Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/225

 11 S. V. MAR. 9, 1912.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

181

LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1012.

CONTENTS. No. 115.

NOTES : S. T. Coleridge and Anna Barbauld, 181 Charles Dickens, 182-Epitaphiana, 184 --Black Dogs: Gabriel Hounds, 185 Harleian Society John Mildenhall " Birch's " Tonbridge Congregational Church Registers- Edinburgh and London : Half- Way Mark, 186 -"Fleet " : New Use of the Word "Honoriflcabilitudinity" Early Women Doctors "L'llerbe d'Or" John Brady, 187.

QUERIES : The Countess of Craven, Margravine of Anspach The St. Albans Ghost, 187 Mayors : " Worshipful " and " Right Worshipful " ^Six Clerks' Office : JaniPS Clarke Smoking in Public-Houses Mistake of Scott's Clerici Family Levant or Turkey Company Norwegian Legend Pigtails Sir Philip Francis's Descendants, 188 Grierson Family Editions of Gibbon's ' History 'St. Publius English Edition of Casanova's ' Memoires ' Author Wanted Elizabeth Polack : Elizabeth Helme Huxley on the Word " Spirit " Archdeacon Paley's Sister" Praise Indeed ! " 189 Philip and Mary Shakespeare's Sonnets : The Rival Poet, 190.

REPLIES : Railway Travel: Early Impressions, 190 Londres : London Hone's ' Ancient Mysteries,' 191 ' Cocke Lorelle's Bote 'Omar Khayyam, 192 Frith's ' Road to Ruin ' and ' Race for Wealth ' Archibald Erskine Lamb or Lambe Gardiner Family, 193 Thomas Cromwell' ' Lillibullero ' "Bartholomew ware." 194 Maida : Naked Soldiers Colkitto and Galasp, 195 Earldom of Derwentwater 'Temple Bar ' : Casanova County Bibliographies, 1 96.

TfOTES ON BOOKS: 'George the Third and Charles Fox 'Reviews and Magazines.

Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND ANNA BARBAULD.

IT was Charles Lamb who jestingly called Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Barbauld " the two "bald women." This joke is not very bril- liant, but it possesses the quality of humour which has been described as the discovery of similarity between things incongruous.

There was apparently much intellectual intercourse between Mrs. Barbauld and Coleridge in the earlier part of his career, and she saw more clearly than he did him- self the danger which beset him, and did so much to wreck his life. How unjust Coleridge could be is exemplified in this story, which he tells himself in relation to Mrs. Barbauld' s brother, the once well- known Dr. John Aikin :

" On William Smith of Norwich asking me what I thought of The Monthly Review or Maga- zine, and of Dr. Aikin, its editor, I was provoked 'by his evident wish that 1 should say something in its favour, to reply, ' That all men of science or literature could attest that the one was a void Aikin, and the other an aching void.' "

Coleridge wished to send a copy of the edition of the poems issued in 1796 to Mrs. Barbauld, or to her brother Dr. Aikin, but Cottle omitted their names.

In August, 1797, Mr. Richard Reynell tells his brother :

"On my arrival at Stowey and at Mr. Coleridge's house, I found he was from home, having set out for Bristol to see Mrs. Barbauld a few days before. I think he had never seen her, and that he now had walked all the way to gratify his curiosity. He returned on Saturday evening after a walk of 40 miles in one day, apparently not much fatigued."

In January, 1812, Crabb Robinson writes to Mrs. Clarkson :

" You will be interested to hear how Coleridge's lectures closed ; they ended with eclat. The room was crowded, and the lecture had several passages more than brilliant they were luminous, and the light gave conscious pleasure to every person who knew that he could both see the glory and the objects around it at once, while (you know) mere splendour, like the patent lamps, presents a flame that only puts out the eyes. Coleridge's explana- tion of the character of Satan, and his vindication of Milton against the charge of falling below his subject, where he introduces the Supreme Being, and his illustration of the difference between poetic and abstract truth and of the diversity in identity between the philosophy and the poet, were equally wise and beautiful. He concluded with a few strokes of satire ; but 1 cannot forgive him for selecting alone (except an attack on Pope's ' Homer.' qualified by insincere eulogy) Mrs. Barbauld. She is a living writer, a woman, and a person who, however discordant with himself in character and taste, has still always shown him civilities and attentions. It was surely ungenerous."

In the ' Table Talk' there is an interesting reference. The poet says :

" Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired the ' Ancient Mariner ' very much, but that there were two faults in it it Was improbable, and had no moral. As for the probability, I owned that that might admit some question ; but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judg- ment the poem had too much ; and that the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than the ' Arabian Nights ' tale of the merchant sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo ! a genie starts up, and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant because one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son."

After Coleridge had abandoned Uni- tarianism for his own special presentation of Christianity, his references to his former faith are usually of a depreciatory cha- racter. Thus under date 4 April, 1832, he says :

" I make the greatest difference between ana and isms. I should deal insincerely with you if I said that I thought Unitarianism was Christianity