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PAGE 40.-MONODY ON THE DEATH OF CHATTERTON.

This monody was sketched at Christ's Hospital; but meagre indeed is the boyish schema, with scarce any of the fire and felicity of the finished composition. October, 1794, is the date affixed by the author. It appears, from a passage in one of Mr. Southey's letters, that seven lines and a half, toward the end of the poem, were borrowed from a young friend and fellow-poet.

"Every thing is in the fairest trim. Favell and Le Grice" (a younger brother of Charles Lamb's Valentine Le Grice,) "two young Pantisocrats of nineteen, join us. They possess great genius. You may perhaps like the sonnet on the subject of our emigration, by Favell:

"No more my visionary soul shall dwell

On joys that were: no more endure to weigh
The shame and anguish of the evil day,
Wisely forgetful! O'er the ocean swell
Sublime of Hope, I seek the cottaged dell,

Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray,
And dancing to the moonlight roundelay,

The wizard Passion wears (sic) a holy spell.

Eyes that have ached with anguish! ye shall weep
Tears of doubt-mingled joy, as those who start
From precipices of distempered sleep,

On which the fierce-eyed fiends their revels keep,
And see the rising sun, and find it dart

New rays of pleasure trembling to the heart."

Southey's Life and Correspondence, vol. i. p. 224.

At the end of the Preface to the edition of 1796, Mr. Coleridge acknowledges himself indebted to Mr. Favell for the "rough sketch" of Effusion XVI.—

"Sweet Mercy! how my weary heart has bled;"

and to the author of "Joan of Arc" for the first half of Effusion XV.—

"Pale Roamer through the night," &c.

It is remarkable that when these obligations were particularized, the passage borrowed from the Monody should not have been referred to its author. But this is but one of a thousand instances that could be given of Mr. Coleridge's partial and uncertain (though in some respects powerful) memory. In 1803 he published, without signature, among his own productions, Mr. Lamb's Sonnet to Mrs. Siddons, which had appeared in the edition of 1796, signed C. L., and in 1797 in Lamb's portion of the joint volume.

PAGE 49.-SONNET III.

This Sonnet, and the ninth, to "Stanhope," were among the pieces withdrawn from the second edition of 1797. They reappeared in the edition of 1803, and were again withdrawn in 1828, solely, it may be presumed, on account of their political vehemence. They will excite no angry feelings, and lead to no misapprehensions now; and as they are fully equal to their companions in poetical merit, the Editors have not scrupled to reproduce them. These Sonnets were originally entitled "Effusions."

PAGE 115.-THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER.

The following interesting notices concerning "The Ancient Mariner" are contained in a letter of the Rev. Alexander Dyce, the well-known admirable Editor of old Plays, to the late H. N. Coleridge:

"When my truly honoured friend Mr. Wordsworth was last in London, soon after the appearance of De Quincey's papers in Tait's Magazine,' he dined with me in Gray's Inn, and made the following statement, which, I am quite sure, I give you correctly: ""The Ancient Mariner" was founded on a strange dream, which a friend of Coleridge had, who fancied he saw a skeleton ship, with figures in it. We had both determined to write some poetry for a monthly magazine, the profits of which were to defray the expenses of a little excursion we were to make together. "The Ancient Mariner" was intended for this periodical, but was too long. I

had very little share in the composition of it, for I soon found that the style of Coleridge and myself would not assimilate. Besides the lines (in the fourth part),

"And thou art long, and lank, and brown,

As is the ribbed sea-sand,"

I wrote the stanza (in the first),

"He holds him with his glittering eye

The Wedding-Guest stood still,

And listens like a three-years' child:
The Mariner hath his will,"

and four or five lines more in different parts of the poem, which I could not now point out. The idea of "shooting an albatross" was mine; for I had been reading Shelvocke's Voyages, which probably Coleridge never saw. I also suggested the reanimation of the dead bodies, to work the ship."" See also "Memoirs of William Wordsworth," by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, vol. i. chap. xi. p. 107—8.

PAGE 266.-THE DAY-DREAM.

This little poem first appeared in the "Morning Post," in 1802, but was doubtless composed in Germany. It seems to have been forgotten by its author, for this was the only occasion on which it saw the light through him. The Editors think that it will plead against parental neglect in the mind of most readers.

END OF VOL. I.

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