But an earlier mention is found in Browne's poem on the death of Mr. Thomas Manwood:—
"Not for thee these briny tears are spent,
But as the nightingale against the breere,
'Tis for myself I moan and do lament,
Not that thou left'st the world, but left'st me here."
He seems to interpret the fable to the same effect as Homer makes Achilles' women lament Patroclus—Πατρόκλου πρόφασιν, σφῶν δ' αὐτῶν κήδε' ἑκάστη. It has been suggested that it rather implies that the spirit of music, like that of poetry and prophecy, visits chiefly the afflicted,—a comfortable doctrine to prosaic and unmusical people.
A. W. H.
128. Coleridge's Essays on Beauty.
—At pp. 300, 301, of this writer's Table Talk (3rd edition) there is the following paragraph:—
"I exceedingly regret the loss of those essays on beauty, which I wrote in a Bristol newspaper. I would give much to recover them."