July 1. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 1, 1854. 



OTJB TENTH VOLUME. 



However unwilling to occupy any portion of our 

 columns with matters relating to ourselves, we cannot 

 issue the First Number of our Tenth Volume with- 

 out a few words of thanks to our Contributors, Friends, 

 and Readers, for their continued and increasing sup- 

 port ; and without assuring them that we regard such 

 encouragement as binding us to increased exertion to 

 make " Notes and Queries " the indispensable com- 

 panion of every Student, the ready and efficient helper 

 of every Man of Letters, 



ijHateS. 



coleeidge's lectures on sha.kspe\rb and 

 milton in 1812. 



The readers of " N. & Q." may like to hear of a 

 find it has very recently been my good fortune to 

 make of my original short-hand notes of " Lec- 

 tures on Shakspeare and Milton," delivered by 

 Coleridge as long since as the year 1812. Un- 

 luckily they are not complete, for although each 

 lecture is finished, and, in a manner, perfect in 

 itself, my memoranda (which are generally very 

 full, and in the ipsissima verba of the author) only 

 apply to seven out of fifteen lectures, viz. to the first, 

 second, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and twelfth. 

 What has become of the others I know not ; they 

 are probably utterly lost ; and such as remain 

 ■would perhaps have shared the same fate, if they 

 had not been deposited in the highest drawer of a 

 high, double chest, to which servants and others 

 could not conveniently resort for waste paper. I 

 knew that I once had them in my possession, and 

 when I was printing the edition of Shakspeare, 

 which I superintended nearly ten years ago, I 

 looked for them with great diligence, but in vain ; 

 and even now I might not have recovered them 

 had it not been necessary, on my removal to this 

 place, to turn out the contents of every receptacle 

 m order to destroy what was mere rubbish, occu- 

 pying space that could not be worse filled. 



In my " Introductions " to the various plays of 

 our great dramatist, I have not unfrequently re- 

 ferred to lectures delivered by Coleridge in 1818, 

 and I there made several quotations from my 

 pencillings ; but for some cause, which I do not 

 now remember, I did not, as in 1812, follow the 

 lecturer with verbal accuracy, excepting on a ievi 

 particular points. I was taught short-hand as a 

 part of my early education ; and although in 1812, 

 when Coleridge delivered the lectures of which I 

 have such full notes, I was quite a young man, I 

 could follow a speaker with sufficient rapidity. 

 Hence the confidence I feel in what I have so 



lately brought to light ; and now my original 

 notes are all written out, they extend to from 

 ten to forty sides of letter-paper for each lecture, 

 apparently according to the interest I took in the 

 particular topics. !^^^ 



At a time when you are discussing in your 'co- 

 lumns the important question, What has become of 

 some of Coleridge's original manuscripts ? this dis- 

 covery by me of seven of his lectures, nearly 

 altogether devoted to Shakspeare (for Milton is 

 only incidentally mentioned), cannot be without 

 interest. I only wish that I had met with these 

 relics of a genius so remarkably gifted before I 

 put pen to paper for the edition of Shakspeare 

 which came out in the years 1843 and 1844. 



I had carefully preserved Coleridge's printed 

 " Prospectus " of his lectures in 1818 (I know not 

 if it has ever been reprinted), because upon the 

 blank spaces of it he wrote to me a very angry 

 letter respecting the conduct of the editors or 

 proprietors of a certain Encyclopaedia, who had " so 

 bedeviled, so interpolated and topsy-turvied " an 

 essay of his, that he was ashamed to own it. I had, 

 however, no such reason for taking care of his 

 prospectus of 1812, but I luckily found it among 

 my notes, and I subjoin a copy of it, in order that 

 your readers may see at once the general scope 

 he embraced, and the particular subjects to which 

 he proposed to devote himself: I say proposed to 

 devote himself, because everybody who was ac- 

 quainted with Coleridge must be aware, that it was 

 not perhaps in his power, from the discursive and 

 exuberant character of his mind, to confine himself 

 strictly within any limits which, in the first instance, 

 he might intend to observe. It is only on one side 

 of post-paper, and it begins with the information 

 that the course would be delivered at the room of 

 the London Philosophical Society, Scots' Corpo- 

 ration Hall, in Crane Court, Fleet Street : 



" Mr. Coleridge will commence on Monday, No- 

 vember 18th (1812), a course of Lectures on Shake- 

 spear and Milton, in illustration of the Principles of 

 Poetry, and their application as grounds of Criticism 

 to the most popular Works of later English Poets, 

 those of tlie living included. 



" After an introductory Lecture on false Criticism 

 (especially in Poetry), and on its causes, two-thirds of 

 the remaining course will be assigned, first, to a phi- 

 losophic analysis and explanation of all the principal 

 characters of our gre it dramatist, as Othello, Falstaff, 

 Richard III., lago, Hamlet, &c. ; and second, to a 

 critical comparison of Shakespear, in respect of Diction, 

 Imagery, management of the Passions, judgment in 

 the construction of his dramas ; in short, of all that 

 belongs to him as a Poet, and as a Dramatic Poet, 

 with his contemporaries or immediate successors, 

 Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, &c., 

 in the endeavour to determine what of Shakespear's 

 merits and defects are common to him with other 

 writers of the same age, and what remain peculiar to 

 his own genius. 



