[206] The Coleridges were absent from Stowey for about a month. For the first fortnight they were guests of George Coleridge at Ottery. The latter part of the time was spent with the Southeys in their lodgings at Exeter. It was during this second visit that Coleridge accompanied Southey on a walking tour through part of Dartmoor and as far as Dartmouth.
[207] Coleridge took but few notes during this tour. In 1803 he retranscribed his fragmentary jottings and regrets that he possessed no more, “though we were at the interesting Bovey waterfall [Becky Fall], through that wild dell of ashes which leads to Ashburton, most like the approach to upper Matterdale.” “I have,” he adds, “at this moment very distinct visual impressions of the tour, namely of Torbay, the village of Paignton with the Castle.” Southey was disappointed in South Devon, which he contrasts unfavourably with the North of Somersetshire, but for “the dell of ashes” he has a word of praise. Selections from Letters of Robert Southey, i. 84.
[208] Suwarrow, at the head of the Austro-Russian troops, defeated the French under Joubert at Novi near Alessandria, in North Italy, August 15, 1799.
[209] A temporary residence of Josiah Wedgwood, who had taken it on lease in order to be near his newly purchased property at Combe Florey, in Somersetshire. Meteyard’s Group of Englishmen, 1871, p. 107.
[210] Southey’s brother, a midshipman on board the Sylph gun-brig. A report had reached England that the Sylph had been captured and brought to Ferrol. Southey’s Life and Correspondence, ii. 30.
[211] Marshal Massena defeated the Russians under Prince Korsikov at Zurich, September 25, 1799.
[212] William Jackson, organist of Exeter Cathedral, 1730-1803, a musical composer and artist. He published, among other works, The Four Ages with Essays, 1798. See letter of Southey to S. T. Coleridge, October 3, 1799, Southey’s Life and Correspondence, ii. 26.
[213] John Codrington Warwick Bampfylde, second son of Richard Bampfylde, of Poltimore, was the author of Sixteen Sonnets, published in 1779. In the letter of October 3 (see above) Southey gives an interesting account of his eccentric habits and melancholy history. In a prefatory note to four of Bampfylde’s sonnets, included by Southey in his Specimens of the Later English Poets, he explains how he came to possess the copies of some hitherto unpublished poems.
“Jackson of Exeter, a man whose various talents made all who knew him remember him with regret, designed to republish the little collection of Bampfylde’s Sonnets, with what few of his pieces were still unedited.
“Those poems which are here first printed were transcribed from the originals in his possession.”