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Coleridge's “Sir Leoline”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In The Road to Tryermaine, an illuminating study of the origins of Christabel, A. H. Nethercot states that Coleridge was indebted to Hutchinson's History of the County of Cumberland . . . (Carlisle, 1794-97) for the name of Christabel's father, Sir Leoline. This statement is based on a sentence found on page 17 of the first volume of Hutchinson which was taken (with minor variations) from the 1695 edition of William Camden's Britannia: “King Edmund, with the assistance of Leoline, King of Wales, spoiled Cumberland of all its riches; and having put out the eyes of Dunmaile, king of that country, granted that kingdom to Malcolm, King of Scots… .”
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1946
References
1 A. H. Nethercot, The Road to Tryermaine (Chicago, 1939), p. 170.
2 Camden's Britannia, Newly Translated into English . . . by Edmund Gibson (London, 1695), col. 238.
3 Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 5th ed. (Oxford, 1638), p. 349. Note that in Burton's Index the name of the Prince is “Leoline.”
4 John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu (Boston, 1927), pp. 535-537.
5 The Letters of Charles Lamb … ed. by E. V. Lucas, 3 vols. (London, 1935), i, 178. It may not be inappropriate to note also Coleridge's passing reference to Burton in a letter written to Southey Aug. 7, 1803. In discussing a scheme of Southey's for an encyclopedic work of reference he comments on the market value of early editions of The Anatomy and a later reprint. See The Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, 2 vols. (Boston, 1895), I, 248 (hereafter referred to as Letters).
6 See Coleridge's mention of Camden in the prefatory note to Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie: “The use of the old ballad word Ladie for Lady, is the only piece of obsoleteness in it; and as it is professedly a tale of ancient times, I trust that ‘the affectionate lovers of venerable antiquity,‘ (as Cambden says) will grant me their pardon …” This statement appears in a letter written Dec. 21, 1799. (Biographia Epistolaris … ed. by A. Turnbull, 2 vols. [London, 1911], i, 183.) Notice also Nethercot's speculation on the possibility of Coleridge's having drawn directly on Camden for the name “Leoline,” and his rejection of this hypothesis because Camden uses the form “Leolin.” (Op. cit., 173, 175.) This rejection, however, is made on the basis of the passage describing Leolin in Cumberland rather than in Gloucestershire, as discussed in the present article.
7 Letters, ii, 609.
8 S. T. Coleridge, Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep (London, 1816), 32-33, 38.
9 Letters, i, 121.
10 For the location of the “Old Passage” at Aust in Coleridge's day see H. A. Evans, Gloucestershire (Cambridge, 1914), 115: “At the beginning of the last century … the Bath, Bristol, Newport, and South Wales road,… crossed the Severn by a ferry either at the New Passage at Redwick, or three miles higher up by the Old Passage at Aust.”
11 Joseph Cottle, Early Recollections; Chiefly Relating to the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge … 2 vols. (London, 1837), i, 41-42.
12 Letters, i, 139.
13 In this connection note particularly Coleridge's statement to Southey in his letter of Nov. 13, 1795: “You have left a large void in my heart. I know no man big enough to fill it.” Also his generous suggestion in a letter of July 29, 1799: “I pray and entreat you, if we should meet at any time, let us not withhold from each other the outward expressions of daily kindliness … (Letters, i, 151, 303).