form an island? and the next lines refer perhaps to the then be lief that all fruits grow and are nourished by water. But then Perhaps, therefore, But he doth bid us take his blood for wine. Nay, the contrary; take wine to be blood, and the blood of a man who died 1800 years ago. This is the faith which even the Church of England demands;* for consubstantiation only adds a mystery to that of transubstantiation, which it implies. P. 175. The Flower. A delicious poem. Ib. How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clear Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing. "The late past frosts tributes of pleasure bring." Epitritus primus+ Dactyl + Trochee + a long word- syltable, which, together with the pause intervening between it and the word—trochee, equals u u u- form a pleasing variety in the Pentameter Iambic with rhymes. Ex. gr. * This is one of my Father's marginalia, which I can hardly persuade myself he would have re-written just as it stands. Where does the Church of England affirm that the wine per se literally is the blood shed 1800 years ago? The language of our Church is that "we receiving these creatures of bread and wine, &c. may be partakers of His most blessed body and blood:" that "to such as rightly receive the same, the cup of blessing is a partaking of the blood of Christ." Does not this language intimate, that the blood of Christ is spiritually produced in the soul through a faithful reception of the appointed symbols, rather than that the wine itself, apart from the soul, has become the blood? In one sense, indeed, it is the blood of Christ to the soul: it may be metaphorically called so, if, by means of it, the blood is really, though spiritually, partaken. More than this is surely not affirmed in our formularies, nor taught by our great divines in general. I do not write these words by way of argument, but because I can not re-print such a note of my Father's, which has excited surprise in some of his studious readers, without a protest.-S. C. The late past frosts | tributes of | pleasure | bring. N.B. First, the difference between U I and an amphimacer u | and this not always or necessarily arising out of the latter being one word. It may even consist of three words, yet the effect be the same. It is the pause that makes the difference. Secondly, the expediency, if not necessity, that the first syllable both of the Dactyl and the Trochee should be short by quantity, and only by force of accent or position - the Epitrite being true lengths.—Whether the last syllable be or=the force of the rhymes renders indifferent. "As if there were no such cold thing." thing. P. 181. = Thus, .... Had been no such 1 should not have expected from Herbert so open an avowal of Romanism in the article of merit. In the same spirit is "Holy Macarius, and great Anthony," p. 205.* *Herbert, however, adds: But I resolve, when thou shalt call for mine, That to decline, And thrust a Testament into thy hand: Let that be scann'd; There thou shalt find my faults are thine. Martin Luther himself might have penned this concluding stanza. Since I wrote the above, a note in Mr. Pickering's edition of Herbert has been pointed out to me: P. 237. The Communion Table. And for the matter whereof it is made, Although it be of tuch, Or wood, or metal, what will last, or fade; And superstition avoided be. Tuch rhyming to much, from the German tuch, cloth, I never met with before, as an English word. So I find platt for foliage in Stanley's Hist. of Philosophy, p. 22. P. 252. The Synagogue, by Christopher Harvey. The Bishop. Though bishops without presbyteries many, &c. An instance of proving too much. If Bishop without Presb. B. Presb. i. e. no Bishop. P. 253. The Bishop. To rule and to be ruled are distinct, Functions of times, but not persons, of necessity? Ex. Bishop to Archbishop. P. 255. Church Festivals. Who loves not you, doth but in vain profess "The Rev. Dr. Bliss has kindly furnished the following judicious remark, and which is proved to be correct, as the word is printed 'heare' in the first edition (1633). He says: 'Let me take this opportunity of mentioning what a very learned and able friend pointed out on this note. The fact is, Coleridge has been misled by an error of the press. What others mean to do, I know not well, should be hear tell. The sense is then obvious, and Herbert is not made to do that which he was the last man in the world to have done, namely, to avow Romanism in the article of merit.'' This suggestion once occurred to myself, and appears to be right, as it is verified by the first edition: but at the time it seemed to me so obvious, that surely the correction would have been made before if there had not been some reason against it.-S. C. Equally unthinking and uncharitable ;-I approve of them; but yet remember Roman Catholic idolatry, and that it originated in such high-flown metaphors as these. Make it sense and lose the rhyme; or make it rhyme and lose the sense. P. 258. The Nativity, or Christmas Day. Unfold thy face, unmask thy ray, The only poem in The Synagogue which possesses poetic merit; with a few changes and additions this would be a striking poem. Substitute the following for the fifth to the eighth line. To sheath or blunt one happy ray, P. 267. Whit-Sunday. Nay, startle not to hear that rushing wind, To hear at once so great variety Of language from them come, &c. The spiritual miracle was the descent of the Holy Ghost: the outward the wind and the tongues and so St. Peter himself explains it. That each individual obtained the power of speaking all languages, is neither contained in, nor fairly deducible from, St. Luke's account. R* OF S. T. COLERIDGE TO W. COLLINS, R. A. PRINTED IN THE LIFE OF COLLINS BY HIS SON. VOL. I. December, 1818. To feel the full force of the Christian religion it is perhaps necessary, for many tempers, that they should first be made to feel, experimentally, the hollowness of human friendship, the presumptuous emptiness of human hopes. I find more substantial comfort now in pious George Herbert's Temple, which I used to read to amuse myself with his quaintness, in short, only to laugh at, than in all the poetry since the poems of Milton. If you have not read Herbert I can recommend the book to you confidently. The poem entitled "The Flower" is especially affecting, and to me such a phrase as "and relish versing" expresses a sincerity and reality, which I would unwillingly exchange for the more dignified "and once more love the Muse," &c. and so with many other of Herbert's homely phrases. NOTES ON MATHIAS' EDITION OF GRAY. ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE. Vol. i. p. 9. Wanders the hoary Thames along His silver-winding way.-GRAY. WE want, methinks, a little treatise from some man of flexible good sense, and well versed in the Greek poets, especially Homer, the choral, and other lyrics, containing first a history of compound epithets, and then the laws and licenses. I am not so much disposed as I used to be to quarrel with such an epithet as "silver-winding;" ungrammatical as the hyphen is, it is not wholly illogical, for the phrase conveys more than silvery and |