sang for joy. Coleridge had in 1789 composed some stanzas “On the Destruction of the Bastille,” but these were not published till 1834.
would have floated his bark. Coleridge and Southey with some other friends had in 1794 formed a plan for an ideal colony, the Pantisocracy, on the banks of the Susquehanna.
In Philharmonia’s. Cf. Coleridge’s “Monody on the Death of Chatterton,” 140: “O’er peaceful Freedom’s undivided dale.”
[P. 213.] Frailty. Cf. “Hamlet,” i, 2, 146: “thy name is woman.”
writing paragraphs. Coleridge was connected with the staff of the Courier as a sort of assistant-editor for five months in 1811. His contributions during this period appeared as the “Essays on His Own Times” in 1850.
poet-laureate and stamp-distributor are references respectively to Southey and Wordsworth.
bourne from whence. “Hamlet,” iii, 1, 79.
tantalized by useless resources. Compare this with Coleridge’s own lines of bitter self-reproach addressed “To a Gentleman”:
“Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain.”
[P. 214.] one splendid passage. The lines beginning “Alas! they had been friends in youth” (408-426). The same passage had been singled out for praise by Hazlitt in his lecture “On the Living Poets” and in the review of “Christabel” which had appeared in the Examiner of June 2, 1816. The authorship of this review has been disputed but should on internal evidence, despite its failure in appreciation, be ascribed to Hazlitt. See Works, XI, 580-582.