CHAPTER XXIII.

PAGE 180. Erasmus ad Dorpium. For 'offendiculi ansam praecidere' the original of this quotation has 'praecludere calumniam' (Biog. Lit. 1847, ii. 255). The letter to Dorpius is affixed to the 1676 edition (Bâle) of Erasmus' Encomium Moriae.

15. In the rifacciamento of The Friend. See Essay xvi of Lect. I (1818), 'On the Principles of Political Knowledge.'

22. a critique on the Tragedy of Bertram. Five Letters on Maturin's Bertram were contributed by Coleridge to The Courier (Aug. 29, and Sept. 7, 9, 10, 11, 1816). The present chapter is a reprint of these. Of the first letter, a large portion has been omitted.

PAGE 181 1. 6. Mr. Whitbread. See vol. i, p. 152, and note ad loc. Byron called this attack on Drury Lane 'not very grateful or graceful on the part of the worthy biographer' (Moore's Life, 1847, p. 367). Byron further stated (ib. p. 287) that Maturin was recommended to him by Scott, to whom he applied 'in despair, that he would point out to us any old or young writer of promise', and that he tried Coleridge too, but he had nothing feasible in hand at the time'. To Brabant Coleridge writes (Jan. 1816) of another play, not the tragedy promised for Drury Lane, to which he is now putting the last hand to, with a view to its being acted (Westm. Rev., July, 1870, 'Unpublished Letters of S. T. Coleridge'). PAGE 182 1. 16. It was Lessing who first introduced. See the Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Stück 46.

18. I should not perhaps go too far. This passage (in which, by the way, Coleridge is hardly fair to his own countrymen) contains an admission which it is difficult to reconcile with the following indignant outburst (Letter to Mudford, 1818, Cant. Mag., Sept. 1834, p. 126): 'Mr. Wordsworth, for whose fame I had felt and fought with an ardour that amounts to self-oblivion... has affirmed in print that a German critic first taught us to think correctly concerning Shakespeare.' If it be Wordsworth's statement in the Essay Supplementary to the Preface to which Coleridge alludes, his language is scarcely justified; for Wordsworth says no more than that in some respects they (the Germans) have acquired a superiority over the fellow-countrymen of the Poet; for among us it is a current, I might almost say an established opinion, that Shakespeare is justly praised when he is pronounced to be a wild irregular genius, in whom great faults are compensated by great beauties'. This is surely less of a concession to Germany than Coleridge's tribute in the Biog. Lit. It may be added that Coleridge's remark in the text need not necessarily be construed as an admission of his own debt to Lessing. For Coleridge's view of the 'Unities', see Lectures, p. 389.

PAGE 183 1. 3. Schiller's Robbers. The Robbers was published in 1780; Don Carlos, the last of Schiller's earlier dramas, in 1787. Wallenstein, the first of his later period, covered the years 1791-8, during which time he had much intercourse with Goethe, and, through his works, with Kant. Cp. T. T., Feb. 16, 1833, for a similar criticism of the change in Schiller's style, which is there largely attributed to Goethe and other theorists. Schiller's Braut von Messina, which marks the culmination of his classical tendency, was published in 1803. The introduction of a Chorus was defended in a preface to the first edition.

22. Young's Night Thoughts, published 1742, translated into German 1761-9; Hervey's Meditation among the Tombs, published 1746, translated soon afterwards; Clarissa Harlowe, first two volumes published 1748, translated 1790-3. To Crabb Robinson (Diary, &c., July 28, 1811) Coleridge had represented Klopstock as 'composed of everything bad in Young, Hervey and Richardson'.

PAGE 184 1.6. the Castle of Otranto. This novel, the parent of the 'novel of terror', was written by Horace Walpole, and published in 1765. It was shortly afterwards translated into German.

28. that which would remain becomes a Kotzebue. Cp. Lectures, 1813-14, p. 464, 'He (Shakespeare) never clothed Vice in the garb of Virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher,—the Kotzebues of his day.'

PAGE 185 1. 11. Atheista Fulminato, a monkish play, founded on the old legend of Don Juan. The first really dramatic treatment of this legend (whose hero actually lived in the fourteenth century) was the Don Gil of Gabriel Tellez (1634). The subject was handled by De Villiers (Le Festin de pierre, 1669) and by Molière (Don Juan, 1665) in France; by Shadwell (The Libertine, 1676) in England; by Goldoni (1726) in Italy; and by Grabbe (1829) in Germany, where it was also chosen as the theme of operas by Gluck and Mozart.

PAGE 186 1. 4. Self-contradiction is the only wrong. From Coleridge's translation of Wallenstein, Pt. I, Act iv, sc. iii, ll. 191 ff.

16. the biography of Carrier. Jean-Baptiste Carrier, 1756-94, one of the worst spirits of the Reign of Terror. See the chapter headed 'Destruction' in Carlyle's French Revolution.

PAGE 187 1. 1. that sort of negative faith. Cp. supra, p. 107, 1. 18, and note. Coleridge's view may be compared with Schiller's conception of aesthetic semblance (Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung, &c., No. 26), which is itself founded on Kant. See Kant, Werke, ed. Hartenstein, v. 337; Bosanquet, Hist. of Aesthetic, p. 292.

8. The ideal consists. With this definition should be compared (as an illustration of Coleridge's critical consistency, and of the early growth of his views) Satyrane's Letters, p. 159, ll. 4 ff.

25. Cipriani (1723-90), Italian painter and engraver. He resided for a great part of his life in England.

PAGE 188 1. 33. the magic transformation of Tasso's heroine. Gerusalemme Liberata, cant. xiii, st. 38 seq. (ref. Biog. Lit. 1847). PAGE 189 1. 14. this is the open attraction. Cp. Lectures, pp. 27, 147, and passim.

34. the cool intrepidity. The scene here described is taken from Shadwell's Libertine, Act ii; and the two following from Act v (concluding scene) and Act iv, Scene iv, respectively.

PAGE 192 1. 35. Eighteen years ago. Cp. Satyrane's Letters, p. 164, l. 22, &c.

PAGE 196 1. 21. This has her body, that her mind. Altered from last lines of a song in Congreve's Poems on Several Occasions: Works, ii. 168 (ref. Biog. Lit. 1847).

PAGE 198. F. N. The big round tears. From As You Like It, Act ii, Sc. 1.

PAGE 205 1. 1. Tempora mutantur. In the earliest-known version of this proverbial line (Harrison's Description of Britain, 1577) 'et nos' stands for 'nos et'. Coleridge was, however, not the first to transpose the words. See the history of the line in Professor Churton Collins's edition of The Plays and Poems of R. Greene, Oxford, 1905, ii. 382.

21. No more I know, I wish I did. Wordsworth's Thorn, Stanza 14.

PAGE 206 1. 13. Dryden's forest-fiend. See his Theodore and Honoria (from Boccaccio's Decameron, Fifth Day Novel 8).

14. the wizzard-stream. Milton's Lycidas, 1. 55:

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream.

CHAPTER XXIV

PAGE 207 1. 18. The sense of Before and After. Cp. T. T., Jan. 1, 1830, 'Even in dreams nothing is fancied without an antecedent quasi cause. It could not be otherwise.'

PAGE 209 1. 1. Casimir was one of the modern Latin poets, of whose works Coleridge proposed, while still at college, to publish imitations. (See the advertisement of the work in the Cambridge Intelligencer for June 14 and July 26, 1794, quoted Letters, p. 67 f.n.) One imitation of Casimir (Ad Lyram, Bk. II, Ode 3) was published in The Watchman, March 9, 1796. In the introduction to the poem Coleridge remarks: '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.' (First reprinted Poet. Works, 1893, p. 28, and Editorial Note, p. 508.)

F. N. See Johnson's Life of Cowley.

PAGE 210 1. 3. the first sentence of an autobiography. The first edition reads 'which' for 'of', an obvious misprint.

12. for write it I assuredly shall. This purpose of leaving behind him a personal autobiography Coleridge never carried out. See Gillman's Life, p. 145: 'He had even half promised himself to write his own biography, but the want of success in his literary labours, and the state of his health, caused him to think seriously that his life was diminishing too fast, to permit him to finish those great works of which he had planned the execution.'

19. Who lives, that's not, &c., from Timon of Athens, Act ii, Sc. i. Read their graves' for 'the graves' (ref. Biog. Lit. 1847).

28. it became almost as well known. Sixteen years elapsed between the completion of the two parts of Christabel and their publication. During this time, it was much circulated among friends and acquaintances of the poet. Scott heard it recited in 1801, and its influence is seen in The Lay of the Last Minstrel ; and Byron seems to have imitated its music in a passage of The Siege of Corinth. And it was Byron who in 1815 advised Murray to publish the poem. See Poet. Works, p. 603: Gillman's Life, p. 277: and Byron's Works, ed. E, H. Coleridge, iii. 443, 471.

PAGE 211 1. 16. In the Edinburgh Review it was assailed. It was this review which occasioned the footnote in Biog. Lit. i. 36. In Feb. 1817, Coleridge wrote to Murray (Letters, p. 609), The article against me in the former (the Edinburgh Review) was, I am assured, written by Hazlitt.' The evidence for the ascription of the review to Hazlitt is discussed by Mr. Hutchinson in Notes and Queries, Ninth Series, xl. 170.

PAGE 212 1. 4. a species of Animal Magnetism. In this subject Coleridge was deeply interested. See Life, p. 231; T. T., April 30, 1830.

19. a gentleman of great influence. Apparently Lord Byron, under whose encouragement Zapolya was written. The play was rejected by Douglas Kinnaird (Gillman's Life, p. 268). Byron declared that full consideration was given to it, but that 'tho' poetical, it did not appear practicable' (Moore's Life of Byron, p. 367). For another explanation, see Life, p. 272.

21. O we are querulous creatures! Zapolya, Part II, Act i, Sc. i. (Poet. Works, p. 411). In the text 'to discontent us' stands for 'to make us wretched '.

29. the two following passages. Zapolya, The Prelude, Sc. i, 11. 355 ff., and Part II, Act ii, Sc. ii, ll. 70 ff. In the first passage 'in the mad whirl of crowds' should stand for 'even in those whirling

crowds'; and in the second often warned me' for 'oft has warned me' (Poet. Works, pp. 406 and 435).

PAGE 213 1. 38. I published a work. The first Lay Sermon, entitled The Statesman's Manual, was published in 1816. It had previously been advertised as 'A Lay Sermon on the Distresses of the Country, addressed to the Middle and Higher Orders'; and in the Examiner for Sept. 8, 1816, Hazlitt wrote an article purporting to be a review of the yet unpublished discourse. After its appearance, it was reviewed in the Examiner of Dec. 29, 1816 (again by Hazlitt), and in the Edinburgh Review of Dec. 1816. The review in the Edinburgh was ascribed by Coleridge to Hazlitt, probably with justice. (See W. Hazlitt's Political Essays, 1819, pp. 118 ff.; Hazlitt's letter to the Editor of the Examiner, Jan. 17, 1817; Life, p. 225 f. n.; and Notes and Queries, Ninth Series, xl. 170.

PAGE 214 1. 14. I remembered Catullus's lines. Catulli, Carmina, lxxiii (Coleridge has slightly altered the original).

27. the innuendo of my 'potential infidelity'. See the Edinburgh Review, Dec. 1816, p. 451: The senseless jargon which Mr. Coleridge has let fall on this subject is the more extraordinary as he declares in an early part of his Sermon that "Religion and Reason are their own evidence”—a position which appears to us "fraught with potential infidelity" quite as much as Unitarianism,' &c.

28. one passage of my first Lay Sermon. See The Statesman's Manual, p. 317 (Bohn's Library).

PAGE 216 1. 21. what we can only know by the act of becoming. See The Friend (1818), Sect. ii, Essay 77, especially the concluding paragraphs: 'But let it not be supposed that it (the principle of religion) is a sort of knowledge. No! it is a form of being, or indeed it is the only knowledge that truly is, and all other science is real only as far as it is symbolical of this.' See also Biog. Lit. i. 84, l. 12 note ad loc.

PAGE 217 1. 3. whether the heavy interdict, &c. i. 99, l. 1, and note.

See Biog. Lit.

II. the concluding page of Spinoza's Ethics. Coleridge has curtailed the latter part of the quotation, which in full runs thus: Atque adeo ex eo, quod mens hoc amore divino seu beatitudine gaudet, potestatem habet libidines coercendi, et quia humana potentia ad coercendos affectus in solo intellectu consistit. Ergo nemo beatitudine gaudet,' &c. (Spinoza, Ethic. Prop. xlii).

19. With regard to the Unitarians. See note to Biog. Lit. i. 136, 1. 31. Mrs. Barbauld repeated this 'shameless assertion' to Coleridge in conversation, and was met with much the same reply; on which she declared that she could not understand the distinction which Coleridge drew (Gillman's Life, p. 164). See also T. T., April 4, 1832.