Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 2: being The Biographical Supplement of Coleridge's Biographia LiterariaColeridge, Samuel Taylor
General
Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 2: being The Biographical Supplement of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 -- Correspondence
_Vol. I, p. 62._--Letter 24 is placed by Cottle in the spring of 1796,
but being dated from Stowey, it is possible that this letter may belong
to 1797. The revision of the _Religious Musings_ mentioned in the letter
would suit 1797 as well as 1796, for the text of that poem differed very
widely from that of the First Edition.
_Vol. I, p. 97._--The numbered poems in Letter 42, are:
Effusion 27. _The Rose_, "As late each flower that sweetest blows."
28. _The Kiss_, "One kiss, dear Maid! I said, and sigh'd."
Sonnets, 45. To Bowles.
59. "Thou gentle look that didst my soul beguile."
60. "Pale Roamer thro' the night, thou poor Forlorn!"
61. "Sweet Mercy! how my very heart has bled."
Sonnets, 64. "Thou bleedest my poor Heart! and thy distress."
65. To Schiller.
66. Brockley Coombe.
_Vol. I, p. 292_, _Letter_ 117. Books from Wordsworth's
Library.--"Perhaps one of the most interesting books in the whole
selection is Sir T. Browne's _Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors_,
the folio edition of 1658, which contains a long letter to Sara
Hutchinson, relative principally to many curious passages in the work,
also several MS. marginal notes and corrections, all in the handwriting
of S. T. Coleridge, and autographs of Charles Lamb and Mary Wordsworth.
The copy of Sir Thomas Browne's _Religio Medici_, 1669, contains copious
marginal and other MS. annotations by Coleridge, and has this
inscription inside the cover, 'Sara Hutchinson from S. T.
C.'"--_Athenæum_, No. 3579, May 30, 1896.
_Vol. II, p. 262_, _Contemplative melancholy_.--The phrase is a
variation of "speculative gloom," which Coleridge used in his original
prospectus of the _Friend_, objected to by Francis Jeffrey (see Letters,
ii, 536, _note_), and afterwards changed into "_Dejection of Mind_" in
the printed Prospectus (see Letter 143, vol. ii, p. 51). The phrase
"speculative gloom" was derived from Warton's _Ode for the New Year_
1786 (which Coleridge took as his model for his own _Ode to the
Departing Year_):
"Hence then, each vain complaint, away,
Each captious doubt, and cautious fear!
Nor blast the new-born year,
That anxious waits the Spring's slow-shooting ray:
Nor deem that Albion's honours cease to bloom.
With candid glance, th' impartial Muse,
Invoked on this auspicious morn,
The present scans, the distant scene pursues,
And breaks Opinion's speculative gloom:
Interpreter of ages yet unborn,
Full right she spells the characters of Fate,
That Albion still shall keep her wonted state!
Still in eternal glory shine,
Of Victory the sea-beat shrine;
The source of every splendid art,
Of old, of future worlds the universal mart."
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