[47] Compare his letter to Poole, dated December 4, 1808. “Begin to count my life, as a friend of yours, from 1st January, 1809;” and a letter to Davy, of December, 1808, in which he speaks of a change for the better in health and habits. Thomas Poole and his Friends, ii. 227; Fragmentary Remains of Sir H. Davy, p. 101.
[48] The Convention of Cintra was signed August 30, 1808. Wordsworth’s Essays were begun in the following November. “For the sake of immediate and general circulation I determined (when I had made a considerable progress in the manuscript) to print it in different portions in one of the daily newspapers. Accordingly two portions of it were printed, in the months of December and January, in the Courier. An accidental loss of several sheets of the manuscript delayed the continuance of the publication in that manner till the close of the Christmas holidays; and this plan of publication was given up.” Advertisement to Wordsworth’s pamphlet on the Convention of Cintra, May 20, 1809: Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 385.
[49] “In the place of some just eulogiums due to Mr. Pitt was substituted some abuse and detraction.” Allsop’s Letters, 1836, ii. 112.
[50] A preliminary prospectus of The Friend was printed at Kendal and submitted to Jeffrey and a few others. A copy of this “first edition” is in my possession, and it is interesting to notice that Coleridge has directed his amanuensis, Miss Hutchinson, to amend certain offending phrases in accordance with Jeffrey’s suggestions. “Speculative gloom” and “year-long absences” he gives up, but, as the postscript intimates, “moral impulses” he has the hardihood to retain. See The Friend’s Quarterly Examiner for July, 1893, art. “S. T. Coleridge on Quaker Principles;” and Athenæum for September 16, 1893, art. “Coleridge on Quaker Principles.”
[51] Thomas Wilkinson, of Yanwath, near Penrith, was a member of the Society of Friends. He owned and tilled a small estate on the banks of the Emont, which he laid out and ornamented “after the manner of Shenstone at his Leasowes.” As a friend and neighbour of the Clarksons and of Lord Lonsdale he was well known to Wordsworth, who, greatly daring, wrote in his honour his lines “To the Spade of a Friend (an Agriculturist).”
Alas! for the poor Prospectus! “Speculative gloom” and “year-long absence” had been sacrificed to Jeffrey, and now “Architecture, Dress, Dancing, Gardening, Music, Poetry, and Painting” were erased in obedience to Wilkinson. Most of these articles, however, “Architecture, Dress,” etc., reappeared in a second edition of the Prospectus, attached to the second number of The Friend, but Dancing, “Greek statuesque dancing,” on which Coleridge might have discoursed at some length, was gone forever. Wordsworth’s Works, p. 211 (Fenwick Note); The Friend’s Quarterly Examiner, July, 1893; Records of a Quaker Family, by Anne Ogden Boyce, London, 1889, pp. 30, 31, 55.
[52] The original draft of the prospectus of The Friend, which was issued in the late autumn of 1808, was printed at Kendal by W. Pennington. Certain alterations were suggested by Jeffrey and others (Southey in a letter to Rickman dated January 18, 1809, complains that Coleridge had “carried a prospectus wet from the pen to the publisher, without consulting anybody”), and a fresh batch of prospectuses was printed in London. A third variant attached to the first number of the weekly issue, June 1, 1809, was printed by Brown, a bookseller and stationer at Penrith, who, on Mr. Pennington’s refusal, undertook to print and publish The Friend. Some curious letters which passed between Coleridge and his printer, together with the MS. of The Friend, in the handwriting of Miss Sarah Hutchinson, are preserved in the Forster Library at the South Kensington Museum. Letters from the Lake Poets, pp. 85-188; Selections from the Letters of R. Southey, ii. 120.
[53] Compare letters to Stuart (December), 1808. “You will long ere this have received Wordsworth’s second Essay, etc., rewritten by me, and in some parts recomposed.” Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 101.
[54] Colonel Wardle, who led the attack in the House of Commons against the Duke of York, with regard to the undue influence in military appointments of the notorious Mrs. Clarke.
[55] Coleridge’s friendship with Dr. Beddoes dated from 1795-96, and was associated with his happier days. It is possible that the recent amendment in health and spirits was due to advice and sympathy which he had met with in response to a confession made in writing to his old Bristol friend. His death, which took place on the 24th of December, 1808, would rob Coleridge of a newly-found support, and would “take out of his life” the hope of self-conquest. The letter implies that he had recently heard from or conversed with Beddoes.