LETTER 75. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "MORNING POST", WITH THE "RAVEN", A POEM.
10 March, 1798.
Sir,
I am not absolutely certain that the following poem was written by
Edmund Spenser, and found by an angler buried in a fishing-box:
Under the foot of Mole, that Mountain hoar,
Mid the green alders, by the Mulla's shore;
but a learned Antiquarian of my acquaintance has given it as his opinion that it resembles Spenser's minor poems as nearly as "Vortigern" and "Rowena" the Tragedies of William Shakespeare. This poem must be read in recitative, in the same manner as the "AEgloga Secunda" of the "Shepherd's Calendar".
CUDDY.
"The Latin motto," Cottle says, "prefixed to the second edition of Mr. C.'s poems, puzzled everybody to know from what author it was derived. One and another inquired of me, to no purpose, and expressed a wish that Mr. C. had been clearer in his citation, as 'no one could understand it.' On my naming this to Mr. Coleridge, he laughed heartily, and said, "It was all a hoax. Not meeting," said he, "with a suitable motto, I invented one, and with references purposely obscure, as will be explained in the next letter."