John Payne Collier
| In his diary entry for 6 November 1811, John Payne
Collier presents a synoptic edition of several versions of "Christabel,"
prefaced with the following note: |
Some short time ago Coleridge lent me
a manuscript of "Christabel"... I informed him that I had
a manuscript of it already, made some years before by a lady of
Salisbury; but he said that he had materially altered it in several
places from his first draught, especially in the first part, and I
borrowed his copy for the purpose of comparison. I showed him my
copy, and he recognized the hand-writing. I
here note some of the recent alterations, which are generally for
the better.(1) |
| Collier goes on to record the variants among the
three versions of the poem--two manuscript and one printed. The first
version of the poem in Collier's possession is a now-lost holograph
borrowed from and returned to Coleridge; the second version is the
now-lost "Salisbury" manuscript. As Collier notes, when he
showed the Salisbury copy to Coleridge, Coleridge
recognized the hand of the copyist--although Collier does not record
Coleridge's comments on the copyist.(2) The
third version of "Christabel" is the 1847 Pickering edition
of Coleridge's 1834 Poetical Works. Like Hazlitt's Examiner
review, Collier's diary stands several versions of "Christabel"
side by side. His record of the line depicting the jewels in
Geraldine's hair is typical of his palimpsest of "Christabel": |
Coleridge himself pointed out to me the
subsequent blunder in my Salisbury copy, where the poet speaks of
the ornaments in the hair of Christabel And
the jewels were tumbled in her hair:
It
ought to have been, as he had written it, And
the jewels were tangled in her hair.
To
this instance of the line, Collier adds the following footnote:Here
again the printed copy of 1847 differs slightly from my Salisbury
copy, and from that which Coleridge lent me: it runs, And
gems entangled in her hair.
Collier's
error in believing the line to be a description of Christabel and not
of Geraldine, as all versions of the poem make clear, is revealing.
Collier's record of the above versions is not simply a momentary slip
of the pen. If, as Jo Ann Citron remarks, |
|
"'tumbled' [in the Salisbury copy]
was a 'blunder,' it was a blunder introduced as early as the
Wordsworth MS [the Mary Hutchinson and Dorothy
Wordsworth jointly penned transcription] and perpetuated by
Coleridge himself in the holograph he gave to Sara Hutchinson.
Collier, knowing nothing about these mss, had no way of knowing
this.(3) |
| This is not the only problematic line in Collier's
record of variants in "Christabel" witnesses. Including the
above example, there are some six variants that are not recorded in
any other manuscripts or printed editions, as
well as seven variant lines, that as Jack Stillinger puts it, "anticipate
the wording" of the 1816 printed edition. Two other variants
noted by Collier first appear in Coleridge's 1828 Poetical Works.(4)
Collier's slips of the pen are not forward-looking, are not "anticipations."
They are backward-looking. Contrary to the 6
November 1811 date of Collier's diary entries, his palimpsestic "Christabel"
is a fabrication--made at some point well after 1811.(5) |
| Collier's interest in "Christabel" is remarkable. Not
only does he fabricate textual information about the poem--in effect
creating a palimpsest like that of Hazlitt's in the Examiner--he
certainly had a hand in the review of "Christabel" that
appeared in the Collier family-controlled Critical Review
several days prior to the release of "Christabel" from the
press. If Collier did not directly assist in writing the
review of "Christabel," he more than likely played the
leading role in encouraging Henry Crabb Robinson to notice Coleridge's
poem.(6) |
back to Henry Crabb Robinson
Notes
- All quotations from Collier's diary are from
R.A. Foakes, ed. Coleridge on Shakespeare: the Text of the
Lectures of 1811-12 (Charlottesville: The University Press of
Virginia, 1971), 145-48. See also Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Complete
Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E.H. Coleridge, 2
vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912; Reprinted 1975), 1: 214. (back)
- As Jo Ann Citron argues, the "Salisbury"
manuscript "is clearly not" the second transcript by Sarah
Stoddart "Two Unrecorded Manuscripts of Christabel"
Wordsworth Circle 13 (Autumn 1982): 216. (back)
- Citron 216. (back)
- Jack Stillinger, Coleridge and Textual
Instability: The Multiple Versions of the Major Poems (Oxford:
Oxford University Press), 83. (back)
- Citron 216-17. (back)
- Oskar Wellens, "John Payne Collier: The
Man Behind the Unsigned Times Review of 'Christabel' (1816)"
Wordsworth Circle 2 (1982): 68-72. (back)