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ADAPTATIONS

[Coleridge rarely quoted, even his own verses, correctly. Sometimes this arose from mere carelessness, but more often, I think, he acted deliberately. Sometimes he altered the sense of his original, but he never perverted it to the injury of the writer's reputation either for matter or form. Often he expanded and illuminated the passage he manipulated. See Athenæum, Aug. 20, 1892; Art. 'Coleridge's Quotations.'-ED.]

[LORD BROOKE]

INCONSISTENCY

'It is a most unseemly and unpleasant thing to see a man's life full of ups and downs, one step like a Christian, and another like a worldling; it cannot choose

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[The lines (with one variant, still' for both in the first line) had been printed. by Coleridge, as Motto to the Lay Middle Classes, in 1817; and have often Sermon, addressed to the Higher and been quoted as of his own composition. I thought them Daniel's, but

but pain himself, and mar the edification failing to find them in his works, I put

of others.'--[LEIGHTON.]

The same sentiment, only with a special application to the maxims and measures of our Cabinet and Statesmen, had been finely expressed by a sage Poet of the preceding Generation, in lines which no Generation will find inapplicable or superannuated.

God and the World we worship both together,

Draw not our Laws to Him, but His

to ours; Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither, The imperfect Will brings forth but

barren Flowers !

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a query in Notes and Queries. A correspondent (8th Ser. ii. p. 18) gave the reference to Lord Brooke's Works, in Grosart's Fuller's Worthies Series, ii. 127. [A Treatise of Warres, St. lxvi.]

'God and the world they worship still together;

Draw not their lawes to Him, but His to theirs ;

Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither; Amid their own own desires still raising

feares; Unwise, as all distracted powers be; Strangers to God, fooles to humanitie. Too good for great things and too great for good.']

[DONNE]

THE recluse hermit ofttimes more doth know

(Ai is to Reflection, Moral and Religious Of the world's inmost wheels, than worldAphorisms,' No. XVII. 1825, p. 93.)

lings can.

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But the last Judgement (this his Jury's plan)

Left to the natural sense of Work-day

man.

Adapted from an elder Poet.

Motto to Chapter XIII. of the General Introduction to The Friend, 1818, i. 149.

II

BLIND is that soul which from this truth can swerve,

No state stands sure, but on the grounds of right,

Of virtue, knowledge; judgment to pre

serve,

And all the powers of learning requisite ? Though other shifts a present turn may

serve,

Yet in the trial they will weigh too light. DANIEL.

Motto to Chapter XVI. as above, 1818, i. 190.

III

O BLESSED Letters ! that combine in one All ages past, and make one live with all: By you do we confer with who are gone, And the dead-living unto council call!

Truth lies entrapp'd where Cunning finds By you the unborn shall have communion

no bar :

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Of what we feel and what doth us befall. Since writings are the veins, the arteries, And undecaying life strings of those hearts,

That still shall pant and still shall exercise

Their mightiest powers when nature none imparts,

The strong constitution of their praise Wear out the infection of distemper'd days. DANIEL'S Musophilus.

Motto to Chapter I. of 'The Landing Place' in The Friend, 1818, i. 215.

[The first passage is from Daniel's Epistle to Sir Thomas Egerton; the second and third from his Musophilus; but Coleridge has so altered, transposed, and rewritten all three that they are more

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[This passage is from the first of the Conciones ad Populum, lectures delivered at Bristol, February 1795, and published there in the same year. Coleridge reprinted the lecture in The Friend (1818, ii. 248; 1850, ii. 179). The first quotation is really from Paradise Regained, iii. 50; but the second contains only a few words of Milton, which will be found in two disconnected passages in Samson Agonistes-[Woman is to man]

A cleaving mischief, in his way to virtue Adverse and turbulent (11. 1039-40): and

Yet so it may fall out, because their end Is hate, not help to me.

[?]

NAPOLEON

ED.]

Then we may thank ourselves Who spell-bound by the magic name of Peace

Dream golden dreams. Go, warlike Briton, go,

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The net that holds no great, takes little fish;

In some things all, in all things none are crost;

Few all they need, but none have all they wish:

Unmedled joys here to no man befall; Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all!

[Although it was by inadvertence that these lines were printed in the Remains as Coleridge's, they have been so often included in his works that I am fain to retain them here as his by adoption. The title is his. The verses form part of a

poem by Robert Southwell, Tymes goe by Turnes. The text here printed is that found in Saint Peter's Complaint. With other Poems. London, 1599.-Ed.]

[BOWLES]

I yet remain To mourn the hours of youth (yet mourn

in vain)

That fled neglected: wisely thou hast trod

The better path-and that high meed which God

Assign'd to Virtue tow'ring from the dust, Shall wait thy rising, Spirit pure and just!

O God! how sweet it were to think, that

all

Who silent mourn around this gloomy ball Might hear the voice of joy ;-but 'tis the will

Of man's great Author, that thro' good and ill

Calm he should hold his course, and so sustain

His varied lot of pleasure, toil and pain!

1793.

[It is for the same reason that I include these lines which the editor of the Remains assumed to be by Coleridge, because they were found in Mr. Coleridge's hand-writing in one of the Prayer-Books

in the Chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge.' The first six lines are taken from W. L. Bowles's Monody on Henry Headley, and although the remaining stanza does not appear in any of the many editions of Bowles's poems I have been able to consult, it probably originally belonged to the same poem.-ED.]

?

RID of a vexing and a heavy load,1 Eternal Lord! and from the world set free,

Like a frail Bark, weary I turn to Thee From frightful storms into a quiet roadOn much repentance Grace will be bestow'd.

The nails, the thorn, and thy two hands, thy face

Benign, meek, [word illegible] offers grace To sinners whom their sins oppress and goad.

Let not thy justice view, O Light divine! My faults, and keep it from thy sacred ear [A line almost entirely illegible.]

Cleanse with thy blood my sins, to this

incline

More readily, the more my years require Prompt aid, forgiveness speedy and entire.

MS.

[I do not think this is a composition of Coleridge's, but an adaptation of something imperfectly remembered by him. It comes from a note-book. —ED.]

1 See The Complete Poetical Works of Wordsworth (p. 761, “At Florence-From M. Angelo"). London: Macmillan and Co.

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