PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
[Pp. [xiii]-xvi.]
Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not
unfrequently condemned for their querulous Egotism. But Egotism is to be
condemned then only when it offends against Time and Place, as in an
History or an Epic Poem. To censure it in a Monody or Sonnet is almost
as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write Sonnets 5
or Monodies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps nothing else
could. After the more violent emotions of Sorrow, the mind demands
amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late
sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected
with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is 10
a painful and most often an unavailing effort:
But O! how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of Misery to impart—
From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow,
And raise esteem upon the base of woe! 15
Shaw.
The communicativeness of our Nature leads us to describe our own
sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is exerted;
and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure, which is gradually
associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the painful subject of the 20
description. "True!" (it may be answered) "but how are the Public
interested in your Sorrows or your Description?" We are for ever
attributing personal Unities to imaginary Aggregates.—What is the Public,
but a term for a number of scattered Individuals? Of whom as many
will be interested in these sorrows, as have experienced the same or 25
similar.
"Holy be the lay,
Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way."
If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm, that
the most interesting passages in our most interesting Poems are those, in 30
which the Author developes his own feelings. The sweet voice of Cona[1144:1]
never sounds so sweetly as when it speaks of itself; and I should almost
suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read the opening of the
third book of the Paradise Lost without peculiar emotion. By a law of
our Nature, he, who labours under a strong feeling, is impelled to seek for 35
sympathy; but a Poet's feelings are all strong. Quicquid amet valde amat.
Akenside therefore speaks with philosophical accuracy, when he classes
Love and Poetry, as producing the same effects:
"Love and the wish of Poets when their tongue
Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms 40
Their own."—Pleasures Of Imagination.
There is one species of Egotism which is truly disgusting; not that
which leads us to communicate our feelings to others, but that which
would reduce the feelings of others to an identity with our own. The
Atheist, who exclaims, "pshaw!" when he glances his eye on the praises 45
of Deity, is an Egotist: an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of
Love-verses is an Egotist: and the sleek Favorites of Fortune are
Egotists, when they condemn all "melancholy, discontented" verses.
Surely, it would be candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases
ourselves but to consider whether or no there may not be others to whom 50
it is well-calculated to give an innocent pleasure.
I shall only add that each of my readers will, I hope, remember that
these Poems on various subjects, which he reads at one time and under
the influence of one set of feelings, were written at different times and
prompted by very different feelings; and therefore that the supposed 55
inferiority of one Poem to another may sometimes be owing to the temper
of mind, in which he happens to peruse it.
[Pp. [xvii]-xx.]
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I return my acknowledgments to the different Reviewers for the
assistance, which they have afforded me, in detecting my poetic deficiencies.
I have endeavoured to avail myself of their remarks: one third of
the former Volume I have omitted, and the imperfections of the republished
part must be considered as errors of taste, not faults of carelessness. My 5
poems have been rightly charged with a profusion of double-epithets, and
a general turgidness. I have pruned the double-epithets with no sparing
hand; and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of
thought and diction. This latter fault however had insinuated itself
into my Religious Musings with such intricacy of union, that sometimes 10
I have omitted to disentangle the weed from the fear of snapping the
flower. A third and heavier accusation has been brought against me, that
of obscurity; but not, I think, with equal justice. An Author is obscure
when his conceptions are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect,
or unappropriate, or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, 15
like the Bard of Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstract
truths, like Collins's Ode on the poetical character, claims not to be
popular—but should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the
Reader. But this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is
warm and rapid, must expect from his contemporaries. Milton did not 20
escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins.
We now hear no more of it; not that their poems are better understood
at present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is
established; and a critic would accuse himself of frigidity or inattention,
who should profess not to understand them. But a living writer is yet 25
sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his
feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider him as lost beneath,
than as soaring above, us. If any man expect from my poems the same
easiness of style which he admires in a drinking-song, for him I have not
written. Intelligibilia, non intellectum adfero. 30
I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and I consider
myself as having been amply repayed without either. Poetry has been to
me its own[1146:1] "exceeding great reward": it has soothed my afflictions: it
has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude;
and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the Good and the 35
Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.
There were inserted in my former Edition, a few Sonnets of my Friend
and old School-fellow, Charles Lamb. He has now communicated to me
a complete Collection of all his Poems; quae qui non prorsus amet, illum
omnes et Virtutes et Veneres odere. My friend Charles Lloyd has 40
likewise joined me; and has contributed every poem of his, which he
deemed worthy of preservation. With respect to my own share of the
Volume, I have omitted a third of the former Edition, and added almost
an equal number. The Poems thus added are marked in the Contents by
Italics. 45
S. T. C.
Stowey,
May, 1797.
MS. Notes attached to proof sheets of the second Edition.
(a) As neither of us three were present to correct the Press, and as my handwriting is not eminently distinguished for neatness or legibility, the Printer has made a few mistakes. The Reader will consult equally his own convenience, and our credit if before he peruses the volume he will scan the Table of Errata and make the desired alterations.
S. T. Coleridge.
Stowey,
May 1797.
(b) Table of Contents. (N.B. of my Poems)—and let it be printed in the same manner as Southey's Table of Contents—take care to mark the new poems of the Edition by Italics.
Dedication.
Preface to the first Edition.
Refer to the Second Edition.
Ode on the departing Year.
Monody on the death of Chatterton, etc., etc.—
[MS. R.]
P. [69].
[Half-title] Sonnets, / Attempted in the Manner / Of The / Rev. W. L. Bowles. / Non ita certandi cupidus, quam propter amorem / Quod te Imitari aveo. / Lucret.
[Pp. 71-74.]
INTRODUCTION TO THE SONNETS
For lines 1-63 vide ante, No. III, The Introduction to the 'Sheet of Sonnets'. Lines 64 to the end are omitted, and the last paragraph runs thus:
The Sonnet has been ever a favourite species of composition with me; but I am conscious that I have not succeeded in it. From a large number I have retained ten only, as seemed not beneath mediocrity. Whatever more is said of them, ponamus lucro.
S. T. Coleridge.
[Note. In a copy of the Edition of 1797, now in the Rowfant Library, S. T. C. comments in a marginal note on the words 'I have never yet been able to discover sense, nature, or poetic fancy in Petrarch's poems,' &c.—'A piece of petulant presumption, of which I should be more ashamed if I did not flatter myself that it stands alone in my writings. The best of the joke is that at the time I wrote it, I did not understand a word of Italian, and could therefore judge of this divine Poet only by bald translations of some half-dozen of his Sonnets.']
[Pp. 243-245.]