Various - "Georgian Poetry 1918 19"

Washington Irving - "The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II)"

Dr. D.M. Brooks - "The Necessity of Atheism"

Horatio Alger, Jr. - "Brave and Bold"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey

J >> Joseph Cottle >> Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey




SIXTH.--The grand Political Views of Christianity--far beyond other
Religions, and even Sects of Philosophy. The Friend of Civil Freedom.
The probable state of Society and Governments, if all men were
Christians.

Tickets to be had of Mr. Cottle, Bookseller.

Sometimes a single Lecture was given. The following is an Advertisement
of one of them.

To-morrow Evening, Tuesday, June 16th, 1795, S. T. Coleridge will
deliver (by particular desire) a Lecture on the Slave Trade, and the
duties that result from its continuance.

To begin at 8 o'clock, at the Assembly Coffee House, on the Quay.
Admittance, One Shilling.

It may be proper to state that all three of my young friends, in that day
of excitement, felt a detestation of the French war then raging, and a
hearty sympathy with the efforts made in France to obtain political
ameliorations. Almost every young and unprejudiced mind participated in
this feeling; and Muir, and Palmer, and Margarot, were regarded as
martyrs in the holy cause of freedom. The successive enormities, however,
perpetrated in France and Switzerland by the French, tended to moderate
their enthusiastic politics, and progressively to produce that effect on
them which extended also to so many of the soberest friends of rational
freedom. Mr. Coleridge's zeal on these questions was by far the most
conspicuous, as will appear by some of his Sonnets, and particularly by
his Poem of "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter;" though written some
considerable time after. When he read this Poem to me, it was with so
much jocularity as to convince me that, without bitterness, it was
designed as a mere joke.

In conformity with my determination to state occurrences, plainly, as
they arose, I must here mention that strange as it may appear in
Pantisocritans, I observed at this time a marked coolness between Mr.
Coleridge and Robert Lovell, so inauspicious in those about to establish
a "Fraternal Colony;" and, in the result, to renovate the whole face of
society! They met without speaking, and consequently appeared as
strangers. I asked Mr. C. what it meant. He replied, "Lovell, who at
first, did all in his power to promote my connexion with Miss Fricker,
now opposes our union." He continued, "I said to him, 'Lovell! you are a
villain!'" "Oh," I replied, "you are quite mistaken. Lovell is an honest
fellow, and is proud in the hope of having you for a brother-in-law. Rely
on it he only wishes you from prudential motives to delay your union." In
a few days I had the happiness of seeing them as sociable as ever.

This is the last time poor Robert Lovell's name will be mentioned in this
work, as living. He went to Salisbury, caught a fever, and, in eagerness
to reach his family, travelled when he ought to have lain by; reached his
home, and died! We attended his funeral, and dropt a tear over his grave!

Mr. Coleridge, though at this time embracing every topic of conversation,
testified a partiality for a few, which might be called stock subjects.
Without noticing his favorite Pantisocracy, (which was an everlasting
theme of the laudatory) he generally contrived, either by direct
amalgamation or digression, to notice in the warmest encomiastic
language, Bishop Berkeley, David Hartley, or Mr. Bowles; whose sonnets he
delighted in reciting. He once told me, that he believed, by his constant
recommendation, he had sold a whole edition of some works; particularly
amongst the fresh-men of Cambridge, to whom, whenever he found access, he
urged the purchase of three works, indispensable to all who wished to
excel in sound reasoning, or a correct taste;--Simpson's Euclid; Hartley
on Man; and Bowles's Poems.

In process of time, however, when reflection had rendered his mind more
mature, he appeared to renounce the fanciful and brain-bewildering system
of Berkeley; whilst he sparingly extolled Hartley; and was almost silent
respecting Mr. Bowles. I noticed a marked change in his commendation of
Mr. B. from the time he paid that man of genius a visit. Whether their
canons of criticisms were different, or that the personal enthusiasm was
not mutual; or whether there was a diversity in political views; whatever
the cause was, an altered feeling toward that gentleman was manifested
after his visit, not so much expressed by words, as by his subdued tone
of applause.

The reflux of the tide had not yet commenced, and Pantisocracy was still
Mr. Coleridge's favourite theme of discourse, and the banks of the
Susquehannah the only refuge for permanent repose. It will excite great
surprise in the reader to understand that Mr. C.'s cooler friends could
not ascertain that he had received any specific information respecting
this notable river. "It was a grand river;" but there were many other
grand and noble rivers in America; (the Land of Rivers!) and the
preference given to the Susquehannah, seemed almost to arise solely from
its imposing name, which, if not classical, was at least poetical; and it
probably by mere accident became the centre of all his pleasurable
associations. Had this same river been called the Miramichi or the
Irrawaddy, it would have been despoiled of half its charms, and have sunk
down into a vulgar stream, the atmosphere of which might have suited well
enough Russian boors, but which would have been pestiferous to men of
letters.

The strong hold which the Susquehannah had taken on Mr. Coleridge's
imagination may be estimated by the following lines, in his Monody on
Chatterton.

"O, Chatterton! that thou wert yet alive;
Sure thou would'st spread the canvass to the gale,
And love with us the tinkling team to drive
O'er peaceful freedom's UNDIVIDED dale;
And we at sober eve would round thee throng,
Hanging enraptured on thy stately song!
And greet with smiles the young-eyed POSEY
All deftly masked, as hoar ANTIQUITY.
Alas, vain phantasies! the fleeting brood
Of woe self-solaced in her dreamy mood!
Yet I will love to follow the sweet dream,
Where Susquehannah pours his untamed stream,
And on some hill, whose forest-frowning side
Waves o'er the murmurs of his calmer tide;
And I will build a cenotaph to thee,
Sweet harper of time-shrouded minstrelsy!
And there soothed sadly by the dirgeful wind,
Muse on the sore ills I had left behind."

In another poem which appeared only in the first edition, a reference is
again made to the American "undivided dell," as follows:

TO W. J. H.

While playing on his flute.

Hush! ye clamorous cares! be mute.
Again, dear Harmonist! again,
Through the hollow of thy flute,
Breathe that passion-warbled strain:

Till memory each form shall bring
The loveliest of her shadowy throng;
And hope that soars on sky-lark whig,
Carol wild her gladdest song!

O skill'd with magic spell to roll
The thrilling tones, that concentrate the soul!
Breathe through thy flute those tender notes again,
While near thee sits the chaste-eyed maiden mild;
And bid her raise the poet's kindred strain
In soft empassioned voice, correctly wild.

"In freedom's UNDIVIDED DELL
Where toil and health, with mellowed love shall dwell,
Far from folly, far from men,
In the rude romantic glen,
Up the cliff, and through the glade,
Wand'ring with the dear-loved maid,
I shall listen to the lay,
And ponder on thee far away."


Mr. Coleridge had written a note to his Monody on Chatterton, in which he
caustically referred to Dean Milles. On this note being shown to me, I
remarked that Captain Blake, whom he occasionally met, was the son-in-law
of Dean Milles. "What," said Mr. Coleridge, "the man with the great
sword?" "The same," I answered. "Then," said Mr. C. with an assumed
gravity, "I will suppress this note to Chatterton; the fellow might have
my head off before I am aware!" To be sure there was something rather
formidable in his huge dragoon's sword, constantly rattling by his side!
This Captain Blake was a member of the Bristol Corporation, and a
pleasant man, but his sword, worn by a short man, appeared
prodigious!--Mr. C. said, "The sight of it was enough to set half a dozen
poets scampering up Parnassus, as though hunted by a wild mastodon."

In examining my old papers I found this identical note in Mr. Coleridge's
hand writing, and which is here given to the reader; suggesting that this
note, like the Sonnet to Lord Stanhope, was written in that portion of
C.'s life, when it must be confessed, he really was hot with the French
Revolution. Thus he begins:

By far the best poem on the subject of Chatterton, is, "Neglected
Genius, or Tributary Stanzas to the memory of the unfortunate
Chatterton." Written by Rushton, a blind sailor.

Walpole writes thus. "All the House of Forgery are relations,
although it be but just to Chatterton's memory to say, that his
poverty never made him claim kindred with the more enriching
branches; yet he who could so ingeniously counterfeit styles, and the
writer believes, hands, might easily have been led to the more facile
imitation of Prose Promissory Notes!" O, ye who honor the name of
man, rejoice that this Walpole is called a Lord! Milles, too, the
editor of Rowley's Poem's, a priest; who (though only a Dean, in
dulness and malignity was most episcopally eminent) foully
calumniated him.--An Owl mangling a poor dead nightingale! Most
injured Bard!

"To him alone in this benighted age
Was that diviner inspiration given
Which glows in Milton's, and in Shakspeare's page,
The pomp and prodigality of heaven!"

Mr. Southey's course of Historical Lectures, comprised the following
subjects, as expressed in his prospectus.

Robert Southey, of Baliol College, Oxford, proposes to read a course
of Historical Lectures in the following order.

1st. Introductory: on the origin and Progress of Society.
2nd. Legislation of Solon and Lycurgus.
3rd. State of Greece, from the Persian War to the Dissolution
of the Achaian League.
4th. Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Roman Empire.
5th. Progress of Christianity.
6th. Manners and Irruptions of the Northern Nations.
Growth of the European States. Feudal System.
7th. State of the Eastern Empire, to the Capture of
Constantinople by the Turks; including the Rise and
Progress of the Mahommedan Religion, and the Crusades.
8th. History of Europe, to the Abdication of the Empire
by Charles the Fifth.
9th. History of Europe, to the Establishment of the Independence
of Holland.
10th. State of Europe, and more particularly of England,
from the Accession of Charles the First, to the Revolution,
in 1688.
11th. Progress of the Northern States. History of Europe
to the American War.
12th. The American War.

Tickets for the whole course, 10s. 6d. to be had of Mr. Cottle,
bookseller, High-Street.

These Lectures of Mr. Southey were numerously attended, and their
composition was greatly admired; exhibiting as they did a succinct view
of the various subjects commented upon, so as to chain the hearers'
attention. They at the same time evinced great self-possession in the
lecturer; a peculiar grace in the delivery; with reasoning so judicious
and acute, as to excite astonishment in the auditory that so young a man
should concentrate so rich a fund of valuable matter in lectures,
comparatively so brief, and which clearly authorized the anticipation of
his future eminence. From this statement it will justly be inferred, that
no public lecturer could have received stronger proofs of approbation
than Mr. S. from a polite and discriminating audience.

Mr. Coleridge had solicited permission of Mr. Southey, to deliver his
fourth lecture, "On the Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Roman Empire,"
as a subject to which he had devoted much attention. The request was
immediately granted, and at the end of the third lecture it was formally
announced to the audience, that the next lecture would be delivered by
Mr. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, of Jesus College, Cambridge.

At the usual hour the room was thronged. The moment of commencement
arrived. No lecturer appeared! Patience was preserved for a quarter,
extending to half an hour!--but still no lecturer! At length it was
communicated to the impatient assemblage, that a circumstance,
exceedingly to be regretted! would prevent Mr. Coleridge from giving his
lecture that evening, as intended. Some few present learned the truth,
but the major part of the company retired not very well pleased, and
under the impression that Mr. C. had either broken his leg, or that some
severe family affliction had occurred. Mr. C's rather habitual absence of
mind, with the little importance he generally attached to engagements,[7]
renders it likely that at this very time he might have been found at No.
48, College-Street; composedly smoking his pipe, and lost in profound
musings on his divine Susquehannah!

Incidents of the most trifling nature must sometimes be narrated; when
they form connecting links with events of more consequence.

Wishing to gratify my two young friends and their ladies elect with a
pleasant excursion, I invited them to accompany me in a visit to the Wye,
including Piercefield and Tintern Abbey; objects new to us all. It so
happened the day we were to set off was that immediately following the
woeful disappointment! but here all was punctuality. It was calculated
that the proposed objects might be accomplished in two days, so as not to
interfere with the Friday evening's lecture, which Mr. Southey had now
wisely determined to deliver himself.

The morning was fine. The party of five all met in high spirits,
anticipating unmingled delight in surveying objects and scenery, scarcely
to be surpassed in the three kingdoms. We proceeded to the Old Passage;
crossed the Severn, and arrived at the Beaufort Arms, Chepstow, time
enough to partake of a good dinner, which one of the company noticed
Homer himself had pronounced to be no bad thing: a sentiment in which we
all concurred, admiring his profound knowledge of human nature! But prior
to our repast, we visited the fine old Castle, so intimately connected
with by-gone days; and as soon as possible we purposed to set off toward
the Abbey, distant about six or seven miles; taking Piercefield in our
way.

Proceeding on my principle of impartial narration, I must here state,
that, after dinner, an unpleasant altercation occurred between--no other
than the two Pantisocritans! When feelings are accumulated in the heart,
the tongue will give them utterance. Mr. Southey, whose regular habits
scarcely rendered it a virtue in him, never to fail in an engagement,
expressed to Mr. Coleridge his deep feelings of regret, that _his_
audience should have been disappointed on the preceding evening;
reminding him that unless he had determined punctually to fulfil his
voluntary engagement he ought not to have entered upon it. Mr. C. thought
the delay of the lecture of little or no consequence. This excited a
remonstrance, which produced a reply. At first I interfered with a few
conciliatory words, which were unavailing; and these two friends, about
to exhibit to the world a glorious example of the effects of concord and
sound principles, with an exemption from all the selfish and unsocial
passions, fell, alas! into the common lot of humanity, and in so doing
must have demonstrated, even to themselves, the rope of sand to which
they had confided their destinies!

In unspeakable concern and surprise I retired to a distant part of the
room, and heard with dismay the contention continued, if not extending;
for now the two young ladies entered into the dispute, (on adverse sides,
as might be supposed) each confirming or repelling the arguments of the
belligerents. A little cessation in the storm afforded me the opportunity
of stepping forward and remarking that, however much the disappointment
was to be regretted, it was an evil not likely again to occur, (Mr. S.
shook his head) and that the wisest way, was to forget the past and to
remember only the pleasant objects before us. In this opinion the ladies
concurred, when placing a hand of one of the dissentients in that of the
other, the hearty salutation went round, and with our accustomed spirits,
we prepared once more for Piercefield and the Abbey.

Being an indifferent walker (from a former dislocation of my ancle,
arising out of a gig accident) I had engaged a horse, while the four
pedestrians set forward, two on each side of my Rosinante. After quitting
the extensive walks of Piercefield, we proceeded toward that part of the
road, where we were to turn off to the right, leading down to Tintern
Abbey. We had been delayed so long at Chepstow, and afterward, by various
enchanting scenes, particularly that from the Wind-cliff, that we were
almost benighted, before we were aware. We recalled all our minute
directions. Every object corresponded. A doubt expressed, at a most
unlucky moment, whether we were to turn to the right, or to the left,
threw ice into some hearts; but at length we all concurred, that it was
to the right, and that this must be the road.

These complicated deliberations, allowed the night rapidly to advance,
but the grand preliminaries being settled, we approached the "road" and
strove to penetrate with our keenest vision into its dark recesses. A
road! this it could not be. It was a gross misnomer! It appeared to our
excited imaginations, a lane, in the tenth scale of consanguinity to a
road; a mere chasm between lofty trees, where the young moon strove in
vain to dart a ray! To go or not to go, that was the question! A new
consultation was determined upon, what proceeding should be adopted in so
painful a dilemma. At length, with an accession of courage springing up
as true courage always does in the moment of extremity, we resolutely
determined to brave all dangers and boldly to enter on the road, lane, or
what it was, where perchance, Cadwallader, or Taliesen, might have
trodden before!

On immerging into the wood, for such it was, extending the whole downward
way to Tintern, we all suddenly found ourselves deprived of sight;
obscurity aggravated almost into pitchy darkness! We could see nothing
distinctly whilst we floundered over stones, embedded as they appeared in
their everlasting sockets, from the days of Noah. The gurgling of the
unseen stream, down in the adjacent gully, (which we perchance might soon
be found, reluctantly to visit!) never sounded so discordant before.
Having some respect for my limbs (with no bone-setter near) I dismounted,
resolving to lead my steed who trembled as though conscious of the
perilous expedition on which he had entered. Mr. Coleridge who had been
more accustomed to rough riding than myself, upon understanding that I
through cowardice had forsaken the saddle, without speaking a word put
his foot in the stirrup and mounting, determined to brave at all hazards,
the dangers of the campaign.

Our General on his charger floundered on before us over channels that the
storms had made, and the upstarting fragments of rocks that seemed
confederated to present an insurmountable barrier to every rash and
roving wight. We were in a forlorn condition! and never before did we so
feelingly sympathize with the poor babes in the wood; trusting, in the
last extremity, (should it occur) a few kind robins with their sylvan
pall, would honour also our obsequies. This kind of calming ulterior hope
might do very well for poets, but it was not quite so consolatory to the
ladies, who with all their admiration of disinterested pity, wished to
keep off the dear tender-hearted robins a little longer.

These desponding thoughts were of short continuance, for whether the moon
had emerged from clouds, or that our sight had become strengthened by
exercise, we rejoiced now in being able to see a little, although it
might be to reveal only sights of woe. Mr. Southey marched on like a
pillar of strength, with a lady pressing on each arm, while the relator
lagged in the rear, without even a pilgrim's staff to sustain his
tottering steps. Our condition might have been more forlorn, had not Mr.
Coleridge from before cheered on his associates in misfortune; and
intrepidity produces intrepidity.

The deepest sorrow often admits of some alleviation, and at present our
source of beguilement was to invent some appropriate name, in designation
of this most[*] horrible channel of communication between man and man.
Various acrimonious epithets were propounded, but they all wanted an
adequate measure of causticity; when Mr. Southey censuring in us our want
of charity, and the rash spirit that loaded with abuse objects which
if beheld in noon-day might be allied even to the picturesque,
proposed that our path-way, whatever it was, should simply be
called--"Bowling-green-lane."

[* Transcriber's note: Corrected from original 'mot'.]

We should have smiled assent, but we had just arrived at a spot that
overshadowed every countenance with ten-fold seriousness! This was no
moment for gratuitous triflings. We had arrived at a spot, where there
was just light enough to descry three roads, in this bosom of the wood,
diverging off in different directions! two of them must be collaterals;
and to fix on the one which was honest, where all had equal claims to bad
pre-eminence, exceeded our divining power. Each awhile ruminated in
silence; reflecting that we were far from the habitations of man, with
darkness only not intense around us! We now shouted aloud, in the faint
hope that some solitary woodman might hear, and come to our relief. The
shrill voices of the ladies, in the stillness of night, formed the
essence of harmony. All was silence! No murmur! No response! The three
lanes lay before us. If we pursued one, it might by the next morning,
conduct us safe back to Chepstow; and if we confided in the other, it
might lead us in due time, half-way toward Ragland Castle! What was to be
done? One in the company now remarked, "Of what service is it to boast a
pioneer, if we do not avail ourselves of his services?" Mr. Coleridge
received the hint, and set off up one of the lanes at his swiftest speed,
namely, a cautious creep; whilst we four stood musing on the wide extent
of human vicissitudes! A few hours before, surrounded by a plethora of
enjoyments, and now desponding and starving in the depth of what appeared
an interminable forest. To augment our trouble, fresh anxieties arose!
From Mr. Coleridge's long absence, we now almost feared whether hard
necessity might not force us to go in search of our way-bewildered or
quagmired companion!

To our great joy, we now faintly heard, in the stillness of night, the
horse's hoofs sliding over the loose stones! The sound drew nearer. Mr.
Coleridge approached and pensively said, that could not be the way, for
it led to an old quarry which the quick sight of his steed discovered
just in time to save both their necks! Mr. C. was next ordered instantly
to explore one of the other two ominous lanes; when like a
well-disciplined orderly man, he set off gallantly on his new commission.
After waiting a time, which in our state of suspense might almost be
called a period, he leisurely returned, significantly saying, that
neither man nor beast could pass that way! rubbing his thorn-smitten
cheek. Now came the use of the syllogism, in its simplest form. "If the
right road must be A, B, or C, and A and B were wrong, then C must be
right." Under this conviction, we marched boldly on, without further
solicitude or exploration,' and at length joyfully reached--Tintern
Abbey!

On arriving at this celebrated place, to which so many travellers resort,
(thanks now to his Grace of Beaufort for a better road than ours) the
first inquiry that hunger taught us to make of a countryman, was for the
hotel. "Hotel! Hotel! Sir? Oh, the sign of the Tobacco Pipe! There it is
over the way." Rusticity and comfort often go together. We entered the
inn, homely as it was, quite certain that any transition must be
paradisaical, compared with our late hopeless condition.

After supper, I proposed to avail ourselves of the darkness, and to
inspect the Abbey by torch-light. This being acceded to, we all set off
to view the beautiful but mouldering edifice, where, by an artificial
light, the ruins might present a new aspect, and, in dim grandeur, assist
the labouring imagination. At the instant the huge doors unfolded, the
horned moon appeared between the opening clouds, and shining through the
grand window in the distance. It was a delectable moment; not a little
augmented by the unexpected green sward that covered the whole of the
floor, and the long-forgotten tombs beneath; whilst the gigantic ivies,
in their rivalry, almost concealed the projecting and dark turrets and
eminences, reflecting back the lustre of the torch below. In this season,
which ought to have been consecrated to reflection and silence, the daws,
nestling in their abodes of desolation, aroused from their repose by the
unusual glare, sailed over our heads in sable multitudes that added depth
to the darkness of the sky, while, in their hoarsest maledictions, they
seemed to warn off the intruders on "their ancient solitary reign."

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