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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In the course of preparing an edition, with the kind permission of the Coleridge family, of the unpublished correspondence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I have found, among the several hundred letters examined, five written by Coleridge to Lord Byron which afford a fuller view of the relationship between the two poets. The contact between Coleridge and Byron was brief, their correspondence being confined to the period between Easter 1815 and April 1816, the time at which Byron finally departed from England. It is known that in 1812 Byron interceded with the managers of Drury Lane for the production of Coleridge's Remorse and that he attended at least two of Coleridge's lectures in 1811 and 1812; but their personal intercourse apparently did not extend beyond those incidents and the exchange of a few letters. Most of Byron's letters to Coleridge have already been published, but the five letters which Coleridge wrote to Byron have never been published in full.
1 James Dykes Campbell, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A Narrative of the Events of his Life, London, 1894, p. 188.
2 Ibid., p. 185.
3 When E. H. Coleridge was gathering letters for the edition of his grandfather's correspondence (Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, London, 1895), he made transcripts of the letters to Byron. Apparently these letters were then in the possession of Sir John Murray: at least the copyright was vested with him, for at the head of each letter he wrote, “Not to be published without the written consent of Sir John Murray”, but the latter wrote me recently that he had no knowledge of the letters and that permission to publish them should come from the Reverend G. H. B. Coleridge.
4 But for the kind efforts of Southey, Wordsworth and others, Hartley would not have been enabled to go to Oxford, for 1814 and 1815 are among Coleridge's most poverty-stricken and self-absorbed years.
5 Sc. English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
6 The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals [R. E. Prothero], London, 1899, III, 190–193.
7 Coleridge constantly wrote in this strain; but whatever the final conclusion may be, certainly he was unfortunate in his worldly affairs.
8 Oxford Ed., p. 285.
9 Letters and Journals, III, 228.
10 Siege of Corinth, XIX.
11 Letters and Journals, III, 230.
12 Ibid., pp. 232, 233.
13 Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron: noted during a residence with his Lordship at Pisa, in the Years 1821 and 1822, by Thomas Medwin, Esq., London, 1821, p. 172.
14 Ibid., pp. 173 and 174.
15 Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses VII, 21.
16 Don Juan, I, xcl, 7, 8; ccv, 2–4; III, xciii, 5–8.
17 The Table Talk and Ominiana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by T. Ashe, (Bohn Library), London, 1884, pp. 16, 32.
