The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Chapter 399 : to his Hexameters 'Francisca.n.u.s et Fratres'. In some Elegiacs addressed t

to his Hexameters 'Francisca.n.u.s et Fratres'. In some Elegiacs addressed to Tasteus and Tevius, in which he complains of his sufferings from gout and kindred maladies, he tells them that Groscollius (Professor of Medicine at the University of Paris) was doctoring him with herbs and by suggestion:--'Et spe languentem consilioque juvat'. Hence the three names. In another set of Iambics ent.i.tled 'Mutuus Amor' in which he celebrates the alliance between Scotland and England he writes:--

Non mortis hoc propinquitas Non temporis longinquitas Solvet, fides quod nexuit Intaminata vinculum.

Hence the wording of the motto. Groscollius is, of course, a _mot a double entente_. It is a name and a nickname. The interpretation of the names and the reference to Buchanan's Hexameters were first pointed out by Mr. T. Hutchinson in the _Athenaeum_, Dec. 10, 1898.]

CONTENTS

[t.i.tles of poems not in 1796 are printed in italics.]

POEMS by S. T. COLERIDGE.

PAGE _Dedication_ vii Preface to the First Edition xiii Preface to the Second Edition xvii _Ode to the New Year_ 1 Monody on Chatterton 17 Songs of the Pixies 29 The Rose 41 The Kiss 43 To a young a.s.s 45 Domestic Peace 48 The Sigh 49 Epitaph on an Infant 51 Lines on the Man of Ross 52 ---- to a beautiful Spring 54 ---- on the Death of a Friend 57 To a Young Lady 61 To a Friend, with an unfinished Poem 65

SONNETS.

[_Introduction to the Sonnets_ 71-74]

To W. L. Bowles 75 On a Discovery made too late 76 On Hope 77 _To the River Otter_ 78 On Brockly Comb 79 To an old Man 81 Sonnet 82 To Schiller 83 _On the Birth of a Son_ 85 _On first seeing my Infant_ 87 Ode to Sara 88 Composed at Clevedon 96 _On leaving a Place of Residence_ 100 _On an unfortunate Woman_ 105 _On observing a Blossom_ 107 _The Hour when we shall meet again_ 109 _Lines to C. Lloyd_ 110 Religious Musings 117

[=Poems=] by CHARLES LLOYD. pp. [151]-189. Second Edition.

[=Poems=] _on The Death_ of PRISCILLA FARMER, By her GRANDSON CHARLES LLOYD, pp. [191]-213.

Sonnet ['The piteous sobs that choak the Virgin's breath', signed S.

T. Coleridge], p. 193.

[=Poems=] by CHARLES LAMB _of the India-House_. pp. [215]-240.

SUPPLEMENT.

_Advertis.e.m.e.nt_ 243 Lines to Joseph Cottle, by S. T. Coleridge 246 On an Autumnal Evening, by ditto, 249 In the manner of Spencer (_sic_), by ditto, 256 The Composition of a Kiss, by ditto, 260 To an Infant, by Ditto 264 _On the Christening of a Friend's Child_, by ditto, 264 To the Genius of Shakespeare, by Charles Lloyd, 267 Written after a Journey into North Wales, by ditto, 270 A Vision of Repentance, by Charles Lamb, 273

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

[Pp. [xiii]-xvi.]

Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not unfre/quently condemned for their querulous Egotism. But Egotism is to be / condemned then only when it offends against Time and Place, as in an / History or an Epic Poem. To censure it in a Monody or Sonnet is almost / as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write Sonnets / or Monodies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps nothing else / could. After the more violent emotions of Sorrow, the mind demands / amus.e.m.e.nt, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late / sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected / with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is / a painful and most often an unavailing effort:

But O! how grateful to a wounded heart The tale of Misery to impart-- From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow, And raise esteem upon the base of woe! 15 SHAW.

The communicativeness of our Nature leads us to describe our own / sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is exerted; / and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure, which is gradually / a.s.sociated, and mingles as a corrective, with the painful subject of the / description. "True!" (it may be answered) "but how are the PUBLIC / interested in your Sorrows or your Description?" We are for ever / attributing personal Unities to imaginary Aggregates.--What is the PUBLIC, / but a term for a number of scattered Individuals? Of whom as many / will be interested in these sorrows, as have experienced the same or / similar.

"Holy be the lay, Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way."

If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm, that / the most interesting pa.s.sages in our most interesting Poems are those, in / which the Author developes his own feelings. The sweet voice of Cona[1144:1] / never sounds so sweetly as when it speaks of itself; and I should almost / suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read the opening of the / third book of the Paradise Lost without peculiar emotion. By a law of / our Nature, he, who labours under a strong feeling, is impelled to seek for / sympathy; but a Poet's feelings are all strong. Quicquid amet valde amat. / Akenside therefore speaks with philosophical accuracy, when he cla.s.ses / Love and Poetry, as producing the same effects:

"Love and the wish of Poets when their tongue Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms 40 Their own."--PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION.

There is one species of Egotism which is truly disgusting; not that / which leads us to communicate our feelings to others, but that which / would reduce the feelings of others to an ident.i.ty with our own. The / Atheist, who exclaims, "pshaw!" when he glances his eye on the praises / of Deity, is an Egotist: an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of / Love-verses is an Egotist: and the sleek Favorites of Fortune are / Egotists, when they condemn all "melancholy, discontented" verses. / Surely, it would be candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases / ourselves but to consider whether or no there may not be others to whom / it is well-calculated to give an innocent pleasure.

I shall only add that each of my readers will, I hope, remember that / these Poems on various subjects, which he reads at one time and under / the influence of one set of feelings, were written at different times and / prompted by very different feelings; and therefore that the supposed / inferiority of one Poem to another may sometimes be owing to the temper / of mind, in which he happens to peruse it.

[Pp. [xvii]-xx.]

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

I return my acknowledgments to the different Reviewers for the / a.s.sistance, which they have afforded me, in detecting my poetic deficien/cies. I have endeavoured to avail myself of their remarks: one third of / the former Volume I have omitted, and the imperfections of the republished / part must be considered as errors of taste, not faults of carelessness. My / poems have been rightly charged with a profusion of double-epithets, and / a general turgidness. I have pruned the double-epithets with no sparing / hand; and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of / thought and diction. This latter fault however had insinuated itself / into my Religious Musings with such intricacy of union, that sometimes / I have omitted to disentangle the weed from the fear of snapping the / flower. A third and heavier accusation has been brought against me, that / of obscurity; but not, I think, with equal justice. An Author is obscure / when his conceptions are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, / or unappropriate, or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, / like the Bard of Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstract / truths, like Collins's Ode on the poetical character, claims not to be / popular--but should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the / Reader. But this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is / warm and rapid, must expect from his _contemporaries_. Milton did not / escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. / We now hear no more of it; not that their poems are better understood / at present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is / established; and a critic would accuse himself of frigidity or inattention, / who should profess not to understand them. But a living writer is yet / sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his / feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider him as lost beneath, / than as soaring above, us. If any man expect from my poems the same / easiness of style which he admires in a drinking-song, for him I have not / written. Intelligibilia, non intellectum adfero.

I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and I consider / myself as having been amply repayed without either. Poetry has been to / me its own[1146:1] "exceeding great reward": it has soothed my afflictions: it / has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude; / and it has given me the habit of wis.h.i.+ng to discover the Good and the / Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

There were inserted in my former Edition, a few Sonnets of my Friend / and old School-fellow, CHARLES LAMB. He has now communicated to me / a complete Collection of all his Poems; quae qui non prorsus amet, illum / omnes et Virtutes et Veneres odere. My friend CHARLES LLOYD has / likewise joined me; and has contributed every poem of his, which he / deemed worthy of preservation. With respect to my own share of the / Volume, I have omitted a third of the former Edition, and added almost / an equal number. The Poems thus added are marked in the Contents by / Italics. S. T. C.

STOWEY, _May_, 1797.

MS. Notes attached to proof sheets of the second Edition.

(_a_) As neither of us three were present to correct the Press, and as my handwriting is not eminently distinguished for neatness or legibility, the Printer has made a few mistakes. The Reader will consult equally his own convenience, and our credit if before he peruses the volume he will scan the Table of Errata and make the desired alterations.

S. T. Coleridge.

Stowey, May 1797.

(_b_) Table of Contents. (N.B. of my Poems)--and let it be printed in the same manner as Southey's Table of Contents--take care to mark _the new poems_ of the Edition by Italics.

_Dedication._

Preface to the first Edition.

_Refer to the_ Second Edition.

_Ode on the departing Year._ Monody on the death of Chatterton, etc., etc.--

[_MS. R._]

P. [69].

[Half-t.i.tle] [=Sonnets=], / _Attempted in the Manner_ / Of The / Rev. W.

L. Bowles. / Non ita certandi cupidus, quam propter amorem / Quod te IMITARI aveo. / LUCRET.

[Pp. 71-74.]

INTRODUCTION TO THE SONNETS

For lines 1-63 vide _ante_, No. III, The Introduction to the 'Sheet of Sonnets'. Lines 64 to the end are omitted, and the last paragraph runs thus:

The Sonnet has been ever a favourite species of composition with me; but I am conscious that I have not succeeded in it. From a large number I have retained ten only, as seemed not beneath mediocrity. Whatever more is said of them, ponamus lucro. S. T. COLERIDGE.

[_Note._ In a copy of the Edition of 1797, now in the Rowfant Library, S. T. C. comments in a marginal note on the words 'I have never yet been able to discover sense, nature, or poetic fancy in Petrarch's poems,'

&c.--'A piece of petulant presumption, of which I should be more ashamed if I did not flatter myself that it stands alone in my writings. The best of the joke is that at the time I wrote it, I did not understand a word of Italian, and could therefore judge of this divine Poet only by bald translations of some half-dozen of his Sonnets.']