The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Chapter 405 : XXVIII THE POETICAL AND DRAMATIC WORKS of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with a Life of the

XXVIII

THE POETICAL AND DRAMATIC WORKS of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with a Life of the Author. London: Tho{s}. Allman 42 Holborn Hill 1837.

[16{mo}, pp. viii + 392.

_Note._--The 'Life of the Author' does not form part of this edition.

The Contents are identical with those of No. XXVII. The frontispiece depicts the 'Ancient Mariner' and the 'Wedding Guest'. The t.i.tle-page, 'Drawn and Engraved by J. Romney,' is embellished with a curious vignette depicting a man in a night-cap lying in bed. A wife, or daughter, is in attendance. The vignette was probably designed to ill.u.s.trate some other work.

XXIX

THE POETICAL WORKS of Samuel Taylor Coleridge with Life of the Author.

London: Charles Daly, 14, Leicester Street, Leicester Square, _n. d._ [16{mo}, pp. x.x.xii + [35]-384.

The Contents consist of 'The Ancient Mariner' (with the marginal glosses printed at the end of the poem); the Poems of 1796, 1797, with a few exceptions: 'The Piccolomini'; 'The Death of Wallenstein'; 'The Dark Ladie'; 'The Raven'; 'A Christmas Carol'; and 'Fire, Famine, and Slaughter'--i. e. of poems then out of copyright, or reprinted from the _Morning Post_.

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The Ancient Mariner, and other Poems. By S. T. Coleridge. Price Sixpence. London: Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, Paternoster-Row.

MDCCCXLIII. J. Scott, Printer, 50, Hatfield Street.

[16{mo}, pp. iv + 148.

_Note._--This edition formed one of the 'Pocket English Cla.s.sics'. An ill.u.s.trated t.i.tle-page depicts the 'skiff-boat' with its crew of the Ancient Mariner, the Holy Hermit, the Pilot, and the Pilot's boy, who is jumping overboard. The flag bears the legend 'The Antient Mariner and Minor Poems By S. T. Coleridge'. The Contents include 'The Ancient Mariner', with the marginal glosses printed at the end of the poem; and a selection of poems published in 1796, 1797.

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THE POEMS of S. T. Coleridge [Aldine device and motto] London William Pickering 1844. [8{o}, pp. xvi + 372.

_Note._--The Contents of this volume, issued by Mrs. H. N. Coleridge as sole editress, consist of the Poems (not the Dramatic Works) included in 1834, with the following omissions, (1) Music, (2) Devons.h.i.+re Roads, (3) Inside the Coach, (4) Mathematical Problem, (5) The Nose, (6) Monody on a Tea-kettle, (7) 'The Same,' 'I too a sister had', &c., (8) On Imitation, (9) Honor, (10) Progress of Vice, (11) The Two round s.p.a.ces on the Tombstone; and the following additions, already republished in _Lit. Remains_, 1836, Vol. I, (1) Epigram, 'Hoa.r.s.e Maevius', &c., (2) Casimir ad Lyram, (3) On the Christening of a Friend's Child, (4) Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie, (5) An Ode to the Rain, (6) The Exchange, (7) Complaint, 'How seldom, Friend', &c., (8) 'What is Life', (9) Inscription for a Time-Piece, (10) ?p?t?f??? a?t???apt??. Four songs from the dramas were also included. The German originals of (1) Schiller's 'Lines on a Cataract', (2) Friederike Brun's 'Chamouny at Sunrise', and (3) Schiller's distiches on the 'Homeric Hexameter' and the 'Ovidian Elegiac Metre' are printed on pp. 371, 372.

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THE POEMS of S. T. Coleridge [Aldine device and motto] London William Pickering 1848. [8{o}, pp. xvi + 372.

The Contents are identical with those of No. x.x.xI, with the exception of two additional 'Notes' (pp. 371, 372) containing the German original of Matthisson's _Milesisches Marchen_, and two stanzas of Cotton's _Chlorinda_, of which 'Separation' (_ante_, p. 397) is an adaptation.

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THE RAVEN, A Christmas Tale, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Esq.

Ill.u.s.trated with Eight Plates, By an Old Traveller. [_n. d._]

_Collation._--Oblong folio, pp. i-vi + eight scenes unpaged, faced by eight lithographs.

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THE POEMS of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by Derwent and Sara Coleridge. A New Edition. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. 1852.

[8{o}, pp. xxvii ('Advertis.e.m.e.nt', and 'Editors' Preface to the Present Edition', pp. [v]-xiv) + 378 + 'Notes', pp. [379]-388.

_ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT_

This volume was prepared for the press by my lamented sister, Mrs. H. N.

Coleridge, and will have an additional interest to many readers as the last monument of her highly-gifted mind. At her earnest request, my name appears with hers on the t.i.tle-page, but the a.s.sistance rendered by me has been, in fact, little more than mechanical. The preface, and the greater part of the notes, are her composition:--the selection and arrangement have been determined almost exclusively by her critical judgment, or from records in her possession. A few slight corrections and unimportant additions are all that have been found necessary, the first and last sheets not having had the benefit of her own revision.

DERWENT COLERIDGE.

ST. MARK'S COLLEGE, CHELSEA, _May_ 1852.

PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION [1852]

As a chronological arrangement of Poetry in completed collections is now beginning to find general favour, pains have been taken to follow this method in the present Edition of S. T. Coleridge's Poetical and Dramatic Works, as far as circ.u.mstances permitted--that is to say, as far as the date of composition of each poem was ascertainable, and as far as the plan could be carried out without effacing the cla.s.ses into which the Author had himself distributed his most important poetical publication, the 'Sibylline Leaves,' namely, POEMS OCCASIONED BY POLITICAL EVENTS, OR FEELINGS CONNECTED WITH THEM; LOVE POEMS; MEDITATIVE POEMS IN BLANK VERSE; ODES AND MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. On account of these impediments, together with the fact, that many a poem, such as it appears in its ultimate form, is the growth of different periods, the agreement with chronology in this Edition is approximative rather than perfect: yet in the majority of instances the date of each piece has been made out, and its place fixed accordingly.

In another point of view also, the Poems have been distributed with relation to time: they are thrown into three broad groups, representing, first the Youth,--secondly, the Early Manhood and Middle Life,--thirdly, the Declining Age of the Poet; and it will be readily perceived that each division has its own distinct tone and colour, corresponding to the period of life in which it was composed. It has been suggested, indeed, that Coleridge had four poetical epochs, more or less diversely characterised,--that there is a discernible difference betwixt the productions of his Early Manhood and of his Middle Age, the latter being distinguished from those of his Stowey life, which may be considered as his poetic prime, by a less buoyant spirit. Fire they have; but it is not the clear, bright, mounting fire of his earlier poetry, conceived and executed when 'he and youth were house-mates still.' In the course of a very few years after three-and-twenty all his very finest poems were produced; his twenty-fifth year has been called his _annus mirabilis_. To be a 'Prodigal's favourite--[1169:1]then, worse truth! a Miser's pensioner,' is the lot of Man. In respect of poetry, Coleridge was a 'Prodigal's favourite,' more, perhaps, than ever Poet was before.

[The poems] produced before the Author's twenty-fourth year [1796], devoted as he was to the 'soft strains' of Bowles, have more in common with the pa.s.sionate lyrics of Collins and the picturesque wildness of the pretended Ossian, than with the well-tuned sentimentality of that Muse which the overgrateful poet has represented as his earliest inspirer. For the young they will ever retain a peculiar charm, because so fraught with the joyous spirit of youth; and in the minds of all readers that feeling which disposes men 'to set the bud above the rose full-blown' would secure them an interest, even if their intrinsic beauty and sweetness were less adequate to obtain it.

The present Editors have been guided in the general arrangement of this edition by those of 1817 and 1828, which may be held to represent the author's matured judgment upon the larger and more important part of his poetical productions. They have reason, indeed, to believe, that the edition of 1828 was the last upon which he was able to bestow personal care and attention. That of 1834, the last year of his earthly sojourning, a period when his thoughts were wholly engrossed, so far as the decays of his frail outward part left them free for intellectual pursuits and speculations, by a grand scheme of Christian Philosophy, to the enunciation of which in a long projected work his chief thoughts and aspirations had for many years been directed, was arranged mainly, if not entirely, at the discretion of his earliest Editor, H. N.

Coleridge. . . Such alterations only have been made in this final arrangement of the Poetical and Dramatic Works of S. T. Coleridge, by those into whose charge they have devolved, as they feel a.s.sured, both the Author himself and his earliest Editor would at this time find to be either necessary or desirable. The observations and experience of eighteen years, a period long enough to bring about many changes in literary opinion, have satisfied them that the immature essays of boyhood and adolescence, not marked with any such prophetic note of genius as certainly does belong to the four school-boy poems they have retained, tend to injure the general effect of a body of poetry. That a writer, especially a writer of verse, should keep out of sight his third-rate performances, is now become a maxim with critics; for they are not, at the worst, effectless: they have an effect, that of diluting and weakening, to the reader's feelings, the general power of the collection. Mr. Coleridge himself constantly, after 1796, rejected a certain portion of his earliest published _Juvenilia_: never printed any attempts of his boyhood, except those four with which the present publication commences, and there can be no doubt that the Editor of 1834 would ere now have come to the conclusion, that only such of the Author's early performances as were sealed by his own approval ought to form a permanent part of the body of his poetical works.

It must be added, that time has robbed of their charm certain sportive effusions of Mr. Coleridge's later years, which were given to the public in the first gloss and glow of novelty in 1834, and has proved that, though not devoid of the quality of genius, they possess upon the whole, not more than an ephemeral interest. These the Editors have not scrupled to omit on the same grounds and in the same confidence that has been already explained.

S. C.

CHESTER PLACE, REGENT'S PARK.

_March_, 1852.

The Contents of 1852 correspond with those of 1844, 1848, with the following omissions: (1) Anthem for the Children of Christ's Hospital; (2) Sonnet, 'Farewell, parental scenes', &c.; (3) To the Muse; (4) With Fielding's Amelia; (5) Sonnet, 'On receiving an account', &c.; (6) Sonnet, 'On seeing a Youth', &c.; (7) Pain; (8) Epigram, 'Hoa.r.s.e Maevius', &c.; (9) Casimir ad Lyram; (10) 'On the Christening', &c.; (11) Elegy imitated from Akenside; (12) Phantom; (13) Allegoric Vision; (14) Reproof and Reply; (15) Written in an Alb.u.m, 'Parry', &c.; (16) To the Author of the Ancient Mariner; (17) Job's Luck; (18) On a Volunteer Singer; together with four songs from the dramas.

The additions were (1) Sonnet to Pitt, 'Not always', &c.; (2) Sonnet, 'Not Stanhope', &c.; (3) To the Author of Poems published anonymously at Bristol; (4) The Day-Dream, 'If thou wert here', &c.; (5) The Foster-Mother's Tale; (6) A Hymn; (7) The Alienated Mistress. A Madrigal; (8) To a Lady, 'Tis not the lily brow', &c.; (9) Song, 'Tho'

veiled', &c.; (10) L'envoy. 'In vain we supplicate', &c.

The Notes, pp. 379-88, contain, _inter alia_, the Latin original of 'Kisses' (vide _ante_, p. 46), and the Sonnet, 'No more my visionary Soul shall dwell', attributed by Southey to Favell (vide _ante_, p. 68).

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