A sweet and playful Highland girl,As light and beauteous as a squirrel,As beauteous and as wild!Her dwelling was a lonely house,A cottage in a heathy dell;And she put on her gown of greenAnd left her mother at sixteen,And followed Peter Bell.Peter Bell, Part III.
A sweet and playful Highland girl,As light and beauteous as a squirrel,As beauteous and as wild!Her dwelling was a lonely house,A cottage in a heathy dell;And she put on her gown of greenAnd left her mother at sixteen,And followed Peter Bell.Peter Bell, Part III.
[283]Margaret Southey, who was born in September, 1802, died in the latter part of August, 1803.
[284]The “Pains of Sleep” was published for the first time, together with “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan,” in 1816. With the exception of the insertion of the remarkable lines 52-54, the first draft of the poem does not materially differ from the published version. A transcript of the same poem was sent to Poole in a letter dated October 3, 1803.Poetical Works, p. 170, and Editor’s Note, pp. 631, 632.
[285]The Rev. Peter Elmsley, the well known scholar, who had been a school and college friend of Southey’s, was at this time resident at Edinburgh. TheEdinburgh Reviewhad been founded the year before, and Elmsley was among the earliest contributors. His name frequently recurs in Southey’s correspondence.
[286]Compare Southey’s first impressions of Edinburgh, contained in a letter to Wynn, dated October 20, 1805: “You cross a valley (once a loch) by a high bridge, and the back of the old city appears on the edge of this depth—so vast, so irregular—with such an outline of roofs and chimneys, that it looks like the ruins of a giant’s palace. I never saw anything so impressive as the first sight of this; there was a wild red sunset slanting along it.”Selections from the Letters of R. Southey, i. 342.
[287]CompareTable Talk, for September 26, 1830, where a similar statement is made in almost the same words.
[288]The same sentence occurs in a letter to Sir G. Beaumont, dated September 22, 1803.Coleorton Letters, i. 6.
[289]The MS. of this letter was given to my father by the Rev. Dr. Wreford. I know nothing of the person to whom it was addressed, except that he was “Matthew Coates, Esq., of Bristol.”
[290]Dr. Joseph Adams, the biographer of Hunter, who in 1816 recommended Coleridge to the care of Mr. James Gillman.