Since the above note was written, Mr. W. Aldis Wright has printed in the Academy, February 24, 1894, an extract from an unpublished letter from Coleridge to the Rev. Mr. Edwards of Birmingham, recently found in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is dated Bristol, “12 March, 1795” (read “1796”), and runs as follows:—
“Since I last wrote you, I have been tottering on the verge of madness—my mind overbalanced on the e contra side of happiness—the blunders of my associate [in the editing of the Watchman, G. Burnett], etc., etc., abroad, and, at home, Mrs. Coleridge dangerously ill.... Such has been my situation for the last fortnight—I have been obliged to take laudanum almost every night.”
[124] The news of the evacuation of Corsica by the British troops, which took place on October 21, 1796, must have reached Coleridge a few days before the date of this letter. Corsica was ceded to the British, June 18, 1794. A declaration of war on the part of Spain (August 19, 1796) and a threatened invasion of Ireland compelled the home government to withdraw their troops from Corsica. In a footnote to chapter xxv. of his Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Sir Walter Scott quotes from Napoleon’s memoirs compiled at St. Helena the “odd observation” that “the crown of Corsica must, on the temporary annexation of the island to Great Britain, have been surprised at finding itself appertaining to the successor of Fingal.” Sir Walter’s patriotism constrained him to add the following comment: “Not more, we should think, than the diadem of France and the iron crown of Lombardy marvelled at meeting on the brow of a Corsican soldier of fortune.”
In the Biographia Literaria, 1847, ii. 380, the word is misprinted Corrica, but there is no doubt as to the reading of the MS. letter, or to the allusion to contemporary history.
[125] It was to this lady that the lines “On the Christening of a Friend’s Child” were addressed. Poetical Works, p. 83.
[126] See Letter LXVIII., p. 206, note.
[127] The preface to the quarto edition of Southey’s Joan of Arc is dated Bristol, November, 1795, but the volume did not appear till the following spring. Coleridge’s contribution to Book II. was omitted from the second (1797) and subsequent editions. It was afterwards republished, with additions, in Sibylline Leaves (1817) as “The Destiny of Nations.”
[128] The lines “On a late Connubial Rupture” were printed in the Monthly Magazine for September, 1796. The well-known poem beginning “Low was our pretty Cot” appeared in the following number. It was headed, “Reflections on entering into active Life. A Poem which affects not to be Poetry.”
[129] Compare the following lines from an early transcript of “Happiness” now in my possession:—
“Ah! doubly blest if Love supply
Lustre to the now heavy eye,
And with unwonted spirit grace
That fat vacuity of face.”