SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
(1772-1834)
70. Christabel: | Kubla Khan, | A Vision; | The Pains Of Sleep. | By | S. T. Coleridge, Esq. | London: | Printed for John Murray, Albemarle-Street, | By William Bulmer And Co. Cleveland-Row, | St. James's. | 1816.
Coleridge, writing to his wife, April 4, 1803, says: "To-day I dine again with Sotheby. He had informed me that ten gentlemen who have met me at his house desired him to solicit me to finish the 'Christabel,' and to permit them to publish it for me; and they engaged that it should be in paper, printing, and decorations the most magnificent thing that had hitherto appeared. Of course I declined it. The lovely lady shan't come to that pass! Many times rather would I have it printed at Soulby's on the true ballad paper. However, it was civil, and Sotheby is very civil to me."
It was not until May 8, 1816, that the still unfinished poem of Christabel was offered to Murray, who, upon Byron's recommendation, so Lamb tells us, agreed to take it, paying seventy guineas for it, "until the other poems shall be completed, when the copyright shall revert to the author." Christabel is in two parts. The "three parts yet to come," and which Coleridge in the Preface said he hoped would be finished in the present year, never appeared. Kubla Khan; Or A Vision In A Dream is prefaced by a short introduction. The seventy guineas Coleridge turned over to a needy friend. Murray also gave "£20 for permission to publish the other fragment of a poem, Kubla Khan, but which the author should not be restricted from publishing in any other way that he pleased."
We may not pass over this book, modest as it is in appearance, without giving a quotation from the voluble Dibdin on the merits of its printer and his press, "The Shakespeare Press." "Trivial as the theme may appear," says he, "there are some very reasonable folks who would prefer an account of this eminent press to the 'History of the Seven Years War:' and I frankly own myself to be of that number. Nor is it—with due deference be it said to William Bulmer & Co.—from the least admiration of the exterior or interior of this printing-office that I take up my pen in behalf of it; but because it has effectually contributed to the promotion of belles-lettres, and national improvement in the matter of puncheon and matrix."
Dibdin might have said more, without exaggeration; some of the chief glories of English typography came from the hands of William Bulmer & Co., works like the edition of Shakespeare of Alderman Boydell; The Poetical Works of John Milton, in three volumes, with engravings after designs by R. Westall; Goldsmith's Traveller and Deserted Village, with engravings upon wood by Thomas Bewick; Somerville's Chase, with engravings by John and Thomas Bewick; Forster's edition of The Arabian Nights' Entertainments in five volumes, with illustrations after Smirke's designs; and last, but not least, Dibdin's own Bibliotheca Spenceriana. Specimens of printing such as these justify Bulmer's claim that great strides had been taken toward raising the art from the depths to which it had fallen.
One is tempted to wonder if the ten gentlemen friends of Sotheby, smitten by the mania for this new-found mode of expression in book-making, could have had it in mind to issue Christabel with designs by Bewick, or Westall, or Smirke.
Octavo.