page: [cover]
Note: WMR has written his description of the note book across the front and back covers
Manuscript Addition: ASHLEY MS. / Ashley 1410 (4)
Editorial Description: Library identification number
This is a notebook of Gabriel's belonging to
his last year or
two—contains
some notable entries
WMR
1905
B M
Ashley Library
Transcribed Note (page [cover]):
Note: Transcription of a circular stamp from the British Museum.
page: [endpaper]
page: [title page]
Manuscript Addition: ASHLEY MS. / Ashley 1410. (4.)
Editorial Description: Library identification number
page: [title page verso]
Note: Blank page with foxing from the library identification numbers on the recto.
page: [2r]
Manuscript Addition: 2 #
Editorial Description: Pagination (not by DGR) at upper right.
page: [2v]
Passages in
Crabb Robinson
11 Russell Sq
from 10 to 12
Cyanide &
Potassium
(photography)
page: [3r]
Manuscript Addition: 3
Editorial Description: Pagination (not by DGR) at upper right.
Mem: A. Dixon (known
to I. Dixon) might know
a useful art - [??]
Childermas—the day
of the week on which the
Holy Innocents
fell The
preceding years Nativity
page: [3v]
Gradual graduation
a Letter
to
one who has now
culminated
frontispiece
The Oxford Prophet
from MA's Prophetic Series
page: [4r]
Manuscript Addition: 4
Editorial Description: Pagination
Permanganate of Potash
A small quantity will
make gallons of Con[?]'s
fluid
To be got of those who
supply photographic
chemicals
page: [4v]
Mrs Asher. Worboys
Hunts
Luca Antonio di Giunta
Venice 1543
page: [5r]
Manuscript Addition: 5
Editorial Description: Pagination
I am
was one of those whose little
is their own
was
- Her hood falls back & the moon
- shines fair,
- Sister Helen,
- On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair.
-
Aye let it blanch
- This moon shall
Let the moon blanch it to silver
- tare
page: [5v]
? Ellis—Dict of Proper
Names
virtuous ring & glass
galliard gardens
page: [6r]
Manuscript Addition: 6
Editorial Description: Pagination
But
in the in what may
be called the Anglo-Hebraic
order of aphoristic truth
Shakspeare Blake &
Wells
are nearly akin, nor cd
any fourth poet be named
so
absolutely in the same
connexion or link the
Shakspearean element
page: [6v]
is so strong in Blake's
fragmentary play of Edward
III
that the one as
[?] as in some of
his songs
& epigrams that there
is no conjecturing now
how near Shakspere
he might have [?]
on the same road had he
taken it
page: [7r]
Manuscript Addition: 7
Editorial Description: Pagination
November
p. 51 (Vala Hyle Skofield)
2 seated — S in chains
26 —Hand as a spectre
page: [7v]
Note: A rough sketch perhaps related to the Blake comments on the recto of the page.
page: [8r]
Manuscript Addition: 8
Editorial Description: Pagination
- Such this Republic!—not the Maid
- He yearned for &c
(for D. at Verona in the
Respublica parenthesis)
- To whom even as to God may be
- Obeisance one with Liberty
page: [8v]
- Was it a friend or foe
- that spread these lies?
- Nay, who but infants
- question in such wise?
- Twas one of my most intimate
- 'enemies.
page: [9r]
Manuscript Addition: 9
Editorial Description: Pagination
-
Wonderful
Waving waving trees
- What do you say to the breeze
- And what says the breeze
- to you?
- This word had Merlin said from
- of old—
- That out of the Oak Tree Shade
- In the day of France's direst dule,
- God's hand should send a Maid.
page: [9v]
- I Catherine was a Douglas
- born
- A name
to all Scots
hold dear;
- And Kate Barlass they've
- called me now
- For many an
honored
aging year.
page: [10r]
Manuscript Addition: 10
Editorial Description: Pagination
Chemical Company
corner shop W. of
Oxford Quadrant
infuse small
quantity
of soda
after break fast
Tarax[?]ium
bottle 3/6
teaspoonful in wine
2 cups of water once a day
page: [10v]
- The tombless fossil
- of deep-buried days.
sisterly sestet
hand-in-hand
True Woman
page: [11r]
Manuscript Addition: 11
Editorial Description: Pagination
If an isolated life has
any sting, it is felt in
the absence of
[?]
those friends
who made for years unneeded
avowals of obligation
&
gratitude. Still this will
come in time to pass
&
be forgotten if not
page: [11v]
emphasized by
momentary
visits once or twice a year.
Life is a coin which we
once shared together, but
which has now quite passed
from my
pocket into yours,
doubtless rightly enough:
only I desire no
half-fart
half-farthing of its
small change.
page: [12r]
Manuscript Addition: 12
Editorial Description: Pagination
There are moments when
Truth must come
not as serene dawn
but
as jagged lightning.
page: [12v]
There are few indeed whom
the facile enthusiasm for
contemporary
models does
not deaden to the truly
balanced claims of successive
effort in art
Conway—take [?]
express
page: [unnumbered]
page: [unnumbered]
page: [13r]
Manuscript Addition: 13
Editorial Description: Pagination
Chatterton can only be
underrated if we
expect that he shd
have
done by intuition
all that was ac
-complished by gradual
inheritance from
him
half a century later.
page: [13v]
Red Cap & Red Shirts
Furnish Revds & Garibaldis
P Richards
30 Cromwell Rd
Upper Holloway N
page: [14r]
Manuscript Addition: 14
Editorial Description: Pagination
- For the garlands of
- heaven were all laid by
- And the daylight sucked
- at the breasts
heart of a lie.
page: [14v]
page: [15r]
Manuscript Addition: 15
Editorial Description: Pagination
Invention absolute is
a thing slow of acceptance
& must be so.
This
Coleridge & others have
found. Why make a
place for what is neither
inven adaptation nor
reproduction? Let it
hew its way if it can.
page: [15v]
page: [unnumbered]
Note: this page torn from the notebook
Size of
Memory
48 x 23 1/2
on light right 3/4
of an inch to go into
rebate—on left
side fillet to be added
page: [16r]
Manuscript Addition: 16
Editorial Description: Pagination
To find that
an unknown
man hates you is
but a tempest in
the outer air— but
to find that your
friend has
turned against
you—
page: [16v]
Dilute aromatic
sulphuric Acid
(for flatulence)
take 15 drops in
a
little water
[?] perhaps [?] here
accompany the work of the same
date
page: [17v]
Note: The texts on the pages here numbered in sequence 17r and 17v, were
actually written by DGR as a unit in the sequence 17v and 17r. The text is
reproduced here in DGR's composition order rather than in the pagination
order editorially supplied to the document. Note that for page 17r, the
bottom half of the page is transcribed before the top half, so as not to
break the flow of the prose.
Devoted as my time
has necessarily been to
another art, I have
never hoped to produce
in poetry more than
a small amount of
quintessential work.
Thus the intervals
of
poetic exercise
page: [17r]
Manuscript Addition: 17
Editorial Description: Pagination
hover[?]/ reached between
poetic effort have
after
lasted for years at a
time; & of these the
present is not
the
longest.
[?] from Robinson
25 Aug/
page: [18r]
Manuscript Addition: 18
Editorial Description: Pagination
Mrs Silvester
Agnes Silvester
25
17 Hotten Street
Edgeware Road
10 Mos
Red[?]
page: [18v]
sorrowful solitude
page: [unnumbered]
Note: Page blank on recto and verso
page: [19r]
Manuscript Addition: 19
Editorial Description: Pagination
- And 'mid the budding
- branches' sway
- Our antlers met in
- battle-play
- When our fetlocks
- felt the Spring
page: [19v]
page: [20r]
Note: Doodles or rough drawing
Manuscript Addition: 20
Editorial Description: Pagination
page: [20v]
Note: The names listed here run from page 20v to the facing page, 21r. The
significance of the list is not clear.
Frank
W
m
JM
Leyland
Watts
Smith
[?]
Miss Boyd
Tebbs
Mrs [?]
Stevens
Miss [?]
Mrs Stillman
F Marsden
page: [21r]
Note: See editorial note to the previous page regarding the list of names on the manuscript image.
Manuscript Addition: 21
Editorial Description: Pagination
Knight
Caine
Dixon
Swinburne
Forman
page: [21v]
Mrs Arlinghy[?]
14 St. Georges Row
£14 7[?] [?] Bridge
Mary Hockey
24
page: [22r]
Manuscript Addition: 22
Editorial Description: Pagination
Del mare il
sussurro sonoro.
Nichols
nearly opposite
Oxford
page: [22v]
When printing in 1870
I omitted the piece on
W[ellington]'s funeral
as
being
referring to so old a date.
but year by year such
themes
become more dateless
& rank only with im
mortal things.
page: [23r]
Note: The page has DGR's sketches of a cyclamen.
Manuscript Addition: 23
Editorial Description: Pagination
Flower
in [?]
6 inch bulb
Cyclamen
page: [23v]
For cleaning off
painting—
sp turp. with one
fourth of
[?] of
lemon
page: [24r]
Manuscript Addition: 24
Editorial Description: Pagination
Pia—wife of Nello
della Pietra—in
Purg. though
repenting
only at last moment
page: [24v]
J. C. Guillett frame maker
79 Bedford Gardens
Camden Hill
Thursday
not Wed—not Sat.
page: [25r]
Manuscript Addition: 25
Editorial Description: Pagination
- If I could die like the
- British Queen
- Who faced the Roman war,
- Or hang in a cage for my
- country's sake
- Like Black Bess of
- Dunbar
page: [25v]
The add[?] hours are
Still a part only
[?] worth &
in
part recovered relived
of youth
If
I could die like the
page: [26r]
Manuscript Addition: 26
Editorial Description: Pagination
Arthur's Seat &
Salisburg crag seen
from Firth
The critic of the new
school sits down before a
picture, &
saturates it
with silence.
page: [26v]
Bass Rock
Berwick Law—a
low
peak
on
near which
stands
stands T[?] Castle
of the Douglas family
[????]
small rocks
page: [27r]
Manuscript Addition: 27
Editorial Description: Pagination
Mr Atkinson
[?]
87 Cleveland St
page: [27v]
Mrs Ward
23 Rutland
Street
Pimlico
page: [unnumbered]
page: [28r]
Note: Previous page torn out
Manuscript Addition: 28
Editorial Description: Pagination
Mrs Mac[?]
99 Kennington Rd
28 Jessie Kyles
Major Douglas
2 1/2 years
£15
page: [28v]
Mrs Salem
42 Formosa St
Maida Hill
6 weeks
Mary Cox 22
32 Elcho St
Battersea
£16
page: [29r]
Manuscript Addition: 29
Editorial Description: Pagination
Mrs Sylvester
492 Edward Rd
Note: DGR's note is left unfinished
It has been
written so
many years
that at last
& is so much
less tempting
to take up
than a
new
thing that if
I venture to
follow the
perilous
precedent
of a Coleridge
& to print it
as it has
long stood
page: [29v]
new yeast from the
brewery. A dessert
spoonful in water
first
thing in morning
(for boils)
page: [30r]
Manuscript Addition: 30
Editorial Description: Pagination
- Like iron I felt my arm
- as through
- The groove I made it pass
- Alack! it was brittle bone—
- no more.
- 'Twas Catherine Douglas sprang
- to the door—
- And I fell back Kate
- Barlass.
page: [30v]
- The sunrise blooms &
- withers on the hill
-
10 Like any hillflower
- Remember me who am La Pia. Me
- From Siena sprung and by it dead.
- This in his inward heart well knoweth he
- With whose ring-jewel I was plight
- & wed.
page: [31r]
Manuscript Addition: 31
Editorial Description: Pagination
- Ah! was it all
- spring weather,
- Nay
but we were all
- young together
page: [31v]
- Within those eyes the
- sedulous yearning throe
-
[??],
- & all the evil of my heart
- A thousand times forgotten.
- Ah! if you had been lost for
- many years,
- And from the dead
this
today
- were risen again
page: [32r]
Manuscript Addition: 32
Editorial Description: Pagination
Note: DGR scripts the fragment of line 1(line 12 of
True Woman. I.Herself) at the end of the
draft in parentheses and appends his note to it: “to lead up
to this”)
- all things most unseen,—
- the mystic seal
fringe of green
- Shifting[?] the snowdrop underneath the snow.
page: [32v]
- The clouds stooped low
- and the surf rose high
- And where there was
- a line of the sky
- The gulls
flocked
loomed
- dark between
page: [33r]
Manuscript Addition: 33
Editorial Description: Pagination
Middenstead
- In galliard gardens of
-
sweet
strange aventine,
- Or sway of tidal night.
page: [33v]
Manuscript Addition: Alternate ends
Editorial Description: DGR's note at left of line 4.
- The wounded hart & the
- dying swan
-
Wend up the stream both
- Were side by side
[?]
- Where the rushes coil with
- the turn of the tide—
- The hart & the swan
- The swan and the hart
page: [34v]
Note: DGR wrote this draft from verso to recto, and it is here transcribed
accordingly, following the given pagination system as established by the
British Library.
page: [35r]
Manuscript Addition: 35
Editorial Description: Pagination
Mabel the short of
Aimable —
Rob
t de Bilesme
Hervey of Winwick
his son Boyn
page: [36r]
Note: The text runs in reverse order from the pagination supplied by the British
Library, from [36r] to [35v].
Manuscript Addition: 36
Editorial Description: Pagination
Note: The text is a prose synopsis of the sonnet.
Here the world's his byway
write by one who had seen
it all but whose
world
was then his cell. The
terrestrial globe he
spanned in
spirit, &
page: [35v]
that spirit was
itself
the Celestial Globe, when
the planets played &
while the zodiac guided
till from this cell
his soul issued into
infinity
page: [36v]
When we are senseless grown,
to make stones speak
The Shakespearean English
ideal of Blake's poetry
groyne
page: [37r]
Manuscript Addition: 37
Editorial Description: Pagination
Who tuned the strong
[?]
(Chatterton)
Pink Tamarisk by
the seashore
(Michael Scott)
page: [37v]
- strange road
- Miring his outward steps,
- who inly trode
- The bright Castalian brink & Latmos'
- steep:—
- Even such his life's cross-paths, till
- deathly deep
- He sank in sands of Lethe
page: [38r]
Manuscript Addition: 38
Editorial Description: Pagination
page: [38v]
Deleted Text
- th[?] din[?]
- Deepening his care without who
- trod within
- The bright &c
Deleted Text
- a road
- Miring his toisome steps
- who inly trode
- The brook of Castaly &c
- Such paths he knew
page: [39v]
Note: The verso of page 39 was scripted by DGR first and is presented first in
this transcription.
- By thine own tears thy
- verse must tears impart
The archer Apollo fledges
his arrow for thy soul
& if that
be not pierced
he has
not no fellow shaft
for another:
but if it
reach thy soul it shall
rebound & reach another
page: [39r]
Manuscript Addition: 39
Editorial Description: Pagination
- The Song-god—he the Sun-god
- is no slave
- Of thine; he thy Hunter for thy soul
- Fledges his shaft,
[?] It darts
[?] goal
- He
hath
toward
showers no
t
fellow shaft
arrows for
- thee to wage
page: [40r]
Manuscript Addition: 40
Editorial Description: Pagination
- or, stamped with the
- snake's coil, it be
- The imperial image of
- Eternity.
Note: This is DGR's first effort to write his sonnet on Keats.
- Could Keats but have
- a day or two on earth
- Once
in each
every year!
page: [40v]
Note: This is DGR's first draft attempt to draft his
headnote for the 1881 printing of “The House of Life”.
In may [?] superfluous I may say that It may seem needless
to
say that
these poems are in no
sense
“occasional”. The “Life”
involved
recorded is neither my
life nor your life, but
Life
purely & simply representative as
coupled with
Love & Death.
page: [41r]
Manuscript Addition: 41
Editorial Description: Pagination
S. in his prose grinds the
alliterative epithets between
his teeth
& trills them
on his tongue with equal
fury. He is a
kind of
epileptic epithetometer.
page: [41v]
page: [42r]
Manuscript Addition: 42
Editorial Description: Pagination
Coleridge had to
endure through life
the self-preserving
attacks of relentless
mediocrity in high places
56 Marion Parade
24 Lewis Crescent
page: [42v]
Watts has
Lautrec
Dobree
Wilkinson
Whistler
Little Masters
Mallett's N
n Antiquities
([?] Diaries)
Lane
Poetry of Bible
page: [43r]
Manuscript Addition: 43
Editorial Description: Pagination
The English Castaly
A Quintessence
Being a Collection of all
that is best in all English Poetry
excepting works of greater length
London [?]
No 62
S's Blake
page: [43v]
Woman's desire awakened
by desire in the object of
her soul's
affection—cold
to all others
end of [?] &
[?] of [?]
How strange a thing
her mental side also
influenced by her affection
Ditto — True Woman
page: [44r]
Note: The final fragment of text is marked for linking with the draft material
on the facing page.
Manuscript Addition: 44
Editorial Description: Pagination
Manuscript Addition: X
Editorial Description: Added near the gutter, following the word “than.”
[?]
Added TextSweet is the grape & tender is the vine
Sonnets—Woman
To be a body desirable like
any wine &c—how strange!
To be a soul purer than
man can reach &c—how strange!
page: [44v]
Note: The last line, transcribed below, is written vertically along the outside margin of the page.
Endymion is a magic toy
fit for the childhood of
a divine poet. The
man
however already appears in
the interview with Diana
(part
II). Nothing but hu
-manity wd do here, & this
it is
that the poet employs, art
fully entwining it with
supernatural exclamation,
page: [45r]
Manuscript Addition: 45
Editorial Description: Pagination
Note: This is an unincorporated fragment.
- Such as I was made I am,
- And such as I could do I did
- Say: such as I was made I am,
- And did even such as I could do.
descripsissy[?]
descripsist
page: [45v]
Eglantine—the wild rose
Milton at a relative's
in St. Martin's Lane,
when his first wife
appeared
& implored his forgiveness.
They mingled
their
tears & were reunited.
page: [46r]
Manuscript Addition: 46
Editorial Description: Pagination
The sense of the
momentous is strongest
in Coleridge— not
the
weird and ominous only,
but the value of
monumental moments.
page: [46v]
I assure you that to touch
them is condemnation.
They are written
by the
basest creatures &
littered with the vilest
purposes. With your
exceptional discerment[?]
you may perhaps
have
learnt this by now.
page: [47r]
Deleted Text
Bill to C. Ellis
payable 15 Feb /80
£115.8
d
Bill to F. & D.
payable May 24
£99.18.6
Chemical [?]
60 3/4 x 35
60 1/2 x 34 7/8
page: [47v]
Note: The page is blank except for some bleed-through from the writing on [47r].
page: [48r]
ASHLEY 1410 (4)
48 FF. July 1949
Ex'd by:
JMR JM