1. Genevieve, p. 1. NOTES This seems to be the earlicst composition of Coleridge which has been preserved. He has dated it as early as 'æt. 14,' and in Poems, 1796, it has the note: 'This little poem was written when the author was a boy.' It was first printed in the Cambridge Intelligencer for Nov. 1, 1794, with a text almost identical with the following from an early MS. : Maid of my Love! sweet Genevieve ! In Beauty's light Thou glid'st along; Thy Eye is like the star of eve, Thy voice is soft as Seraph's song. Yet not thy heavenly beauty gives This heart with passion soft to glow: Within thy soul a voice there lives! It bids thee hear the tale of woe. When sinking low the suffrer wan Beholds no hand stretcht out to save, Fair as the bosom of the swan That rises graceful o'er the wave, I've seen thy breast with pity heave, And therefore love I thee, sweet Gene vieve !' There was a tradition in Christ's Hospital that Genevieve was addressed to the daughter of Coleridge's school ' nurse.' For the head boys to be in love with their nurses' daughters was an institution of long standing. The lines have frequently been set to music. 2. Dura Navis, p. 1. Here printed for the first time from an early, probably contemporary, autograph | copy which Coleridge annotated in 1823. The annotations are partially and incorrectly printed in Gillman's Life, p. 25. 3. Nil pejus est calibe vitâ, p. 2. Printed here for the first time from the book into which the headmaster of Christ's Hospital, James Boyer, caused his boys to transcribe their best poetical and prose exercises. It has been carefully preserved by his family, and it is by the courtesy of the headmaster's grandson and namesake that I am enabled to print these verses. This note and acknowledgment applies equally to Julia, p. 4; Quæ nocent docent, p. 4; Progress of Vice, p. 8; and Monody on the Death of Chatterton (first version), p. 8. The second and fourth are now printed for the first time. 4. Sonnet to the Autumnal Moon, p. 3. Marked 'æt. 16' by Coleridge in an annotated copy of Poems, 1828. First printed in Poems, 1796, and excluded from Poems, 1797, in spite of Lamb's remonstrances. The text has never been altered. 5. Anthem for the Children of Christ's Hospital, p. 3. First printed in P. W. 1834. An early MS. exists, with the title, Anthem written as if intended to have been sung by the Children of Christ's Hospital. The differences in text are unimportant. 6. Julia, p. 4. First printed in A History of the Royal Foundation of Christ's Hospital, by the Rev. W. Trollope, M.A., 1834, p. 191. First collected in P. and D. W. 1877-80. Here printed verbatim from the original 11. To a Young Lady, with a Poem on the French Revolution, p. 6. This poem, though variously dated by Coleridge 1792' and '1794,' has been placed here because there is no other known poem but the one immediately preceding to which it could apply. Quite possibly the preceding poem may have been written in or about 1792. The lines To a Young Lady were written in 1792, and addressed to Miss F. Nesbitt, of whom see 'Notes 36, 37.' Coleridge did not meet Sara until 1794. The concluding lines are an addition of 1794 or 1795, for a rough draft of them, much pulled about, exists among a number of Watchman (1796) MSS. The lines were printed in the first number of that paper. Southey's Retrospect was not published until 1795. 12. Life, p. 7. First printed in P. W. 1834, but the text there differs slightly from each of two early MS. copies. To one of these the title is Sonnet written just after the Author left the Country in Sept. 1789, atat 15. Coleridge was about 17 in 1789, but this error pervades these early family MS. The other MS. is headed Sonnet, by S. T. C., written in September 1789. 13. Progress of Vice, p. 8. First published in P. W. 1834, but here first printed verbatim from Coleridge's copy in Boyer's book. See Note 3.' 14. Monody on the Death of Chatterton. First Version, 1790,' p. 8. Latest Version, 1829,' p. 61. The First Version' is printed verbatim from Boyer's book (see 'Note 3') and is undoubtedly the earliest form of the poem. The text does not differ materially from that printed from a Note-book in the handwriting of the late Sir John Taylor Coleridge, the nephew of the poet, kept at Eton College in 1807,' given in P. and D. W. 1877-80 (ii. 355*); nor from either of two other early MS. copies I have seen, one of them being in the handwriting of the poet, and sent from school to his brother George, along with the Alonody on a Tea-Kettle (p. 12) and An Invocation (p. 10). The poem next appeared, altered and enlarged, but anonymously, in Launcelot Sharpe's edition of Chatterton's Poems (Cambridge, 1794), where it is thus introduced: The Editor thinks himself happy in the permission of an ingenious Friend to insert the following Monody.' In Poems, 1796, the Monody took the first place, and (subject to a few verbal alterations) consisted of the 1794 version with the addition of 11. 119 to the end of 1829 text as printed here at p. 63. The poem had then taken, substantially, its final shape, and for that reason is here placed among the poems of 1796. In 1797 and 1803 many little changes were made, especially the shifting about of the six lines beginning Friend to the friendless' between the Monody and the Lines written at the King's Arms, Ross (see 'Note 53'). The Monody was not printed in Sib. Leaves; and in 1828 it was printed verbatim from 1796. In 1829 great changes were made, the principal one being the new opening-11. 1-15. The lines 25-47, 72-118, are very slightly altered from 1794; and 11. 119 to the end are much the same as in 1796. Lines 48-57 are almost new on a foundation of 1794. Coleridge told Cottle in 1814 (Rem. p. 381) that the four opening lines, 'O, what a wonder is the fear of death,' etc., were written when he was a mere boy'; and to another friend, in 1819, he said they were written in his thirteenth year as a school exercise'; but we know of what different quality were his school exercises of even his sixteenth or seventeenth year. In 1834 the text of 1829 was reproduced with the addition, between ll. 102, 103, of 11. 80 to the end of the Christ Hospital version. There was no 'note' printed in 1796, but one was prepared and suppressed. See the amusing history of it in Cottle's E.R. i. 34, or Rem. p. 24. In a note to the Poems, 1852, the editor quotes from Southey's Life and Correspondence (i. 224) a letter of Oct. 19, 1794, in which Southey gives a 'sonnet on the subject of our emigration, by Favell.' It contains 11. 129-136 (p. 63) of the Monody; the editor accuses her father of borrowing' them. But there must have been some misapprehension on Southey's part; for Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge has a letter from Coleridge to Southey in which the former quotes the whole of the sonnet as his own, and apologises for the badness of the poetry. Even more convincing is the 11th line, From precipices of distempered sleep.' Lamb greatly admired the Monody, and much interesting and valuable criticism of it will be found in his letters to Coleridge in 1796 and 1797. 15. Inside the Coach-Devonshire Roads -Music, p. 10. I have seen no MSS. of these verses, which were all first printed in 1834. They belong doubtless to a holiday visit to Ottery in 1790. 16. An Invocation, p. 10. Printed here for the first time from the autograph copy which accompanied the Monody on Chatterton (p. 8) and Monody on a Tea-Kettle (p. 12). 17. Anna and Harland, p. 11. First printed from MS. in P. and D. W. 1877-80. Coleridge never printed the verses except in the Cambridge Intelligencer for Oct. 25, 1794, and there the text is not quite the same. Compare the two closing lines with the corresponding lines of The Gentle Look (p. 23) and of Recollection in 'Note 39.' 18. To the Evening Star, p. 11. First printed, from MS., in P. and D. W. 1877-80. 19. Pain, p. II. First printed in 1834. In one early MS. it is headed Pain: a Sonnet; in another, Sonnet composed in Sickness; but neither is dated. 20. On a Lady Weeping, p. 12. Printed here for the first time from a MS. believed to belong to 1790. 21. Monody on a Tea-Kettle, p. 12. First printed in 1834, but I have preferred to give the original text of the MS. sent or taken home by Coleridge from Christ's in 1790. The allusion in the first line of the last stanza is to the poet's favourite brother George. Being written on the same sheet with the Monody on Chatterton, it is headed 'Monody the Second, occasioned by a very recent Calamity.' The lines I have called An Invocation (p. 10) are on the same sheet. 28. On Imitation, p. 17. First printed in P. W. 1834- I have not seen any MS. of this, and date conjecturally. If written in 1791, as is probable, this earliest extant specimen of Coleridge's epigrammatic style is better than a good many later ones. 29. Happiness, p. 17. Since placing this poem, which was first published in P. W. 1834, I have seen an early, perhaps an earlier, MS. copy with the title Upon the Author's leaving School and entering into Life. It should therefore have been grouped with the Sonnet on quitting School (p. 15) and Absence (p. 15). The MS. text does not differ much from that printed, but there is one very interesting variant. The printed lines 91, 92 are not in the MS. where the passage reads thus: 'Ah! doubly blest, if love supply Or if e'en Love, the mighty Love Shall find this change his powers above; Some lovely maid perchance thou'lt find To read thy visage in thy mind.' 30. The Raven, p. 18. First printed in the Morning Post, March 10, 1798 (see 'APPENDIX A'); then in the Ann. Anth. (1800), with many alterations; next in Sib. Leaves (1817), with further alterations and a note in the 'Preface' (see 'APPENDIX K'). The two closing lines were printed only in Sib. Leaves, and were the occasion of Coleridge's writing the following curious Note in the margin of a copy now in the possession of Mr. Stuart M. Samuel, by whose courtesy I am enabled to print it : 'Added thro' cowardly fear of the Goody! What a Hollow, where the Heart of Faith ought to be, does it not betray this alarm concerning Christian morality, that will not permit even a 1 'The Author was at this time at. 17 [read 19.-ED.], remarkable for a plump face.' [Transcriber's footnote.] |