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 i probable, this earliest extant specimen o 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 ar early, perhaps an earlier, MS. copy with the title Upon the Author's leaving Schoos and entering into Life. It should therefore have been grouped with the Sonnet or quitting School (p. 15) and Absence (p15). 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
Lustre to this now heavy eye,
And with unwonted Spirit grace
That fat1 vacuity of face,
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'); them 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').

A

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.' [Tran.. scriber's footnote.]

Raven to be a Raven, nor a Fox a Fox, but demands conventicular justice to be inflicted on their unchristian conduct, or at least an antidote to be annexed.'

The original title of the poem appears to have been Dream. 'Your Dream' Lamb calls it in his letter of Jan. 5, 1797 (Ainger's Letters, i. 59; see also i. 130).

In Sibylline Leaves there is this footnote to line 17

'Travelled he* with wandering wings.'

* 'Seventeen or eighteen years ago an artist of some celebrity was so pleased with this doggerel that he amused himself with the thought of making a Child's Picture-Book of it; but he could not hit on a picture for these four lines. I suggested a round-about with four seats, and the four seasons, as children with Time for the shew-man.'

31. A Wish-An Ode in the Manner of Anacreon, p. 19. A Lover's Complaint, p. 20.

Here first printed from a letter written by Coleridge from Cambridge to Mary Evans. This letter, with several others to Mrs. Evans, and to her daughters Mary and Anne, are now in the great collection of Mr. Alfred Morrison of Fonthill, to whose courtesy I owe my first acquaintance with them, and the permission to print anything of interest I might find.

32. With Fielding's Amelia,' p. 20. I am much disposed to adopt Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge's suggestion that this was addressed to Mrs. Evans, the mother of Mary. Note line 9:

'And sure the Parent of a race so sweet.'

33. Imitated from Ossian, p. 20. First printed in Poems, 1796, with the original passage from OSSIAN as a ' note.'

It was probably composed at the same time as The Complaint of Ninathóma, omitted from 1797, but restored by Lamb in 1803.

34. The Complaint of Ninathóma,

p. 20.

First printed in Poems, 1796, with the The lines original passage from OSSIAN. were sent from Cambridge to Mary Evans in a letter of Feb. 7, 1793, now in Mr. Morrison's collection. See 'Note 31.' They included the following (between the second and third stanzas), which have not hitherto been printed:

'By my Friends, by my Lovers discarded,
Like the Flower of the Rock now I waste,
That left its fair head unregarded,
And scatters its leaves in the blast.'

35. Songs of the Pixies, p. 21. First printed in Poems, 1796. Many changes were made in the text from time to time.

36. The Rose, p. 23.

The

First printed in Poems, 1796. following Note in Poems, 1852, refers to this poem and to Kisses (p. 23). In the MS. 1. 12 reads: On lovely Nesbitt's breast.'

This Effusion and The Rose were originally addressed to a Miss F. Nesbitt, at Plymouth, whither the author accompanied his eldest brother, to whom he was paying a visit, when he was twenty-one years of age. Both poems are written in pencil on the blank pages of a copy of Langhorne's Collins. Kisses is entitled Cupid turned Chymist; is signed S. T. Coleridge, and dated Friday evening, [July] 1793.

The Rose has this heading: “On presenting a Moss Rose to Miss F. Nesbitt." In both poems the name of Nesbitt appears instead of Sara, afterwards substituted.' See Note II.'

37. Kisses, p. 23.

See preceding Note. In Poems, 1796, 1797, and 1803, Coleridge gave the following in a note to the poem, and in the proof-sheets of 1797 wrote: 'Carmina Quadragesimalia, vol. ii. To the copy

in the Bristol Library there is a manuscript signature of " W. Thomas" to this beauti ful composition:

11. 71-86; To the River Otter, ll. 2-11; The Gentle Look (p. 23), 11, 13, 14, the two lines being also found in Anna and Harland (p. 11). Compare also the

address to 'Dear native brook,' 11. 81 et seq. with the Sonnet to the River Otter.

40. Lines to a Beautiful Spring in a Village, p. 24.

This no doubt belongs to Ottery and the Otter, and to the same period as the two poems which precede and follow it respectively.

41. Lines on an Autumnal Evening,

P. 24.

First printed, Poems, 1796, with the title Written in early youth; the time, an autumnal Evening; and the following Note to line 57 :

'I entreat the Public's pardon for having carelessly suffered to be printed such intolerable stuff as this and the thirteen following lines. They have not the merit even of originality: as every thought is to be found in the Greek Epigrams. The lines in this poem from the 27th to the 36th I have been told are a palpable imitation of the passage from the 355th to the 370th line of the " Pleasures of Memory," part 3. I do not perceive so striking a similarity between the two passages; at all events, I had written the Effusion several years before I had seen Mr. Rogers' poem.

'It may be proper to remark that the tale of Florio in the "Pleasures of Memory" is to be found in "Lochleven," a poem of great merit by Michael Bruce. In Mr. Rogers' poem the names are FLORIO and JULIA; in the "Lochleven," Lomond and Levina-and this is all the difference. We seize the opportunity of transcribing from the "Lochleven" of Bruce the following exquisite passage, expressing the effects of a fine day on the human heart :

"Fat on the plain and mountain's sunny side "'

[and so on, for ten lines].

For Coleridge's quaint apology to Rogers, see Advertisement to 'SUPPLEMENT' to Poems, 1797, in 'APPENDIX K,' p. 541.

In this Supplement may also be read Cole

ridge's reasons for 'reprieving' this poem 'from immediate oblivion.'

In the undergraduate diary of Christopher Wordsworth (afterwards Master of Trinity College, Cambridge) the poem is alluded to as having been read by Coleridge at a college party on Nov. 7, 1793. (Social Life at the English Universities, by Christopher Wordsworth, M.A., Fellow of Peter House, Camb. 1874. Appendix.)

II. 17-20 may have been inspired by felicitations received from Mary Evans on the winning of the 'Browne' gold medal in 1792.

Lamb persuaded Coleridge to allow the poem to take its proper place in 1803. It was excluded from the Sibylline Leaves, but readmitted in 1828 and 1829.

42. To Fortune, p. 27.

Now first collected, from the Morning Chronicle. I was enabled to find it there

by an entry in Christopher Wordsworth's diary (see preceding Note), and printed it in the Anti-Jacobin for Aug. 22, 1891. I think it probable that this was Coleridge's first appearance in print. It is not at all unlikely that the poet had sought relief from financial embarrassment by taking a ticket in the Irish Lottery, the drawings. of which began five days after the appearance of these verses, and closed about a fortnight later on the 26th November 1793, just a week before he enlisted in the 15th Light Dragoons.

43. Lewti, p. 27.

First printed in the Morning Post, April 13, 1798 (not '1795' as mis-stated in Sib. Leaves), with the following editorial introduction, now first reprinted :

'ORIGINAL POETRY.

'It is not amongst the least pleasing of our recollections, that we have been the means of gratifying the public taste with some exquisite pieces of Original Poetry. For many of them we have been indebted to the Author of the Circassian's Love Chant. Amidst images of war and woe, amidst scenes of carnage and horror, of devastation and dismay, it may afford the mind a temporary relief to wander to the magic haunts of the Muses, to bowers and

fountains which the despoiling powers of the war has never visited, and where the lover pours forth his complaint, or receives the recompense of his constancy. whole of the subsequent Love Chant is in a warm and impassioned strain. The fifth

The

and last stanzas are, we think, the best.'

The poem was signed Nicias Erythraus, and included the following verses, never again printed by Coleridge.

Between ll. 14 and 15, p. 27

'I saw the white waves, o'er and o'er,
Break against the distant shore.
All at once upon the sight,
All at once they broke in light :
I heard no murmur of their roar,
Nor ever I beheld them flowing,
Neither coming, neither going;
But only saw them, o'er and o'er,
Break against the curved shore;
Now disappearing from the sight,
Now twinkling regular and white;
And Lewti's smiling mouth can show
As white and regular a row.

Nay, treach'rous image! from my mind
Depart; for Lewti is not kind.'

Between Il. 52 and 53, p. 28"This hand should make his life-blood flow That ever scorn'd my Lewti so!

'I cannot chuse but fix my sight On that small vapour, thin and white! So thin, it scarcely, I protest,

Bedims the star that shines behind it ;
And pity dwells in Lewti's breast,

Alas! if I knew how to find it.
And O! how sweet it were, I wist,

To see my Lewti's eyes to-morrow
Shine brightly through as thin a mist

Of pity and repentant sorrow!
Nay, treach'rous image! leave my mind-
Ah, Lewti! why art thou unkind?'

Allowing for the omission of these stanzas, subsequent changes have been unimportant, except in one instance, prompted as usual by Lamb. He said the original epithet in line 69,

'Had I the enviable power,' would damn the finest poem, and it disappeared. In a copy of the Ann. Anth. annotated by Coleridge he alters the line

into

'Had I the enviable power,'

'O beating heart! had I the power'and between 11. 8, 9 he wrote: 'Two lines

expressing the wetness of the rock.' This remark may have been a memorandum for something new to be added, but much more

probably was inspired by a recollection of what is perhaps the earliest form of the poem, the MS. of which is now in the British Museum. It opens thus :

'High o'er the silver rocks I roved
To forget the form I loved;

In hopes fond fancy would be kind.
And steal my Mary from my mind.

'Twas twilight, and the lunar beam
Sailed slowly o'er Tamaha's stream
As down its sides the water strayed.
Bright on a rock the moonbeam play'd,
It shone half-sheltered from the view,
By pendent boughs of tressy yew.'

I take this to be the earliest version, because it speaks of Mary'-Mary Evans, no doubt. There is another early MS. in which Sara' holds the place of 'Mary,' but here the poet's pen has crossed out 'Sara' and substituted Lewti.'

When the Lyrical Ballads were first put together in 1798, Lewti was included, but at the last moment the sheet was cancelled and The Nightingale, a Conversational Poem substituted. Nothing is recorded of the reason for this sudden change, and the fact might never have been known, but for the circumstance that Southey bound up the cancelled sheet in his copy, which is now in the British Museum.

44. Ad Lyram, p. 28.

Printed in the Watchman, No. II. March 9, 1796, and never again by Coleridge. Thus introduced :

'If we except Lucretius and Statius, I know not of any Latin Poet, ancient or modern, who has equalled Casimir in boldness of conception, opulence of fancy, or beauty of versification. The ODES of this illustrious Jesuit were translated into English about one hundred and fifty years ago by a Thomas Hill, I think.1 I never

1 The Odes of Casimire, translated by G. H. (G. Hils). Lond. 1646.-ED.