[109] The reference is to the Fifth Book of The Prelude.—M.
[110] On comparing these quotations with the original passages in The Prelude, one finds that De Quincey, quoting from memory, is not exact to the text in any of them save the last.—M.
[111] Descriptive Sketches during a Pedestrian Tour on the Italian, Swiss, and Savoyard Alps. London, 1793.—M.
[112] An Evening Walk: an Epistle in Verse. London, 1793.—M.
[113] The reader, who may happen not to have seen Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria," is informed that Coleridge tells a long story about a man who followed and dogged himself and Wordsworth in all their rural excursions, under a commission (originally emanating from Mr. Pitt) for detecting some overt acts of treason, or treasonable correspondence, or, in default of either, some words of treasonable conversation. Unfortunately for his own interests as an active servant, even in a whole month that spy had collected nothing at all as the basis of a report, excepting only something which they (Coleridge and Wordsworth, to wit) were continually saying to each other, now in blame, now in praise, of one Spy Nosy; and this, praise and blame alike, the honest spy very naturally took to himself, seeing that the world accused him of having a nose of unreasonable dimensions, and his own conscience accused him of being a spy. "Now," says Coleridge, "the very fact was that Wordsworth and I were constantly talking about Spinosa." This story makes a very good Joe Miller; but, for other purposes, is somewhat damaged. However, there is one excellent story in the case. Some country gentleman from the neighbourhood of Nether Stowey, upon a party happening to discuss the probabilities that Wordsworth and Coleridge might be traitors, and in correspondence with the French Directory, answered thus:—"Oh, as to that Coleridge, he's a rattlebrain, that will say more in a week than he will stand to in a twelvemonth. But Wordsworth—that's the traitor: why, bless you, he's so close, that you'll never hear him open his lips on the subject from year's end to year's end!"
[114] How little has any adequate power as yet approached this great theme! Not the Grecian stage, not "the dark sorrows of the line of Thebes," in any of its scenes, unfold such tragical grouping of circumstances and situations as may be gathered from the memoirs of the time. The galleries and vast staircases of Versailles, at early dawn, on some of the greatest days—filled with dreadful faces—the figure of the Duke of Orleans obscurely detected amongst them—the growing fury—the growing panic—the blind tumult—and the dimness of the event,—all make up a scene worthy to blend with our images of Babylon or of Nineveh with the enemy in all her gates, Memphis or Jerusalem in their agonies. But, amongst all the exponents of the growing agitation that besieged the public mind, none is so profoundly impressive as the scene (every Sunday renewed) at the Chapel Royal. Even in the most penitential of the litanies, in the presence when most immediately confessed of God himself—when the antiphonies are chanted, one party singing, with fury and gnashing of teeth, Salvum fac Regem, and another, with equal hatred and fervour, answering Et Reginam (the poor queen at this time engrossing the popular hatred)—the organ roared into thunder—the semi-chorus swelled into shouting—the menaces into defiance—again the crashing semi-choir sang with shouts their Salvum fac Regem—again the vengeful antiphony hurled back its Et Reginam—and one person, an eye-witness of these scenes, which mounted in violence on each successive Sunday, declares that oftentimes the semi-choral bodies were at the point of fighting with each other in the presence of the king.
[115] That tract of the lake country which stretches southwards from Hawkshead and the lakes of Esthwaite, Windermere, and Coniston, to the little town of Ulverstone (which may be regarded as the metropolis of the little romantic English Calabria called Furness), is divided from the main part of Lancashire by the estuary of Morecamb. The sea retires with the ebb tide to a vast distance, leaving the sands passable through a few hours for horses and carriages. But, partly from the daily variation in these hours, partly from the intricacy of the pathless track which must be pursued, and partly from the galloping pace at which the returning tide comes in, many fatal accidents are continually occurring—sometimes to the too venturous traveller who has slighted the aid of guides—sometimes to the guides themselves, when baffled and perplexed by mists. Gray the poet mentions one of the latter class as having then recently occurred, under affecting circumstances. Local tradition records a long list of such cases.
[116] I do not, on consideration, know when they might begin to keep house together: but, by a passage in "The Prelude," they must have made a tour together as early as 1787.
[117] In the Memoir of Coleridge prefaced to Messrs. Macmillan's four-volume edition of his poetical works (1880) one reads:—"In the summer of 1797 Coleridge and Wordsworth, if they did not actually meet for the first time, first became familiarly acquainted with each other at Racedown in Dorsetshire. Wordsworth was then in his twenty-eighth and Coleridge in his twenty-fifth year."—M.
[118] Now entitled Resolution and Independence.—M.