[30] “Short pieces,” Mr. Stuart calls them in the Gentleman’s Magazine. But among them was France, an Ode, which was first published in the M. P. in the beginning of 1798, and republished in the same Paper some years afterwards, and must have helped to give it a decent poetical reputation, I think.—S. C.
[31] Nov. 27, 1799.—S. C.
[32] [No. IV of Gentleman’s Magazine.]
[33] [No. VII of Gentleman’s Magazine.]
[34] [For the full text of this letter, see Letters, CLXXXII.]
[35] [In the Essays on his Own Times, 1850.]
[36] [Letter, 4 June 1811.]
[37] “He never could write a thing that was immediately required of him,” says Mr. S., in the Gentleman’s Magazine, of May, 1838. “The thought of compulsion disarmed him. I could name other able literary men in this unfortunate plight.” One of the many grounds of argument against the sole profession of literature.—S. C.
[38] [Sir Archibald Alison, after having eulogized Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Campbell, Southey, and Moore, and indicated their relationship to the French Revolution, says: “But the genius of these men, great and immortal as it was, did not arrive at the bottom of things. They shared in the animation of passing events, and were roused by the storm which shook the world; but they did not reach the secret caves whence the whirlwind issued, nor perceive what spirit had let loose the tempest upon the earth. In the bosom of retirement, in the recesses of solitary thought, the awful source was discovered, and the Aeolus stood forth revealed in the original Antagonist Power of wickedness. The thought of Coleridge, even during the whirl of passing events, discovered their hidden springs, and poured forth in an obscure style, and to an unheeding age, the great moral truths which were then being proclaimed in characters of fire to mankind.”—History of Europe, chap. lxiv.]
[39] [No. XVII of Gentleman’s Magazine.]