"BACKGROUND OF A POET'S MIND" IS LOWE'S STUDY

The following is another of a series of interviews given to the Crimson by reclplants of the recent Milton Awards. This interview was granted by Professor J. L. Lowes '05, Professor of English, who received the award in order to make it possible to carry on a more thorough study and preparation for publication of a note book of L. T. Coleridge which the poet kept during the years of his highest literary activity.

"The note book referred to in the grant," said Professor Lowes when the CRIMSON reporter went to see him at his office in Warren House, "is a manuscript volume of about 90 leaves now in the British Museum. The notebook was in possession of a school-friend of his, Matthew Gutch and was purchased by the Museum in the sixties. In my judgement it is the most important of all the numerous notebooks which Coleridge left.

Key to Character

"It is undated, but from internal evidence, it is clear that it belongs to the years 1795-98, the years just before Coleridge's great period. It consists of an amazing mass of jottings long and short, extracts from Coleridge's reading in travels, histories, the philosophical transactions of the Royal Society, books on optics, and so on, usually with no indication of where the references come from. It contains lists of subjects for poems and articles most of them never written, as well as personal memoranda."

When the reporter asked Professor Lowes just what these jottings were about, he laughed and said that trying to find references to them had taken him through all eight floors of the library.

"For example," he said, "What does the following suggestion for a poem or an article refer to: Randolph consecrating the Duke of York's banners'? It turns up again in a curious poem called the Devil's Walk, and seems to have made a good deal of a stir at the time, but the incident remains to be identified. In addition there are fascinating extracts from one of the most interesting books of the period, Bartram's 'Travels in Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, etc.;' extracts dealing with alligators, snake-birds, Indians and strange plants. There are references to a cave with a bubble of ice, taken from a contemporary history of Hindustan; and the habits of astronomers in the Grand Observatory in Peking.

Raw Material

"The book reflects as does nothing of which I know, the wide range of Coleridge's interests. It gives, moreover, the background of a poet's mind in that it furnishes invaluable clues to the raw materials which were transmitted into poetry.

"The notebook was edited in 1896 by Professor Brandl of Berlin but the text as given was very inaccurate and many of the most important items were left unidentified. The text needs a thorough reediting and there is still much to be done in the way of identifying the references.

"I have already made large use of the document in a book soon to be published, and this investigation is supplementary to that. In a word" said Professor Lowes, "the notebook is of the utmost value as an indication of the currents of the times as they influenced one of the most brilliant, if not the most brilliant figures of the time."