While each to his great father bends, All things both great and small : The Marinere, whose eye is bright, He went, like one that hath been stunn'd A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn. NOTES. " PAGE 1.-THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. THE following interesting notices concerning "The Ancient Mariner are contained in a letter of the Rev. Alexander Dyce, the well-known admirable Editor of old Plays, to the late H. N. Coleridge: "When my truly honoured friend Mr. Wordsworth was last in London, soon after the appearance of De Quincey's papers in Tait's Magazine,' he dined with me in Gray's Inn, and made the following statement, which, I am quite sure, I give you correctly: ""The Ancient Mariner was founded on a strange dream, which a friend of Coleridge had, who fancied he saw a skeleton ship, with figures in it. We had both determined to write some poetry for a monthly magazine, the profits of which were to defray the expenses of a little excursion we were to make together. "The Ancient Mariwas intended for this periodical, but was too long. I had very little share in the composition of it, for I soon found that the style of Coleridge and myself would not assimilate. Besides the lines (in the fourth part),— ner 99 "And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand," I wrote the stanza (in the first part),— "He holds him with his glittering eye- I and four or five lines more in different parts of the poem, which I could not now point out. The idea of "shooting an albatross” was mine; for I had been reading Shelvocke's Voyages, which probably Coleridge never saw. also suggested the reanimation of the dead bodies, to work the ship." also "Memoirs of William Wordsworth," by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, vol. i., chap. xi., p. 107-8. See M PAGE 41.-FIRST ADVENT OF LOVE. The early date assigned to these exquisite lines is derived from a memorandum of the author. "Relics of my School-boy Muse; ie., fragments of poems composed before my fifteenth year. LOVE'S FIRST HOPE 'O fair is Love's first hope,' &c. The concluding stanza of an Elegy on a Lady, who died in early youth :- And see a Daisy peeps upon its slope! I wipe the dimming waters from mine eye; Even on the cold Grave lights the Cherub Hope! AGE.-A stanza written forty years later than the preceding :- But the Tears of dewy Eve! S. T. C. Sept. 1827." PAGE 42.-MONODY ON THE DEATH OF CHATTERTON. This monody was sketched at Christ's Hospital; but meagre indeed is the boyish schema, with scarce any of the fire and felicity of the finished composition. October, 1794, is the date affixed by the author. It appears from a passage in one of Mr. Southey's letters, that seven lines and a half, toward the end of the poem, were borrowed from a young friend and fellow-poet. "Everything is in the fairest trim. Favell and Le Grice" (a younger brother of Charles Lamb's Valentine Le Grice), "two young Pantisocrats of nineteen, join us. They possess great genius. You may perhaps like the sonnet on the subject of our emigration, by Favell :— "No more my visionary soul shall dwell On joys that were: no more endure to weigh Wisely forgetful! Ö'er the ocean swell Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray, The wizard Passion wears (sic) a holy spell. Eyes that have ached with anguish! ye shall weep From precipices of distempered sleep, On which the fierce-eyed fiends their revels keep, New rays of pleasure trembling to the heart." Southey's Life and Correspondence, vol. i., p. 224. At the end of the Preface to the edition of 1796, Mr. Coleridge acknowledges himself indebted to Mr. Favell for the "rough sketch" of Effusion XVI.,"Sweet Mercy! how my weary heart has bled;" and to the author of "Joan of Arc" for the first half of Effusion XV.,— "Pale Roamer through the night," &c. In It is remarkable that when these obligations were particularised, the passage borrowed from the Monody should not have been referred to its author. But this is but one of a thousand instances that could be given of Mr. Coleridge's partial and uncertain (though in some respects powerful) memory. 1803 he published, without signature, among his own productions, Mr. Lamb's Sonnet to Mrs. Siddons, which had appeared in the edition of 1796, signed C. L., and in 1797 in Lamb's portion of the joint volume. PAGE 46.-SONNET. This and the following Sonnet, to "Stanhope," were among the pieces withdrawn from the second edition of 1797. They reappeared in the edition of 1803, and were again withdrawn in 1828, solely, it may be presumed, on account of their political vehemence. They will excite no angry feelings, and lead to no misapprehensions now; and as they are fully equal to their companions in poetical merit, the Editors have not scrupled to reproduce them. These Sonnets were originally entitled "Effusions." PAGE 134.-THE PAINS OF SLEEP. This poem was first published, with the "Kubla Khan," in 1816, with the following notice :-"As a contrast to this vision I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease." It has been recently ascertained to have been written in 1803. PAGE 136.-YOUTH AND AGE. With respect to the date of the admired composition "Youth and Age," memories and opinions differ. It is the impression of the writer of this note that the first stanza, from "Verse, a breeze," to "liv'd in't together," was produced as late as 1824, and that it was subsequently prefixed to the second stanza, "Flowers are lovely," which is said to have been composed many years before. It appears, from the Author's own statement, already quoted, that the last verse was not added till 1827, to which period the poem, considered as a whole, may very well be assigned. PAGE 160.-TRANSLATED FROM SCHILLER. DER EPISCHE HEXAMETER. Schwindelnd trägt er dich fort auf rastlos strömenden Wogen; DAS DISTICHON. Im Hexameter steigt des Spring-quells flüssige Saule, THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE. AN HISTORIC DRAMA. ΤΟ H. MARTIN, Esq., OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. DEAR SIR,-Accept, as a small testimony of my grateful attachment, the following Dramatic Poem, in which I have endeavoured to detail, in an interesting form, the fall of a man whose great bad actions have cast a disastrous lustre on his name. In the execution of the work, as intricacy of plot could not have been attempted without a gross violation of recent facts, it has been my sole aim to imitate the impassioned and highly-figurative language of the French orators, and to develop the characters of the chief actors on a vast stage of horrors. JESUS COLLEGE, Sept. 22, 1794. Yours fraternally, S. T. COLERIDGE. ACT I. THE tempest gathers—be it mine to seek I know he scorns me-and I feel, I hate him— [Exit. Enter TALLIEN and LEGEndre. TALLIEN. It was Barrere, Legendre! didst thou mark him? And towards us cast a look of doubtful meaning. Legendre. I mark'd him well. I met his eye's last glance; It menac'd not so proudly as of yore. Methought he would have spoke—but that he dar'd not— Such agitation darken'd on his brow. TALLIEN. 'Twas all-distrusting guilt that kept from bursting Perfidious Traitor !-still afraid to bask TALLIEN. Yet much depends upon him- well you know Defeat like victory-and blind the mob With truth-mix'd falsehood. They led on by him, LEGENDRE. O what a precious name is Liberty To scare or cheat the simple into slaves! O Danton! murder'd friend! assist my counsels— Beholds the Tyrant living-we are dead! TALLIEN. Yet his keen eye that flashes mighty meanings Legendre. Fear not or rather fear the alternative, And seek for courage e'en in cowardice |