Note 3 — Chapter III · WANDERINGS, 1795-1803.

I find in a Catalogue of English Poetry, 1862, the following passage from an autograph letter of S. T. Coleridge, dated Bristol, July 16, 1814, then in Mr. Pickering’s possession: “I looked over the first five books of the first (quarto) edition of Joan of Arc yesterday, at Hood’s request, in order to mark the lines written by me. I was really astonished—1, at the schoolboy, wretched allegoric machinery; 2, at the transmogrification of the fanatic Virago into a modern Novel-pawing proselyte of the Age of Reason, a Tom Paine in petticoats, but so lovely! and in love more dear! ‘On her rubied cheek hung pity’s crystal gem;’ 3, at the utter want of all rhythm in the verse, the monotony and the dead plumb down of the pauses, and of the absence of all bone, muscle, and sinew in the single lines.”