[244] Nothing is known of these lines beyond the fact that in 1816 Coleridge printed them as “Conclusion to Part II.” of “Christabel.” It is possible that they were intended to form part of a distinct poem in the metre of “Christabel,” or, it may be, they are the sole survival of an attempted third part of the ballad itself. It is plain, however, that the picture is from the life, that “the little child, the limber elf,” is the four-year-old Hartley, hardly as yet “fitting to unutterable thought, The breeze-like motion, and the self-born carol.”
[245] George Hutchinson, the fourth son of John Hutchinson of Penrith, was at this time in occupation of land at Bishop’s Middleham, the original home of the family. He migrated into Radnorshire in 1815, being then about the age of thirty-seven; but between that date and his leaving Bishop’s Middleham he had resided for some time in Lincolnshire, at Scrivelsby, where he was engaged probably as agent on the estate of the “Champion.” His first residence after migration was at New Radnor, where he married Margaret Roberts of Curnellan, but he subsequently removed into Herefordshire, where he resided in many places, latterly at Kingston. He died at his son’s house, The Vinery, Hereford, in 1866. It would seem from a letter dated July 25, 1801 (Letter CXX.), that at this time Sarah Hutchinson kept house for her brother George, and that Mary (Mrs. Wordsworth) and Joanna Hutchinson lived with their elder brother Tom at Gallow Hill, in the parish of Brompton, near Scarborough. The register of Brompton Church records the marriage of William Wordsworth and Mary Hutchinson, on October 4, 1802; but in the notices of marriages in the Gentleman’s Magazine, of October, 1802, the latter is described as “Miss Mary Hutchinson of Wykeham,” an adjoining parish.
[From information kindly supplied to me by Mr. John Hutchinson, the keeper of the Library of the Middle Temple.]
[246] The historian William Roscoe (afterwards M. P. for Liverpool), and the physician James Currie, the editor and biographer of Burns, were at this time settled at Liverpool and on terms of intimacy with Dr. Peter Crompton of Eaton Hall.
[247] The Bristol merchant who lent the manor-house of Racedown to Wordsworth in 1795.
[248] In the well-known lines “On revisiting the Sea-shore,” allusion is made to this “mild physician,” who vainly dissuaded him from bathing in the open sea. Sea-bathing was at all times an irresistible pleasure to Coleridge, and he continued the practice, greatly to his benefit, down to a late period of his life and long after he had become a confirmed invalid. Poetical Works, p. 159.
[249] Francis Wrangham, whom Coleridge once described as “admirer of me and a pitier of my political principles” (Letter to Cottle [April], 1796), was his senior by a few years. On failing to obtain, it is said on account of his advanced political views, a fellowship at Trinity Hall, he started taking pupils at Cobham in Surrey in partnership with Basil Montagu. The scheme was of short duration, for Montagu deserted tuition for the bar, and Wrangham, early in life, was preferred to the benefices of Hemmanby and Folkton, in the neighborhood of Scarborough. He was afterwards appointed to a Canonry of York, to the Archdeaconry of Cleveland, and finally to a prebendal stall at Chester. He published a volume of Poems (London, 1795), in which are included Coleridge’s Translation of the “Hendecasyllabli ad Bruntonam e Grantâ exituram,” and some “Verses to Miss Brunton with the preceding Translation.” He died in 1842. Poetical Works, p. 30. See, too, Editor’s Note, p. 569; Reminiscences of Cambridge, by Henry Gunning, London, 1855, ii. 12 seq.
[250] “I took a first floor for him in King Street, Covent Garden, at my tailor’s, Howell’s, whose wife is a cheerful housewife of middle age, who I knew would nurse Coleridge as kindly as if he were her son.” D. Stuart, Gent. Mag., May, 1838. See, too, Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 7.
[251] Captain Luff, for many years a resident at Patterdale, near Ulleswater, was held in esteem for the energy with which he procured the enrolment of large companies of volunteers. Wordsworth and Coleridge were frequent visitors at his house, For his account of the death of Charles Gough, on Helvellyn, and the fidelity of the famous spaniel, see Coleorton Letters, i. 97. Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 131.
[252] Ciceronis Epist. ad Fam. iv. 10.