“Greeks only should free Greece,
The Age of Bronze, lines 298, 299, Poetical Works, 1901, V 557, note 1
Not the barbarian with his masque of peace.”
—Editor ↩
Γενοίμαν, ἵν’ ὑλᾶεν ἔπεστι πόν-
του πρόβλημ’ ἁλίκλυστον, ἄ-
κραν ὑπὸ πλάκα Σουνίου, κ.τ.λ.
Sophocles, Ajax, lines 1190–1192
—Editor ↩
Compare—
“What poets feel not, when they make,
Matthew Arnold (Motto to Poems, 1869, vol. I Flyleaf)
A pleasure in creating,
The world, in its turn, will not take
Pleasure in contemplating.”
—Editor ↩
For this “sentence,” see Journal, November 16, 1813, Letters, 1898, II 320, note 1; see, too, letter to Rogers, 1814, Letters, 1899, III 89, note 1. —Editor ↩
In digging drains for a new water-closet.
—[MS.]
For Edmund Hoyle (1672–1769), see English Bards, etc., lines 966–968, Poetical Works, 1898, I 372, note 4. —Editor ↩
William Coxe (1747–1828), Archdeacon of Wilts, a voluminous historian and biographer, published Memoirs of John, Duke of Marlborough, in 1817–1819. —Editor ↩
See Life of Milton, Works of Samuel Johnson, 1825, VII pp. 67, 68, 80, et vide ante, note 270. —Editor ↩
According to Suetonius, the youthful Titus amused himself by copying handwriting, and boasted that he could have made a first-rate falsarius. One of Caesar’s “earliest acts” was to crucify some jovial pirates, who had kidnapped him, and with whom he pretended to be on pleasant if not friendly terms. —Editor ↩
James Currie, M.D. (1756–1805), published, anonymously, the Works of Robert Burns, with an account of his Life, etc., in 1800. —Editor ↩
“He [Cromwell] was very notorious for robbing orchards, a puerile crime … but grown so scandalous and injurious by the frequent spoyls and damages of Trees, breaking of Hedges, and Enclosures, committed by this Apple-Dragon, that many solemn complaints were made both to his Father and Mother for redresse thereof; which missed not their satisfaction and expiation out of his hide,” etc.
—Flagellum, by James Heath, 1663, p. 5
See, too, for his “name of a Royster” at Cambridge, A Short View of the Late Troubles in England, by Sir William Dugdale, 1681, p. 459. —Editor ↩
In The Friend, 1818, II 38, Coleridge refers to “a plan … of trying the experiment of human perfectibility on the banks of the Susquehanna;” and Southey, in his Letter to William Smith, Esq. (1817), (Essays Moral and Political, by Robert Southey, 1832, II 17), speaks of his “purpose to retire with a few friends into the wilds of America, and there lay the foundations of a community,” etc.; but the word “Pantisocracy” is not mentioned. It occurs, perhaps, for the first time in print, in George Dyer’s biographical sketch of Southey, which he contributed to Public Characters of 1799–1800, p. 225,
“Coleridge, no less than Southey, possessed a strong passion for poetry. They commenced, like two young poets, an enthusiastic friendship, and in connection with others, struck out a plan for settling in America, and for having all things in common. This scheme they called Pantisocracy.”
Hence, the phrase must have “caught on,” for, in a footnote to his review of Coleridge’s Literary Life (Edin. Rev., August, 1817, vol. XXVIII p. 501), Jeffrey speaks of “the Pantisocratic or Lake School.” —Editor ↩
Wordsworth was “hired,” but not, like Burns, “excised.” Hazlitt (Lectures on the English Poets, 1870, p. 174) is responsible for the epithet: “Mr. Wordsworth might have shown the incompatibility between the Muse and the Excise,” etc. —Editor ↩
Confined his pedlar poems to democracy.
—[MS.]
Coleridge began his poetical contributions to the Morning Post in January, 1798; his poetical articles in 1800. —Editor ↩
Flourished its sophistry for aristocracy.
—[MS.]
Coleridge was married to Sarah Fricker, October 5; Southey to her younger sister Edith, November 15, 1795. Their father, Stephen Fricker, who had been an innkeeper, and afterwards a potter at Bristol, migrated to Bath about the year 1780. For the last six years of his life he was owner and manager of a coal wharf. He had inherited a small fortune, and his wife brought him money, but he died bankrupt, and left his family destitute. His widow returned to Bristol, and kept a school. In a letter to Murray, dated September 11, 1822 (Letters, 1901, VI 113), Byron quotes the authority of “Luttrell,” and “his friend Mr. Nugent,” for the statement that Mrs. Southey and “Coleridge’s Sara … before they were married … were milliner’s or dressmaker’s apprentices.” The story rests upon their evidence. It is certain that in 1794, when Coleridge appeared upon the scene, the sisters earned their living by going out to work in the houses of friends, and were not, at that time, “milliners of Bath.” —Editor ↩
For Joanna Southcott (1750–1814), see Letters, 1899, III 128–130, note 2. —Editor ↩
Here follows, in the original MS.—
“Time has approved Ennui to be the best
Of friends, and opiate draughts; your love and wine,
Which shake so much the human brain and breast,
Must end in languor;—men must sleep like swine:
The happy lover and the welcome guest
Both sink at last into a swoon divine;
Full of deep raptures and of bumpers, they
Are somewhat sick and sorry the next day.”
—Editor ↩
“Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.”
Hor., Epist. Ad Pisones, line 359
—Editor ↩
Wordsworth’s Benjamin the Waggoner, was written in 1805, but was not published till 1819. “Benjamin” was servant to William Jackson, a Keswick carrier, who built Greta Hall, and let off part of the house to Coleridge. —Editor
