworthy aim, or was turned aside in spite of him- 
 self. Some say that his muse was lulled to sleep 
 by opium, and others that opium called up the vision 
 and inspired the melody, and afterwards annulled 
 them altogether. He says himself that he sang 
 for " joy," and, lacking joy, was songless ; that 
 poesy, the " shaping spirit of the imagination," is a 
 function of bliss — not pleasure, not mirth, not even 
 happiness, but of inward satisfaction, of a mind 
 and heart at one. But from whatever visitation of 
 the natural or the spiritual man he turned to 
 " abstruse research," he did not forget that he was a 
 
28 S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 poet. It was in the spirit and the power of poetry 
 that he suffered himself to be consumed with a 
 zeal for truth, and I make bold to say that the 
 world is the better and the wiser for his martyrdom. 
 And now and again, I doubt not, he was rewarded 
 with a vision of " The Vision." Now and again, in 
 those long night-watches between moonrise and 
 moonset, when he was wrestling with the mysteries 
 of Being, he might have exclaimed Avith Sir Gralahad : 
 
 " All, blessed vision ! blood of God ! 
 My spirit beats her mortal bars, 
 As down dark tides the glory slides, 
 And star-like mino-les Avitli the stars ! " 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 29 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Tlie following summary of poems, first published 
 by S. T. Coleridge in newspapers and magazines, 
 has been compiled from the notes, foot-notes, etc., 
 attached to the several poems in ' The Poetical and 
 Dramatic Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,' 1877, 
 vols, i, ii (edited by R. H. Shepherd), and from the 
 notes to ' The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge,' 1893 (edited by James Dykes Campbell), 
 and from numerous memoranda made in the course 
 of personal investigation and research. For a similar 
 enumeration of poems contributed to newspapers, 
 etc., see the ' Bibliography of Coleridge,' by the late 
 Richard Heme Shepherd, revised, corrected, and 
 enlarged by Colonel W. F. Prideaux, C.S.I., 1900. 
 
 Poems first 'published in the ' Cambridge Intelligencer.' 
 
 Lines written at the King^s Arms, Eoss . Sept. 27, 1794 
 
 Absence: a Farewell Ode, etc, . . Oct. 11, 1794 
 
 Anna and Harland . . . Oct. 25, 1794 
 
 Grenevieve ..... Nov. 1, 1794 
 
 Lmesaddressed to aYoangMan of Fortune Dec. 17, 1796 
 
 Ode for the Last Day of the Year . Dec. 31, 1796 
 
 Parliamentary Oscillators . . . Jan. 6, 1798 
 
 Poems first imhlished in the 'Morning Chronicle.'' 
 
 To Fortune .... Nov. 7, 1793 
 
 Elegy imitated from Akenside . . Sept. 23, 1794 
 
 Epitaph on an Infant . . • Sept. 27, 1794 
 
30 S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE 
 
 POET. 
 
 Sonnets on Eminent Characters. 
 
 To the Hon. Mr. Erskine . 
 
 Dec. 1, 1794 
 
 Burke 
 
 
 
 Dec. 9, 1794 
 
 Priestley- 
 
 
 
 . Dec. 11, 1794 
 
 La Fayette . 
 
 
 
 . Dec. lb, 1794 
 
 .Kosciusko . 
 
 
 
 . Dec. 16, 1794 
 
 Pitt 
 
 
 
 Dec. 23, 1794 
 
 To the Rev. W. L. Bowles 
 
 
 
 Dec. 26, 1794 
 
 Mrs. Sicldons 
 
 
 
 Dec. 29, 1794 
 
 To William Godwin 
 
 
 
 . Jan. 10, 1795 
 
 To Robert Southey 
 
 
 
 Jan. 14, 1795 
 
 To R. B. Sheridan . 
 
 
 
 Jan. 29, 1795 
 
 To Lord Stanhope . 
 
 
 
 Jan. 31, 1795 
 Dec. 30, 1794 
 
 To a Young Ass 
 
 Poems first published in the ^Morning Post.' 
 
 To an Unfortunate Woman ... at the 
 
 
 Theatre 
 
 Dec. 7, 1797 
 
 Melancholy : a Fragment . 
 
 Dec. 12, 1797 
 
 Fire^ Famine, and Slaughter : a Wai 
 
 
 Eclogue 
 
 Jan. 8, 1798 
 
 The Old Man of the Alps . 
 
 March 8, 1798 
 
 The Raven ..... 
 
 March 10, 1798 
 
 My Lesbia, let us Love and Live . 
 
 April 11, 1798 
 
 Lewti, or the Circassian's Love Chant 
 
 April 13, 1798 
 
 Recantation (France) : an Ode 
 
 April 16, 1798 
 
 Moriens Superstiti ("The hour-bel' 
 
 
 sounds/' etc.) . 
 
 May 10, 1798 
 
 Recantation illustrated in the Mad Ox 
 
 July 30, 1798 
 
 The British Stripling's War-Song. 
 
 Aug. 24, 1799 
 
 The Devil's Thoughts 
 
 Sept. 6, 1799 
 
 Lines written in the Album at Elbingerode 
 
 Sept. 17, 1799 
 
 Lines composed in a Concert Room 
 
 Sept. 24, 1799 
 
 To a Young Lady (" Why need I say ") 
 
 Dec. 9, 1799 
 
 Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie 
 
 ' Dec. 21, 1799 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 31 
 
 Ode to Georgiana, Ducliess of Devonshire 
 
 Dec. 24, 1799 
 
 A Christmas Carol 
 
 Dec. 25, 1799 
 
 Talleyrand to Lord G-ranville 
 
 Jan. 10, 1800 
 
 Alceeus to Sappho .... 
 
 Nov. 24, 1800 
 
 The Two Eound Spaces : a Skeltoniad 
 
 Dec. 21, 1800 
 
 On Eevisiting the Sea Shore 
 
 Sept. 15, 1801 
 
 Ode to Tranquillity 
 
 Dec. 4, 1801 
 
 The Picture^ or the Lover's Eesolution 
 
 Sept. 6, 1802 
 
 Hymn before Sunrise 
 
 Sept. 11, 1802 
 
 The Keepsake 
 
 Sept. 17, 1802 
 
 Inscription on a Jutting Stone over a 
 
 h 
 
 Spring 
 
 Sept. 24, 1802 
 
 Dejection : an Ode . 
 
 Oct. 4, 1802 
 
 Answer to a Child's Questions 
 
 Oct. 16, 1802 
 
 France : an Ode (reprinted) 
 
 Oct. 14, 1802 
 
 The Day-dream 
 
 Oct. 19, 1802 
 
 Epigrams first published in the 'Mor 
 
 ning Post.' 
 
 To the Lord Mayor's Nose 
 
 Jan. 2, 1798 
 
 On Deputy (" By many a booby's/' etc.) 
 
 Jan. 2, 1798 
 
 To a Well-known Musical Critic . 
 
 Jan. 4, 1798 
 
 Names {" I ask'd my fair/' etc.) . 
 
 Aug. 27, 1799 
 
 On a Reader of His Own Verses . 
 
 Sept. 7, 1799 
 
 Jim writes his Yerses 
 
 Sept. 23, 1799 
 
 Doris can find no taste in tea 
 
 Nov. 14, 1799 
 
 Jack drinks Fine Wines 
 
 Nov. 16, 1799 
 
 What rise again with all one's bones 
 
 Dec. 12, 1799 
 
 To Mr. Pye 
 
 . Jan. 24, 1800 
 
 Song {" Ye Drinkers of Stingo ") . 
 
 Sept. 18, 1801 
 
 Epitaph on a Bad Man 
 
 . Sept. 22, 1801 
 
 Drinking versus Thinking . 
 
 . Sept. 25, 1801 
 
 The Devil Outwitted 
 
 . Sept. 26, 1801 
 
 The Wills of the Wisp 
 
 Dec. 1, 1801 
 
 To a certain Modern Narcissus 
 
 . Dec. 16, 1801 
 
 To a Critic (" Most candid critic ") 
 
 . Dec. 16, 1801 
 
 Always Audible ("Pass under Jack' 
 
 s 
 
 window") 
 
 . Dec. 19, 1801 
 
32 S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 Pondere non numero ("■ Friends should be 
 
 
 weighed") .... 
 
 Dec. 26, 1801 
 
 To Wed a Fool .... 
 
 Dec. 26, 1801 
 
 Original Epigrams, Lot I . 
 
 Sept. 23, 1802 
 
 What is an epigram ? (1). 
 
 
 Charles Grave or Merry (2). 
 
 
 An Evil Spirit^s on Thee, Friend ! (3). 
 
 
 Here Lies the Devil (4). 
 
 
 To One Who Published, etc. ("Two things," etc.) (5). 
 
 Scarce any Scandal (6). 
 
 
 How seldom. Friend (7). 
 
 ' 
 
 Eeply to above. 
 
 
 Old Harpy (8) . 
 
 
 To a Vain Young Lady (9) . 
 
 
 A Hint to Premiers (" Three Truths," etc.) 
 
 Sept. 27, 1802 
 
 Westphalian Song {" When this my true 
 
 
 love/' etc.) .... 
 
 Sept. 27, 1802 
 
 From me, Aurelia .... 
 
 Oct. 2, 1802 
 
 For a House-dog^s Collar . 
 
 Oct. 2, 1802 
 
 In Vain I praise thee, Zoilus 
 
 Oct. 2, 1802 
 
 Epitaph on a Mercenary Miser 
 
 Oct. 9, 1802 
 
 Original Epigrams, Lot II 
 
 Oct. 11, 1802 
 
 A Dialogue between an Author and hi 
 
 3 Friend (1). 
 
 MojpoGO(j)ia, or Wisdom and Folly (2). 
 
 
 Each Bond Street Buck (3). 
 
 
 From an Old Grerman Poet (4). 
 
 
 On the Curious Circumstance, etc. (5). 
 
 
 Spots on the Sun (6). 
 
 
 When Surface Talks, etc. (7). 
 
 
 On my Candle — the FareAvell Epigram 
 
 (8). 
 
 Poems first 'puhlished in ' The Courier.' 
 
 The Exchange .... 
 
 April 16, 1804 
 
 Farewell to Love .... 
 
 Sept. 12, 1806 
 
 To Two Sisters .... 
 
 Dec. 10, 1807 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 33 
 
 The Virgin's Cradle Hymn . . Aug. 30, 1811 
 
 Mutual Passion (altered and modernized 
 
 from an Old Poet) . . . Sept. 21, 1811 
 
 Poems first published in 'The Watchman.' 
 
 To a Young Lady with a Poem on the 
 
 French Eevolution . . . March 1, 1796 
 
 Imitation from Casimir ("The solemn- 
 breathing air/' etc.) . . . March 9, 1796 
 
 To Mercy ..... April 2, 1796 
 
 The Hour when we shall Meet Again . March 17, 1796 
 
 Recollection (" As the lone savage," etc.) 
 
 Epigrams ..... April 2, 1796 
 On a Late Marriage between an Old Maid, etc. 
 Epigram on an Amorous Doctor. 
 
 Lines on observing a Blossom on the 1st of 
 
 February, 1796 . . . April 11, 1796 
 
 To a Primrose ("Thy smiles," etc.) . April 17, 1796 
 
 Poems first piihlished in ' The Friend.' 
 
 The Three Graves .... Sept. 21, 1809 
 Epigram (" An excellent adage," etc.) . Oct. 26, 1809 
 " Tis True, Idoloclastes Satyrane " . Nov. 23, 1809 
 
 Poems published in the 'Monthly Magazine.' 
 
 On a Late Connubial Rupture . . Sept., 1796 
 
 Reflections on entering into Active Life . Oct., 1796 
 Sonnets in the Manner of Contemporary 
 
 Writers .... Nov., 1799 
 
 Poems first published in ' Blachicood's Edinburgh Magazine.' 
 
 Fancy in Nubibus .... Nov., 1819 
 
 The Old Man's Sigh : a Sonnet . . June, 1832 
 
 3 
 
34 S. T. COLEEIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 Poems first published in 'The Literary Souvenir. 
 
 Lines suggested by tlie Last Words of Berengarius 1827 
 Epitaphium Testamentarium . • • ^° 
 
 Youth and Age . . . • .1828 
 
 What is Life? . . • • • ^^29 
 
 Poems first jmhlished in ' The Bijou.' 
 
 Youth and Age {et vide supra) . • • 1828 
 
 The Two Fountains . . • .1828 
 
 Work without Hope .... 1828 
 
 The Wanderings of Cain .... 1828 
 
 Poems first published in 'The Amulet.' 
 
 The Lnprovisatore ..... 1828 
 Three Scraps ..... 1833 
 
 Love's Burial Place (1). 
 
 The Butterfly (2). 
 
 A Thought suggested by a view of Saddleback (3). 
 
 Poems first published in 'The Keepsake.' 
 
 Epigrams ...... 1829 
 
 "There comes from Old Avaro's Grave'' (1). 
 " Swans Sing before they Die " (2). 
 
 The Garden of Boccaccio .... 1829 
 
 Song ex improviso, On hearing a Song in Praise of 
 a Lady's Beauty ("'Tis not the lily brow/' 
 etc.) ...... 1830 
 
 The Poet's Answer, etc. ("Love, Hope, and 
 
 Patience in Education ") . . . 1830 
 
S. T. COLEEIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 Poems first 'published in 'Friendship's Offering ' (1834). 
 
 My Baptismal Birthday. 
 
 Fragments of tlie Wreck of Memory ; or^ Portions of Poems 
 composed in Early Manhood : 
 
 1. Hymn to the Earth. 
 
 2. English Hexameters, written during a Temporary 
 
 Blindness (1799). 
 8. The Homeric Hexameter Described andExemplified. 
 4. The Ovidian Elegiac Metre described and exem- 
 plified. 
 Love's Apparition and E vanishment. 
 Lightheartednesses in Rhyme by S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 1. The Reproof and Reply. 
 
 2. In Answer to a Friend's Question. 
 
 3. Lines to a Comic Author, on an Abusive Review. 
 An Expectoration, or Splenetic Extempore on my Joyful 
 
 Departure from the City of Cologne (" As I am a 
 rhymer," etc.). 
 Expectoration the Second ('^In Coln,^' etc.). 
 
i:^^ y^^ (^^ 
 
 B. T. COLERIDGE AS A LAKE POET. 
 
 BY 
 
 Ernest Hartley Coleridge, M.A., Hon. P.E.S.L. 
 
 TRANSACTIONS R.S.L., Vol. XXIV. 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 From the 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
 Endowment 
 
 3/3