Chapter LVIII: Letter 50: To Cottle

(10 January 1797).

My dear Cottle,

The lines which I added to my lines in the "Joan of Arc", have been so little approved by Charles Lamb, to whom I sent them, that although I differ from him in opinion, I have not heart to finish the poem.

"Mr. Coleridge in the same letter," says Cottle, "thus refers to his "Ode to the Departing Year"."

* * * So much for an "Ode", which some people think superior to the "Bard" of Gray, and which others think a rant of turgid obscurity; and the latter are the more numerous class. It is not obscure. My "Religious Musings" I know are, but not this "Ode".

Coleridge, in 1797, as in 1796, was invariably behind time with his "copy" for the second edition. He thus writes Cottle: