Then Miss Fenwick's notes show
that Coleridge is certainly one of the two personages of the poem, and
there are points in the description of the second man which suit him
very well.
that Coleridge is certainly one of the two personages of the poem, and
there are points in the description of the second man which suit him
very well.
William Wordsworth
We were unseen by one another.
"
Again, April 23rd,
"Coleridge and I pushed on before. We left William sitting on the
stones, feasting with silence. "
And this recalls the first verse of 'Expostulation and Reply', written
at Alfoxden in 1798;
'Why, William, on that old grey stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away? '
The retreat where "apple-trees in blossom made a bower," and where he so
often "slept himself away," was evidently the same as that described in
the poem 'The Green Linnet':
'Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow white blossoms on my head. '
On the other hand, the "low-hung lip" and "profound" forehead of the
other, the "noticeable Man with large grey eyes," mark him out as S. T.
C. ; "the rapt One, of the god-like forehead," described in the
'Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg'. The description
"Noisy he was, and gamesome as a boy," is verified by what the poet and
his wife said to Mr. Justice Coleridge in 1836. In addition, Mr.
Hutchinson of Kimbolton tells me he "often heard his father say that
Coleridge was uproarious in his mirth. "
Matthew Arnold wrote me an interesting letter some years ago about these
stanzas, from which I make the following extract:
"When one looks uneasily at a poem it is easy to fidget oneself
further, and neither the Wordsworth nor the Coleridge of our common
notions seem to be exactly hit off in the 'Stanzas'; still, I believe
that the first described is Wordsworth and that the second described
is Coleridge. I have myself heard Wordsworth speak of his prolonged
exhausting wanderings among the hills.
Then Miss Fenwick's notes show
that Coleridge is certainly one of the two personages of the poem, and
there are points in the description of the second man which suit him
very well. The 'profound forehead' is a touch akin to the 'god-like
forehead' in the mention of Coleridge in a later poem.
"I have a sort of recollection of having heard something about the
'inventions rare,' and Coleridge is certain to have dabbled, at one
time or other, in natural philosophy. "
In 1796 Coleridge wrote to his friend Cottle from Nether Stowey:
" . . . I should not think of devoting less than 20 years to an Epic
Poem: ten to collect materials and warm my mind with universal
science. I would be a tolerable Mathematician, I would thoroughly know
Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Optics, and Astronomy, Botany, Metallurgy,
Fossilism, Chemistry, Geology, Anatomy, Medicine--then the 'mind of
man'--then the 'minds of men'--in all Travels, Voyages, and Histories.
So I would spend ten years--the next five to the composition of the
poem--and the last five to the correction of it. So would I write,
haply not unhearing of the divine and rightly whispering Voice," etc.
Mr. T. Hutchinson (Dublin) writes in 'The Athenaeum', Dec. 15, 1894:
"I take it for granted these lines were written, not only on the
fly-leaf of Wordsworth's copy of the 'Castle of Indolence', but also
by way of Supplement to that poem; i. e. as an 'addendum' to the
descriptive list of the denizens of the Castle given in stanzas
LVII-LXIX of Canto I.
Again, April 23rd,
"Coleridge and I pushed on before. We left William sitting on the
stones, feasting with silence. "
And this recalls the first verse of 'Expostulation and Reply', written
at Alfoxden in 1798;
'Why, William, on that old grey stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away? '
The retreat where "apple-trees in blossom made a bower," and where he so
often "slept himself away," was evidently the same as that described in
the poem 'The Green Linnet':
'Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow white blossoms on my head. '
On the other hand, the "low-hung lip" and "profound" forehead of the
other, the "noticeable Man with large grey eyes," mark him out as S. T.
C. ; "the rapt One, of the god-like forehead," described in the
'Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg'. The description
"Noisy he was, and gamesome as a boy," is verified by what the poet and
his wife said to Mr. Justice Coleridge in 1836. In addition, Mr.
Hutchinson of Kimbolton tells me he "often heard his father say that
Coleridge was uproarious in his mirth. "
Matthew Arnold wrote me an interesting letter some years ago about these
stanzas, from which I make the following extract:
"When one looks uneasily at a poem it is easy to fidget oneself
further, and neither the Wordsworth nor the Coleridge of our common
notions seem to be exactly hit off in the 'Stanzas'; still, I believe
that the first described is Wordsworth and that the second described
is Coleridge. I have myself heard Wordsworth speak of his prolonged
exhausting wanderings among the hills.
Then Miss Fenwick's notes show
that Coleridge is certainly one of the two personages of the poem, and
there are points in the description of the second man which suit him
very well. The 'profound forehead' is a touch akin to the 'god-like
forehead' in the mention of Coleridge in a later poem.
"I have a sort of recollection of having heard something about the
'inventions rare,' and Coleridge is certain to have dabbled, at one
time or other, in natural philosophy. "
In 1796 Coleridge wrote to his friend Cottle from Nether Stowey:
" . . . I should not think of devoting less than 20 years to an Epic
Poem: ten to collect materials and warm my mind with universal
science. I would be a tolerable Mathematician, I would thoroughly know
Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Optics, and Astronomy, Botany, Metallurgy,
Fossilism, Chemistry, Geology, Anatomy, Medicine--then the 'mind of
man'--then the 'minds of men'--in all Travels, Voyages, and Histories.
So I would spend ten years--the next five to the composition of the
poem--and the last five to the correction of it. So would I write,
haply not unhearing of the divine and rightly whispering Voice," etc.
Mr. T. Hutchinson (Dublin) writes in 'The Athenaeum', Dec. 15, 1894:
"I take it for granted these lines were written, not only on the
fly-leaf of Wordsworth's copy of the 'Castle of Indolence', but also
by way of Supplement to that poem; i. e. as an 'addendum' to the
descriptive list of the denizens of the Castle given in stanzas
LVII-LXIX of Canto I.
