John Keats. enchanting of all his efforts. Twenty-five years have passed away, and I have by degrees (in the love I bear to his memory) placed it in my mind as amongst the most enchanting poetry of the world. After writing this Sonnet, Keats sank down into a melancholy state, and never wrote again, save one painful letter on the same subject as the Sonnet-for the love so rapturously sung in it was then hastening the poet's death it was a real and honourable love, which, but for the separation occasioned by his direful illness, would have been blessed in a happy and advantageous marriage. Alas! for Italy-he only went there to die. I remain, Sir, Yours truly, JOSEPH SEVERN.' 'Do you remember that last sonnet? Let us repeat it solemnly, and let the words wander down with the waters of the river to the sea... How the star-sheen on the tremulous tide, and that white death-like "mask," haunt the imagination! Had the poet, who felt the grass grow over him ere he was five-and twenty, been crowned with a hundred summers, could he have done anything more consummate? I doubt it.'-Nuga Critica. By 'Shirley' [=John Skelton]: 1862, p. 236. "This beautiful Sonnet was the last word of a poet deserving the title "marvellous boy" in a much higher sense than Chatterton. If the fulfilment may ever safely be prophesied from the promise, England appears to have lost in Keats one whose gifts in Poetry have rarely been surpassed. Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, had their lives been closed at twenty-five, would (so far as we know) have left poems of less excellence and hope than the youth who, from the petty school and the London surgery, passed at once to a place with them of "high collateral glory."'-F. T. Palgrave. PAGE 155-158-CCCVI-CCCXI. First collected in the Life, Letters, &c., edited by Lord Houghton: 2 vols., 1848. William Sidney Walker. CCCXII. From his Poetical Remains. Edited, with a Memoir, by the Rev. John Moultrie, M.A., Rector of Rugby: 1852. Thomas Noon Talfourd. 159-CCCXIII. This noble sonnet, evoked by the ignominious collapse of the famous 'Cadiz Expedition' equipped by Spain for the recovery of her transatlantic possessions (see The Annual Register for 1819 and 1820, lxi, 35, 66, &c., and lxii, 221; or The Gentleman's Maga PAGE zine, 1819, Pt. I, 473, and Pt. II, 169), appeared over Talfourd's initials in John Thelwall's paper, The Champion, 11 April, 1819, and was afterwards reprinted by him in The Poetical Recreations of The Champion and his Literary Correspondents (1822), from which it is here given. It may be of interest to compare it with one which Talfourd addressed to the same men nearly two years previously (Examiner, 7 Sept., 1817): TO THE SOUTH AMERICAN PATRIOTS. Think not, undaunted Champions! that the sea While Freedom's Sons contend in 'holiest glee ':- T. N. T. 159-CCCXIV. Also contributed to Thelwall's paper (15 Sept., 1821), and reprinted in the Recreations as above. Neither of these sonnets-the former unquestionably his best-has ever been included among Talfourd's writings, whether here or in America. 160-CCCXV-CCCXVI. From Tragedies; to which are added a few Sonnets and Verses: 1844. At the end of a copy of the 4th edition of Ion: to which are added Sonnets (1837), presented by Talfourd to the late John Forster, 24 December, 1838, and now in the Forster Collection in the South Kensington Museum, there is an autograph transcript of these two sonnets and the one to Macready, which were then unpublished, showing numerous variations from the printed versions. The sonnet to Dickens is dated 16 February, 1839, and that to The Memory of the Poets inscribed: 'Written 1819. Revised and copied here, Shakespeare's Birthday, 23 April, 1839.' Hartley Coleridge. 'The influence of Wordsworth's peculiar genius is more discernible in the productions of Hartley Coleridge than that of his father, more especially in the Sonnets, which, I venture to think, may sustain a comparison with those of the elder writer. Their port is indeed less majestic, they have less dignity of purpose, and, particularly in combination, are less weighty in effect; but taken as single compositions, Hartley Coleridge. they are not less graceful, or less fraught with meaning; they possess a softer if not a deeper pathos, they have at least as easy a flow and as perfect an arrangement. A tender and imaginative fancy plays about the thought, and as it were lures it forward, raising an expectation which is fully satisfied. Indeed, if I am not wholly mistaken, there will be found among these sonnets, models of composition comparable to those of the greatest masters.'-Rev. Derwent Coleridge.' 'That infirmity of will which is so touchingly acknowledged and deplored in the poetry of Hartley Coleridge was the cause doubtless of his not reaching a far higher place in literature. His poems are excellent alike for soundness of thought, descriptive power, fancy, and felicity of diction; and their moral tone is elevating. His Sonnets are very remarkable. They are the most imaginative part of his writings, as well as the most highly finished; and possess that indescribable union of sweetness and subtle pathos for which the sonnets of Shakespeare are so remarkable.'-Aubrey de Vere. PAGE 161-CCCXVII, 3-4. Cp. Wordsworth's Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle: 'The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.' This and the sonnet given under CCCXX were written not later than February, 1823. They appeared in The London Magazine of that date, addressed to R. S. Jameson, husband of Mrs. Jameson, authoress of The Loves of the Poets, &c. 162-CCCXIX. Cp. Wordsworth's sonnet, CXC (p. 97). CCCXX. With this most pathetic sonnet read another of the same series, evidently reminiscent of the beautiful lines, full of a prescient tenderness, which Wordsworth had written on Hartley as a child thirty years before (To H. C. Six Years Old): 'O THOU! whose fancies from afar are brought; And fittest to unutterable thought The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol; Thou faery Voyager! that dost float In such clear water, that thy boat May rather seem To brood on air than on an earthly stream; Suspended in a stream as clear as sky, Where earth and heaven do make one imagery; O blessed Vision! happy Child, Thou art so exquisitely wild, 1 Memoir prefixed to the Poems, i, clxi. Select Specimens of the English Poets, with Biographical Notices, &c., 1858, P. 218. PAGE I think of thee with many fears For what may be thy lot in future years. Thou art a Dew-drop, which the morn brings forth, Or to be trailed along the soiling earth; A gem that glitters while it lives, And no forewarning gives; But, at the touch of wrong, without a strife This is the sonnet (Poems, p. 11): How long I sail'd, and never took a thought To what port I was bound! Secure as sleep, I dwelt upon the bosom of the deep And perilous sea. And though my ship was fraught From fairy-land, no course I cared to keep, Nor changeful wind nor tide I heeded ought, But joy'd to feel the merry billows leap, And watch the sunbeams dallying with the waves; 162-163-CCCXX-CCCXXI. Quoting these and other illustrations from this series in an analysis of Hartley Coleridge, the late Walter Bagehot remarks (Literary Studies, edited by R. H. Hutton, 1879, i, 63): 'It is in this self-delineative species of poetry that, in our judgment, Hartley Coleridge has attained to nearly, if not quite the highest excellence; it pervades his writings everywhere. . . . Indeed the whole series of sonnets with which the earliest and best work of Hartley began is (with a casual episode on others), mainly and essentially a series on himself. Perhaps there is something in the structure of the sonnet rather adapted to this species of composition. It is too short for narrative, too artificial for the intense passions, too complex for the simple, too elaborate for the domestic ; but in an impatient world where there is not a premium on self-describing, whoso would speak of himself must be wise and brief, artful and composed-and in these respects he will be aided by the concise dignity of the tranquil sonnet.' 165-cccxxv. 'In all respects adequate to its high theme.'-Henry Reed. Compare Mr. Arnold's treatment (Poems, ed. 1877, i, 5): SHAKSPEARE. Others abide our question. Thou art free. PAGE Hartley Coleridge. Planting his stedfast footsteps in the sea, To the foil'd searching of mortality; And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, Matthew Arnold.. 161-165-CCCXVII-CCCXXVI. From the Poems: 1833. 166-CCCXXVII. Dated 'Spring Cottage, Feb. 12, 1841.' This charming and highly characteristic sonnet, now first printed, I draw forth from the obscurity of a private MS. album (containing many other most interesting autographs) which, at the time our sonnet was written into it, belonged to Charles Swain the poet. It is now the property of Dr. Coveney of Prestwich, to whose courtesy I am indebted for the privilege of adding this grain of Hartley Coleridge's gold dust to my Treasury. The sonnet, verbatim as given in the text, is written, dated, and signed in the undoubted autograph of Hartley Coleridge. I presume the youngest reader would resent any further information than the allusion itself supplies (1. 12) touching the 'birds' that wrought the Curiously enough, the two ballads of The Children in the Wood and Barbara Allen's Cruelty stand in close proximity in Percy (Reliques, ed. Wheatley, 1877, vol. iii, Book the Second, p. 128–169). 167-CCCXXIX. L. 2. Wordsworth (Excursion, Bk. I): 'that mighty orb of song, The divine Milton.' Aliter (Poems, 1833, p. 134): HOMER. Far from all measured space, yet clear and plain Illumes extremest Heaven. Beyond the throng The transient rulers of the fickle main, One steadfast light gleams through the dark and long Of human truths, Great Poet of thy kind, Wert thou, whose verse, capacious as the sea, |