A reporter was hired at the expense of Hookham Frere to take down the lectures in shorthand. A transcript, which I possess, contains numerous errors and omissions, but is interesting as affording proof of the conversational style of Coleridge’s lectures. See, for further account of Lectures of 1819, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative, by J. Dykes Campbell, pp. 238, 239.
[175] Thomas Phillips, R. A., 1770-1845, painted two portraits of Coleridge, one of which is in the possession of Mr. John Murray, and was engraved as the frontispiece of the first volume of the Table Talk; and the other in that of Mr. William Rennell Coleridge, of Salston, Ottery St. Mary. The late Lord Chief Justice used to say that the Salston picture was “the best presentation of the outward man.” No doubt it recalled his great-uncle as he remembered him. It certainly bears a close resemblance to the portraits of Coleridge’s brothers, Edward and George, and of other members of the family.
[176] My impression is that this letter was written to Mrs. Aders, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of the engraver Raphael Smith, but the address is wanting and I cannot speak with any certainty.
[177] Compare lines 16-20 of The Two Founts:—
“As on the driving cloud the shiny bow,
That gracious thing made up of tears and light.”
The poem as a whole was composed in 1826, and, as I am assured by Mrs. Henry Watson (on the authority of her grandmother, Mrs. Gillman), addressed to Mrs. Aders; but the fifth and a preceding stanza, which Coleridge marked for interpolation, in an annotated copy of Poetical Works, 1828 (kindly lent me by Mrs. Watson), must have been written before that date, and were, as I gather from an insertion in a note-book, originally addressed to Mrs. Gillman. Poetical Works, p. 196. See, too, for unprinted stanza, Ibid. Editor’s Note, p. 642.
[178] “To Two Sisters.” Poetical Works, p. 179.
[179] The so-called “Manchester Massacre,” nicknamed Peterloo, took place August 16, 1819. Towards the middle of October dangerous riots broke out at North Shields. Cries of “Blood for blood,” “Manchester over again,” were heard in the streets, and “so daring have the mob been that they actually threatened to burn or destroy the ships of war.” Annual Register, October 15-23, 1819.
[180] “Fears in Solitude.” Poetical Works, p. 127.
[181] Mrs. Gillman’s sister.