Note 83 — Chapter I · —INTRODUCTION.

Coleridge in his Table Talk (14 May, 1833) remarked: "A man may, under certain states of the moral feeling, entertain something deserving the name of love towards a male object—an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from appetite. In Elizabeth's and James's time it seems to have been almost fashionable to cherish such a feeling. Certainly the language of the two friends Musidorus and Pyrocles in the Arcadia is such as we could not use except to women." This passage of Coleridge's is interesting as an early English recognition by a distinguished man of genius of what may be termed ideal homosexuality.