| Pp. 311–35, | vol. i, pp. 1–29 to “5th of February 1791” | of this work. |
| 335–38, | ” 30–34 to “destined to turn” | of this work. |
| 338–44, | ” 35–41 to “pantisocratical basis” | of this work. |
| 344–45, | ” 44–46 to “22nd of September 1794” | of this work. |
| 345–48, | ” 47–51 to “S. T. Coleridge” | of this work. |
| 348–50, | ” 53–56 to “expected” | ” |
| 350–55, | ” 56–62 to “S. T. C.” | ” |
| 355–60, | ” 63–68 to “S. T. Coleridge” | ” |
| 360–62, | ” 71–74 to “S.T. Coleridge” | ” |
| 362–3, | ” 76–76 to “never arrived” | ” |
| 363–77, | ” 77–92 to “latest convictions” | ” |
| 377–86, | ” 96–105 to “S. C.” | ” |
| 386–90, | ” 114–119 to “plaintive warbling” | ” |
| 391, | ” 121 to “were written” | ” |
| 391–411, | vol. ii, 76–99 to “name behind” | ” |
| 411–21, | ” 104–115 to “candid” | ” |
| 422–25, | ” 280–284 to “Demosius and Mystes” | of this work. |
| 426–32, | ” 305–312 to “Fall of Rora” | of this work. |
Cottle’s Text.—Cottle has been severely blamed for tampering with the text of the letters of Coleridge. The most glaring changes occur in Letter 32, in which Cottle inserts the names of Lamb, Wordsworth and Dr. Parr, and in Letter 123, in which he alters his own name for that of Biggs, his partner. His changes consist mostly of omissions. Letters 99, 114, 117, 122, which are given in full in T. Litchfield’s Tom Wedgwood the First Photographer, are the principal sufferers from Cottle’s treatment. It cannot be said that these omissions amount to a serious charge against Cottle. They were made to avoid bringing in the names of people still alive or whose near relations might object to their names figuring in a publication, and also to avoid obtruding Coleridge’s complaints about his ill-health and his own treatment into notice. His tampering with the letters of Southey, in which he makes Southey say what he never wrote, is not, of course, defensible (see Dykes Campbell’s Life of Coleridge, p. 204 note). Cottle’s longest omission is in Letter 99, to Wedgwood, where Coleridge quotes what Lamb had written to him about Cottle’s own poem Alfred (see Ainger’s Letters of Lamb, i, 138). The omission of such a passage was only to be expected; Cottle was not going to act as his own hangman. Henry Nelson Coleridge, Thomas Noon Talfourd, and even Canon Ainger, and indeed nearly all editors of letters published during the first half of the nineteenth century, took the liberty to discriminate what should be communicated to the public in volumes such as Cottle’s.
Vol. I, p. 50.—The Summer of 1795 should be “the Autumn of 1794;” see Thomas Poole and his Friends, I, 95.
Vol. I, p. 62.—Letter 24 is placed by Cottle in the spring of 1796, but being dated from Stowey, it is possible that this letter may belong to 1797. The revision of the Religious Musings mentioned in the letter would suit 1797 as well as 1796, for the text of that poem differed very widely from that of the First Edition.
Vol. I, p. 97.—The numbered poems in Letter 42, are:
Vol. I, p. 292, Letter 117. Books from Wordsworth’s Library.—“Perhaps one of the most interesting books in the whole selection is Sir T. Browne’s Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, the folio edition of 1658, which contains a long letter to Sara Hutchinson, relative principally to many curious passages in the work, also several MS. marginal notes and corrections, all in the handwriting of S. T. Coleridge, and autographs of Charles Lamb and Mary Wordsworth. The copy of Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, 1669, contains copious marginal and other MS. annotations by Coleridge, and has this inscription inside the cover, ‘Sara Hutchinson from S. T. C.’”—Athenæum, No. 3579, May 30, 1896.
Vol. II, p. 262, Contemplative melancholy.—The phrase is a variation of “speculative gloom,” which Coleridge used in his original prospectus of the Friend, objected to by Francis Jeffrey (see Letters, ii, 536, note), and afterwards changed into “Dejection of Mind” in the printed Prospectus (see Letter 143, vol. ii, p. 51). The phrase “speculative gloom” was derived from Warton’s Ode for the New Year 1786 (which Coleridge took as his model for his own Ode to the Departing Year):
“Hence then, each vain complaint, away,
Each captious doubt, and cautious fear!