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jects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves.

'In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed that my endeavors should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth, sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief, for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.'

This exposition by the author leaves little need for more comment on The Ancient Mariner, save perhaps a word as to the form. This is modelled on that of the medieval ballad; but if you compare it with one of these - The Demon Lover, for instance, or Sir Patrick Spens you will notice the incomparable superiority of Coleridge, both in the depth of his psychological observation and in the bewitching melody of his cadences.

PART I.

soon =

Eftsoons (12); from the Old English eft = again + sone at once, speedily. With lines 21-24 compare the opening stanzas of Tennyson's The Voyage; indeed the whole of that poem shows Coleridge's influence. minstrelsy (36) = company of musicians. Compare, But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him.' 2 Kings, iii. 15. thunder-fit (69) = = a noise like thunder. The oldest meaning of this word 'fit' is struggle;' it has no etymological connection with the adjective 'fit,' nor with the noun 'fit' = ballad, song. shroud (75). Shrouds are supporting ropes that run from the mast-head to the sides of the ship. evenings.

PART II.

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vespers (76) =

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'em (92); dative case = to or for them. The form 'em is directly from the Old English dative plural 'him,' Middle English ‘hem.’ Our modern form them' is from 'pâm' or 'pam,' the dative plural of the demonstrative 'se, seô, pât' (that), whose plural has entirely supplanted that of the third personal pronoun. When at Mt. Saint Jean, then, the Duke of Wellington said (if he did say), UP, GUARDS, AND AT 'EM! he was not guilty of a barbarism, but was indulging a laudable fondness for Choicest Old English. uprist (98). A weak preterite : = uprose. See Whitney, §§ 240, 244. The stanza beginning All in a hot and copper sky reminds one of some of Turner's pictures. This great artist, as well as Coleridge, had a keen eye for the subtle aspects of nature that hard and brilliant minds like Macaulay's find so uninteresting. For similar touches see lines

171-180, 199-200, 263-271, 314–326, 368–372. death-fires (128); sometimes called 'fetch-candles' or 'corpse-candles;' supposed to portend the death of the person who sees them. 'Another kind of fiery apparition peculiar to Wales appeareth. . . in the lower region of the air, straight and long, not much unlike a glaive, mours, [mulberry-leaves?] or shoots directly and level . . . but far more slowly than falling stars. It lighteneth all the air and ground where it passeth, lasteth three or four miles or more, for aught is known, because no man seeth the rising or beginning of it; and when it falls to the ground, it sparkleth and lighteth all about. These commonly announce the death or decease of freeholders by falling on their lands. Brand's Popular Antiquities, iii.

237.

PART III.

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they for joy did grin (164). I took the thought of 'grinning for joy' from poor Burnett's 1 remark to me when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the constriction till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to me: 'You grinned like an idiot.' He had done the same.' - Coleridge in Table-Talk, May 31, 1830. the hornéd Moon (210). 'It is a common superstition among sailors that something evil is about to happen whenever a star dogs the moon.' - Coleridge. Did you ever see the phenomenon described in lines 210-211? Has Coleridge made a mistake?

PART IV.

Lines 226-227 were written by Wordsworth.

PART V.

silly (297) = (originally) blessed; then, 'simple-hearted,' 'guileless,' 'weak,' 'foolish' and (as here) 'empty,'' useless.' sheen (314) = bright, shining. The Sun, right up above the mast (383). The ship has now reached the equator, returning north. In line 30 she is represented as having crossed the line, going south. In Coleridge's prose comment on lines 103-106, he represents the ship, at that point of the narrative, as having reached the line, going north. But this is contradicted by lines 328, 335, 367-368, 373-376, all of which imply a cailing north from the point reached in 107.

1 Campbell (p. 598) says 'Berdmore of Jesus Coll. Cambridge,' but gives no authority.

PART VI.

After line 475, in the edition of 1798, came these five stanzas:

The moonlight bay was white all o'er,

Till rising from the same,

Full many shapes, that shadows were,
Like as of torches came.

A little distance from the prow

Those dark-red shadows were;
But soon I saw that my own flesh
Was red as in a glare.

I turned my head in fear and dread,
And by the holy rood,

The bodies had advanced, and now
Before the mast they stood.

They lifted up their stiff right arms,
They held them straight and tight;
And each right-arm burnt like a torch,
A torch that's borne upright.
Their stony eye-balls glittered on
In the red and smoky light.

I prayed and turned my head away,
Forth looking as before.

There was no breeze upon the bay,

No wave against the shore.

After line 503, in the edition of 1798, came this stanza:

Then vanish'd all the lovely lights;

The bodies rose anew:

With silent pace, each to his place,

Came back the ghastly crew.

The wind, that shade nor motion made,
On me alone it blew.

ivy-tod (535) = ivy-bush.

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'Tod' is etymologically the same word

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as the German Zotte,' a tuft of hair or wool. prefix here is merely intensive, as in

'He cometh not,' she said; She said, 'I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead.'

Tennyson's Mariana, 9-11.

I pass, like night, from land to land (586); a line doubtless suggested by the legend of the Wandering Jew. teach (590) = tell. The Old English meaning of 'teach' is 'point out,'' show.' What loud uproar bursts from that door! (591). Notice with what dramatic skill this poem is set. The mariner's tale-gloomy, weird, supernatural stands out in compelling contrast against the scenery of the bridal-cheerful, domestic, humanistic. If you look especially at the marvellous way in which the supernatural element is introduced, you will perhaps agree with me that no poet — not even the mighty Shakespeare himself — has so brought home to us those spiritual existences which, to a devout mind, attend our every moment and preserve our going out and our coming in.

LORD BYRON.

GEORGE GORDON, sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale, was born in London in 1788. Much of his youth was passed in Scotland, where he acquired the love of mountain scenery that appears so constantly in his poems. Harrow and Cambridge seem to have done little for him save to excite in him a loathing for the pedantry of the schools. The Hours of Idleness (1807) being savagely condemned by the Edinburgh Review, Byron consoled himself by drinking three bottles of claret at a sitting and by writing English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,—a satire that contains some lines not unworthy of Pope. Two years on the continent (1809-1811) furnished the material for the first and second cantos of Childe Harold, wherein he showed for the first time his great powers of idealistic description. Seven editions were sold within a month. Then followed a long list of lurid Oriental romances in verse, concerning which we must agree with the author when he declares they show his own want of judgment in publishing and the public's in reading. The same public made itself equally ridiculous by treating Byron as the object of a persistent lionism; this period of heroic vacuity in the poet's life, was brought to an abrupt close by differences arising from an unhappy marriage; in 1816 he wisely left England for Italy, never to return. The third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold (1816 and 1818) give us those splendid pictures of the Rhine, Switzerland and Italy upon which Byron's reputation as a poet must largely rest. His numerous dramas, though containing magnificent lyrical passages, are all lacking in the first essentials of a good play — Action and Contrast of Character. Just what it is Byron has given us in Don Juan the critics seem unable to agree upon: Watkins has called it the 'Odyssey of Immorality;' Shelley declares it to be 'Something wholly new and relative to the age and yet surpassingly beautiful.' However this may be, certain it is that the varying moods of this poem, with its wonderful range of humor, passion and imagination, come straight from Byron's soul, which he has here exposed-as he was too fond of doing to the gaze of the world. The revolt of Greece against Turkey enlisted his ardent sympathies; in 1823 he left Italy for Greece, where he unselfishly devoted his money, his talents and his health to the cause of Hellenic independence. Had he lived, he bid fair to become the Cavour of his age; this glorious prospect was eclipsed by death, which came to him untimely, at Mesolonghi, on the 19th of April, 1824.

No English poet is so well known on the Continent of Europe as Byron, nor has any foreigner ever exercised such an influence as he on the poetry of modern France, Germany and Italy.

FRIENDS. Scott, Moore, Sheridan, Shelley, Hobhouse, Trelawny.
ANTIPATHIES.-Wordsworth, Southey, Castlereagh, George IV,

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