PAGE a communication from my obliging correspondent, the Rev. Thomas Ashe, acquainting me that the sonnet had first seen the light in The Bijou for 1828; and Mr. Hall Caine has since duly noted the fact in his Sonnets of Three Centuries (1882). It still remains to be pointed out, however, that an examination of The Bijou at once establishes the identity of the sonnet therein printed with the one referred to in the correspondence above mentioned, and satisfactorily, as I think, explains how Coleridge had unwittingly incurred his friend's displeasure. Several of Coleridge's most beautiful and characteristic pieces appear in the annual named; and as in the Preface it is recorded that 'Mr. Coleridge, in the most liberal manner, permitted the Editor to select what he pleased from all his unpublished MSS.', and the sonnet itself bears the significant superscription, 'Dedicated to S. T. Coleridge, Esq., by his sincere friend, Joseph Blanco White', the presumption is that Coleridge, in handing over these papers, had, with characteristic carelessness, included the sonnet with them, which thus came to be given to the public without either his own or its author's cognizance. 189 deckt: here conjecturally printed for 'drest.' 202 swell and fall: so Keats's MS.-preferably to the 'fall and swell' of the printed copy. L. 14. Aliter: 211 'Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death.' "Dated "Spring Cottage, Feb. 12, 1841". This charming and highly characteristic sonnet, now first printed, I draw forth from the obscurity of a private MS. album (containing many other most interesting autographs) which, at the time the sonnet was written into it, belonged to Charles Swain the poet. It is now the property of Dr. Coveney of Prestwich, to whose courtesy I PAGE am indebted for the privilege of adding this grain of Hartley Coleridge's gold dust to my Treasury. The sonnet, verbatim as given in the text, is written, dated, and signed in the undoubted autograph of Hartley Cole. ridge. I presume the youngest reader would resent any further information than the allusion itself supplies (1. 12) touching the "birds" that wrought the good and pious deed Of which we in the Ballad read." Curiously enough, the two ballads of The Children in the Wood and Barbara Allen's Cruelty stand in close proximity in Percy (Reliques, ed. Wheatley, 1877, vol. iii., Book the Second, pp. 128-169).'-A Treasury of English Sonnets, p. 428. 224 closing o'er: the printed copy reads, disastrously, 'close around,' which Mr. Hall Caine retains, and, not less disastrously, alters round in 1. 14 to 'o'er.' It is believed that the true lection is now here for the first time restored. 231-238 All now taken from the Collected Sonnets, Old and New, 1880. 244 From the Poems, 1844, as finally amended, 1856. 256 The pseudonymous work by Ellison of which I was unable to give the title in my former work (p. 413, foot-note) is, Stones from the Quarry; or, Moods of Mind. By Henry Browne [1874]. 266-270 From The Legend of Jubal and other Poems, 1874. 282 'In April [1880] he made a drawing illustrative of the Sonnet on the Sonnet, a highly finished design in ink, and the same that forms the frontispiece to this volume. This he painted in Indian ink, as a frontispiece to a copy of Mr. David Main's Treasury of English Sonnets, which he presented to his mother on her birthday, in the floral design along the lower right corner being the inscription, U PAGE "D. G. Rossetti, pro matre fecit, Apr: 27, 1880"; a book that he valued highly himself, and which was thus made more valuable still. The Sonnet on the Sonnet, as it is given in this design, differs only from the printed copy in the use of the word "intricate" in place of "arduous" in the fifth line [and "prevail" for "may rule” in the seventh]; and only a portion of the sonnet is illustrated. The figure is that of the animating spirit, or soul, as signified by the word "anima" written in the upper corner; the harp is the Sonnet, with fourteen strings for the fourteen lines of that form of composition; and the spreading branches of the tree represent the all-embrac ing aspects of life which the Sonnet can apprehend and embody. The further end of the branches terminates in a split coin, on one side of which is revealed the soul in its emblem the butterfly, and on the other the intertwined letters Alpha and Omega. The design is highly interesting, not only because of its correct drawing and novel style, but also from the fact that it is a pictorial tribute towards what Rossetti always considered his special vehicle in verse.'-Dante Gabriel Rossetti: a Record and a Study. By William Sharp, 1882, p. 259. 282-288 From the series entitled 'The House of Life,' in its completed state: Ballads and Sonnets, 1881. 294 echoing the No More with Nevermore: doubtless in allusion to Shelley's despairing cry,— 'Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight: Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar No more--O never more!' 289-294 From the same volume, except those on pages 289 and 292, which are from the Poems, 1870. 299 From the posthumous Songs of a Worker, 1881. |