Transporting English Romanticism to the Colonies: Alexander Turnbull, Coleridge’s Prospectus to The Friend, and Richard Horne’s Copy of Hazlitt’s Book. Co-authored with Ruth

Ruth Lightbourne and Heidi Thomson

Transporting English Romanticism to the Colonies:Alexander Turnbull, Coleridge’s Prospectus toThe Friend, and Richard Hengist Horne’s Copy

of Hazlitt’s Book

Keywords: S. T. Coleridge, The Friend,Richard H. Horne, William Hazlitt, WilliamWordsworth, Alexander Turnbull

On 23 January 1892 Alexander HorsburghTurnbull (1868–1918) left London forNew Zealand with his parents and youngersister, his precious library packed into cases,leaving behind the life of a privileged Englishgentleman. He would become one of NewZealand’s main early collectors, his librarysubsequently forming the nucleus of a nationalcollection.

Alex, as he usually signed himself, was bornin Wellington, New Zealand, on 14 September1868, the sixth child of Alexandrina Horsburghand Walter Turnbull. His father, a prosperousmerchant, had earlier emigrated to NZ fromScotland with his wife in 1857.1 When Alexwas six, the family travelled back to England,and in 1881 Alex entered Dulwich College(McCormick, 57). For a short period afterleaving school he worked for the family firm’sLondon office, Turnbull, Smith & Co, until itsclosure in 1888 (McCormick, 72). During thistime Alex lived mainly at the family home‘Mount Henley’ at Sydenham Hill on theoutskirts of London. After 1888, Alex enjoyed a

life of leisure, attending plays, operettas andVaudeville shows, going to his various clubs,taking dancing lessons, attending the Ascotraces, the Henley regatta, and cricket at Lords.At the same time he fostered his book collectinghobby which would later become an obsession.

Eventually Alex tired of this aimlessexistence and began to think about his return toNew Zealand to take up his role in the familyfirm.2 Once the decision was made, cabins werebooked on the Doric and packing began. Thefirst four cases of books were sent on thesteamer Matatua along with ten cases offurniture (Letter, 12 November 1891). Tenfurther cases of books followed on the Duke ofWestminster and Alex, obviously concernedabout visitors to the house helping themselvesto his ‘precious darlings’ (Letter, 15 October1891), instructed his older brother Robert, whowas already in Wellington, not to unpack thebooks until his arrival and to insure themagainst damage in the meantime (Letter,9 December 1891). He also asked his brother toensure that there was plenty of accommodationfor his ‘beloved books’ in the Wellington houseand to take note that his library had ‘grown alittle since you left’ (Letter, 12 November1891).

Romanticism 18.3 (2012): 281–293DOI: 10.3366/rom.2012.0099© Edinburgh University Presswww.eupjournals.com/rom

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Figure 1. Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull as a young man. Alexander Turnbull Library ref: 1/2-032603-F.

Living in New Zealand, far from the restof the world, did not hinder his collectingactivity. He purchased books from dealersas far afield as England, Scotland, USA,Holland, Germany, Australia, various PacificIslands, as well as New Zealand. London washis main source, however, and in that citysome of his dealers included BernardQuaritch, Maggs Bros, Pickering & Chatto,Walter T. Spencer, Henry Sotheran & Co,Herbert E. Gorfin, J. & J. Leighton, HenryStevens, James Tregaskis, Dulau & Co, and

Francis Edwards. Books were sent out by shipfor inspection usually in tin-lined casestailor-made for the task, and could bereturned if not wanted, or if they requiredbinding.3 This was a slow process takingaround six weeks each way, and there wasalways the danger of damage to the booksduring transit, cases getting mislaid, and,during the war years, of the ship being sunkat sea.4

Alex’s initial collecting interests centredaround New Zealand, but would soon include

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Figure 2. Turnbull’s Bookplate. Alexander Turnbull Library, Bookplates-Graham-NZ-Turnbull-1910–01.

the Pacific, Australia and everything connectedwith the sea and seafaring.5 At the same timehe decided to collect Milton on a major scale:‘I intend forming a Milton collection &making it as complete as possible if I cansee my way to do so’.6 Other authors alsobegan to make an appearance, thoughon a less obvious scale. Major Romantic andVictorian authors are all represented: Keats,

Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Hazlitt,Browning, and Swinburne. Turnbull wasalways attracted by the rare or unusual andsome of these are detailed below. We can’t dojustice to the wonders of the AlexanderTurnbull Library collection within theconfines of this article, but we will restrictourselves to a few examples from the Romanticcollection.

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The Alexander Turnbull Library Copy ofColeridge’s The Friend (1812)7

Barbara E. Rooke’s edition of The CollectedWorks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge lists threeentries for annotated copies of The Friend(1812). The second one reads:

2. Sir John Sinclair’s copy.Not located. Sotheby Misc Sale 2 Mar 1891.C Bibl (Haney 1903) 49. Samuel Sale,Sotheby 1 Jul 1907, 35 (bought by Dobell).Dobell Catalogue 1909. No further trace.

Rooke includes an appraisal from the SamuelSale Catalogue: ‘Inserted . . . is theoriginal . . . prospectus . . . containing severalcorrections in the autography of Coleridge, andaddressed in his handwriting to Sir JohnSinclair, with postmark’.8 As Rooke rightlypoints out, this ‘appears to be not a markedcopy, but a copy into which the markedProspectus of the 1809–10 edition has beeninserted’ (i. 388). This copy, with the markedup Prospectus, is located in the AlexanderTurnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.The presence of the 1808 prospectus, one of theKendal Prospectuses, addressed to Sir JohnSinclair (1754–1835), in this book is not in itselfsufficient evidence that Sinclair ever owned the1812 copy in which it was inserted. Theprospectus apparently did not convince Sinclairto subscribe to the periodical, because his nameis not on Rooke’s list of Subscribers (AppendixE, ii. 407–67). Sinclair’s failure to subscribe isnot entirely surprising considering Coleridge’ssatirical portrayal of him in the ‘ParliamentaryOscillators’, published in The Morning Post on30 December 1797 and reprinted in theCambridge Intelligencer on 6 January 1798.9

Coleridge ridiculed Sinclair, who was then MPfor Caithness, for his opposition to Pitt’staxation plans to finance the war. The address isclearly marked on the Prospectus:

Sir John Sinclair bartCharlotte SqEdinburgh

Above the address, in the same handwriting,we read: ‘Kendal Dec seventh 1808’, with the‘Kendal’ post stamp. The date coincides withthe flurry of letters which accompanied theprospectuses Coleridge was sending out at thebeginning of November and December 1808 inan optimistic effort to secure enoughsubscribers by the first Saturday of January1809, the intended first publication date.10 Theletters are characterized by a messianicenthusiasm and a strong sense of renewedpurpose and energy which may explainColeridge’s blindness to any grudges hisaddressees may bear him. Francis Jeffrey(on 7 November 1808), Thomas Poole(on 4 December 1808), and brother GeorgeColeridge (on 5 December 1808) are all treatedto the famous Ostrich metaphor: ‘It is indeedTime to be doing something for myself.Hitherto I have layed my Eggs with Ostrichcarelessness & Ostrich oblivion’ (to Poole, CL,iii.131).

The provenance of the actual ownership ofthe 1812 copy which contained the 1808Prospectus is still unclear. On the upperpastedown is a fragment of a book plate withthe name ‘Thomas Davies’. By 1892 the lavishgreen gold-tooled, goatskin slipcase confirmsStuart M. Samuel’s ownership. The flap of theluxurious slipcase is stamped:

Bound by R. Riviere & Sonfor S. M. Samuel, 1892

The prospectus itself has a number ofcorrections in Coleridge’s hand and itdemonstrates Coleridge’s particular delight inplanning his project. Coleridge’s obsession withthe exact wording and lay-out of the project fitsin with his mood of renewal, the attempt to gethis life back on track and to take better controlof his health after his first open admission thathe had ‘with the bitterest pangs ofSelf-disapprobation struggled in secret againstthe habit of taking narcotics’ (CL, iii. 127).On 8 December Dorothy Wordsworth reports

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Figure 3. ‘Prospectus’ of The Friend posted from Kendal to Sir John Sinclair in Edinburgh. Alexander TurnbullLibrary, R Eng WORD Misc 1820.

about Coleridge with superb psychologicalacumen to her friend Catherine Clarkson:‘Nobody, surely, but himself would haveventured to set forth this prospectus, withno one essay written, no beginning made!but yet I believe it was the only way for him.I believe he could not have made thebeginning unspurred by a necessity which isnow created by the promises therein made’.11

Charles Lamb announces its arrival to Hazlittwith ‘a printed prospectus from S. T. Coleridge,Grasmere, of a weekly paper, to be calledThe Friend – a flaming prospectus – I have notime to give the heads of it’.12 Hazlitt endedup referring to it later as ‘the longest andmost tiresome Prospectus that ever waswritten’.13

Barbara Rooke refers to the genesis of theProspectus in the introduction to her edition ofThe Friend (i. xxxvii-xli) and refers to a fewvariants in the version of the Prospectus

included in Appendix A (ii. 16–20). But theversion included in this edition, the one whichColeridge added at the end of Friend No 1, doesnot quite capture the anticipation and thework-in-progress of the ones sent out fromsmoke-infested Allen Bank during the hecticearly December days. Not much has been madeof Coleridge’s obsessive corrections to theProspectus, but they are worth dwelling onbecause they typify Coleridge’s characteristicambivalence and ambitions about going publicwith his ideas.14

The first handwritten addition by Coleridgeis on the first page, inserted in bold in thispassage:

Yet one Habit, formed during Year-longAbsences from those, with whom I couldconverse with full Sympathy, has been ofAdvantage to me – that of daily noting down,in my Memorandum or Commonplace

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Books, both Incidents and Observations;whatever had occurred to me from without,and all the Flux and Reflux of my Mindwithin itself. The Number of these Notices,and their Tendency, miscellaneous as theywere, to one common End (’quid fumus etquid futuri gignimur,’ what we are andwhat we are born to become; and thus fromthe End of our Being to deduce its properObjects) first encouraged me to undertakethe Weekly Essay, of which you willconsider this Letter as the Prospectus.

The word ‘Year’ in ‘Year-long absences’ wasdeleted in copies sent to Daniel Stuart becauseFrancis Jeffrey objected to it (CL, iii. 150). Theaddition of ‘what we’ ensures that thetranslation from Latin conveys the balancebetween present and future identity. Coleridgewould have been particularly focused at thistime on making a constructive connectionbetween his past and the future ahead. TheFriend was yet another project to get a morepurposeful life back on track in the wake of histroubled return from Malta in 1806, thetwo-year absence which did not really solveanything regarding his addiction andinfatuation with Sara Hutchinson.

On the second page we get a typical assertionof ownership (despite Coleridge’s frequentborrowings), with the insertion of ‘own’ in thefollowing sentence: ‘The chief Subjects of myown Essays will be’. The numbers of theensuing list of Subjects, suggesting a hierarchyof sorts in the list, have been erased, therebycreating a more interconnected sense amongthese ‘chief subjects’. Within the list there is acorrection of a subject-verb agreement in ‘or is[with ‘are’ crossed out] not to be found incommon French Authors’. Considerablethought went into the next two paragraphs inwhich Coleridge elaborates the periodical statusof and authorial claims for his publication.These two paragraphs were omitted from thecollected 1812 edition, probably for lack of

relevance. The ambiguous form of The Friend, aperiodical with long essays in newspaperformat, was a contentious issue that Coleridgehimself was not entirely clear about – as lettersof 14 December to Daniel Stuart and HumphryDavy illustrate (CL, iii.141–5).

’The Friend,’ as to its Plan, will bedistinguished from its celebratedPredecessors, the Spectator, Rambler, World,&c. chiefly by the greater Length of theseparate Essays, by their closer Connectionwith each other, and by the Predominance ofone Object, and the common Bearing of all toone End.

The Friend is contrasted to threelong-established periodicals by severaldistinguishing features: length, focus, and‘common Bearing’ or coherence. In the laterProspectuses only The Spectator survives in thelist, and in the copy sent to Daniel StuartColeridge wrote alongside the paragraph thathe would leave the presence or omission of it toStuart (The Friend, ii. 19).

In the final paragraph (before the quotationfrom Petrarch) Coleridge has crossed out‘amenable’ and written ‘responsible’underneath, a change which was kept in latercopies of the Prospectus. This could be readagain as an assertion of Coleridge’s soleauthority over The Friend. According to theOED ‘amenable’ assumes an external authorityto whom one is accountable: ‘liable to bebrought before any jurisdiction’.15 In contrast,the word ‘responsible’ is associated with morefaith in the individual concerned: it is focusedon the innate characteristics of the person as‘capable of fulfilling an obligation or duty;reliable, trustworthy, sensible’ (OED). With thesame spirit of individual assertion he replacedthe phrase ‘Let me’ with ‘I may not inaptly’ inthe next paragraph introducing Petrarch’s DeVita Solitaria (where he also corrected theopening quotation marks).

Transporting English Romanticism to the Colonies 287

That not all copies of the Prospectus wereconsistently corrected during those busy earlyDecember days is obvious, for instance, fromthe British Library Ashley 5172 copy of theProspectus which includes, on the other side,Wordsworth’s letter of 3 December 1808 to theReverend Francis Wrangham in Yorkshire. Thiscopy does not have printed numerals alongsidethe list of subjects. There is no insertion of‘what’ in the Latin translation, no insertion of‘as to its Plan’, but the subject-verb agreementhas been corrected.

The variations on the Prospectus provide uswith a small, but meaningful, glimpse of justhow much the periodical was awork-in-progress and how frantic the activityinvolving both Coleridge and the Wordsworthhousehold must have been at the time.

The Alexander Turnbull Library Copy ofThe Miscellaneous Poems of WilliamWordsworth (1820)16

The provenance of this four-volume copypoints to Richard H. Horne’s association withWilliam Hazlitt. The inscription on the upperpastedown of Volume 1 reads ‘R. H. Hornefrom William Hazlitt’. The title pages of allfour volumes are signed (in ink) ‘WilliamHazlitt’ in the upper right hand corner, and allvolumes have the embossed stamp of ‘H. T.Dwight Bookseller &c Near Parliament Houses’on title pages or fly leaves. There are pencilmarkings and annotations throughout the text,and an address inscription (in pencil) on theflyleaf of Volume 2 (’21 Great Quaker StMontagu Sqr’). The table of Contents of eachvolume has poems marked with a cross (+) inink.17

The indefatigable but often self-deludedRichard H. Horne (1802–1884) packed manyadventures into his long life, including action atthe siege of Vera Cruz (1825) during a stint asmidshipman in the navy, travels through theUnited States and Canada, and gold prospecting

in Australia (1852–1867).18 Horne’s main claimto fame was as a prolific, rather indiscriminatewriter who demonstrated occasional talent; hewas convinced that his own genius was secondonly to Hazlitt’s whom he idolized to the extentof ventriloquizing him. Horne’s first book, TheExposition of the False Medium and BarriersExcluding Men of Genius from the Public(London, 1833), was demolished in the reviews.John Wilson obviously wrote this with gusto:

His malady seemed to us, at first, deliriumtremens; but by and by we became assuredthat it was a case of Monomania well worthythe attention of Phrenologists. His case is,that all ‘superior’ people—as he callsthem—have lived and died miserably, andthat none but blockheads have had a goodbellyful since the day our first parents weredriven from Paradise.19

And so on, for 28 pages. William Johnson Fox,editor of the Monthly Repository, however,reviewed the work favourably, and in responseHorne sent him an article on ‘Hazlitt’s FirstEssay’ which was published, signed by Horne as‘The Author of ‘The Exposition of the FalseMedium”.20 This marked the beginning ofHorne’s friendship with Fox. The AlexanderTurnbull Library holds their manuscriptcorrespondence in a bound folder entitled,Richard Hengist Horne (1803–1884), author of’Orion,’ ’Cosmo de Medici,’ etc. Collaboratedwith Miss Elizabeth Barrett (afterwards Mrs.Browning)/ Collection of autograph letterswritten between the years 1834 and 1847 to hisintimate personal friend William Johnson Fox,Preacher, Politician and Author. These lettersgive us a further insight in Horne’s connectionwith the Hazlitt family and his involvementwith the Monthly Repository.

The only time that Horne actually sawWilliam Hazlitt was in 1830 when,immediately after Hazlitt’s death, heaccompanied Charles Wells and his wife to

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Figure 4. Upper pastedown of The Miscellaneous Poems of William Wordsworth (1820), volume 1, AlexanderTurnbull Library, R Eng WORD Misc 1820.

Hazlitt’s lodgings in Frith Street. Wells, Horne,and the Keats brothers had all attended EnfieldSchool, and John Keats wrote in his journalletter of April 1819 about ‘degraded Wells’ forthe ‘cruel deception’ he had played upon hisdying brother Tom through pretended loveletters from ‘Amena Bellefilla’.21 Wells, perhapsolder and wiser, showed a better self when withHorne he arranged Hazlitt’s funeral and burial.

Duncan Wu describes the setting, with Wells,Horne, and Hazlitt’s landlady Mrs Stapletonin the picture: ‘Hazlitt’s few books satmournfully on the shelves (she would holdthem hostage until his debts were paid); Hornewas moved by the sight of his hat and gloves.Before leaving, they had an idea, and askedMrs Stapleton whether they could come back.She agreed’.22 Horne had access on several

Transporting English Romanticism to the Colonies 289

occasions to this room in the wake of Hazlitt’sdeath, and I wonder if he might have acquired,somehow, the four small Wordsworth volumesthen.

There may have been an alternativeprovenance. Horne may never have metWilliam Hazlitt, but he definitely encounteredhis son William (1811–1893). In thecorrespondence with Fox, Horne refers toHazlitt Jnr. in his letter of 30 April 1835,written from 4 Charlotte Street:

Dear SirMr Hazlitt has just left me, and in case the

information may be worth knowing, hementioned to me in course of conversationthat he had heard it rumoured that D. W.Harvey was about to purchase the True Sun.I don’t know where he heard the rumour,anymore than the truth of fabulousness of;but I know he was at the office of theNational in the course of the day. – Lastnight I went down to Mr Adams, and foundmyself accused of having forgotten to go toCrown Hill last Monday? Surely theirmistake? Was it not next Monday, and is notthat day fortnight for the asemblage of theJust, who are as much entitled to eat as theiropposites? ’My fork is in hand, and eager forthe feed!’ Dr. Watts. I wonder in what sortof form those graceless printers have mademy article deploy to the right? When yourbrother sent me the Repository for lastmonth he did not send one to Mr Hazlitt,who lives only a few yards off. This was notso pretty. Yours truly RHH23

At the time Hazlitt lived with his wife and babyson over a cabinet-maker’s at 76 CharlotteStreet.24 In January 1835 William Fox hadrecently and controversially set up a householdwith his lover, the composer Eliza Flower(1803–1846), the daughter of his late friend theradical printer Benjamin Flower.25 Thisdomestic arrangement led to the loss of friends

and subscribers to the Monthly Repository, andFox ended up writing for the Sunday Times andthe True Sun. Horne’s friendship with Foxflourished, partly because Fox was willing toaccommodate Horne’s partisanship overHazlitt, which may also have been motivated bya desire to support Hazlitt’s impecunious sonand his young family. In January 1836 Hornesent a copy of his edition of Characteristics: Inthe Manner of Rochefoucault’s Maxims. ByWilliam Hazlitt to Fox’s True Sun office on theStrand: ‘Herewith, a copy of ’Hazlitt’sCharacteristics’ of which a few linesnotice – Roman Hand – would rejoice my oldheart. Yours truly RHH’.26 In a letter of 10February Horne suggested a new arrangementfor the Monthly Repository which wouldrelieve Fox:

As to the Repository, I should be very sorryto see you give it up, or let it die a naturaldeath; either of which seems likely. Onegood effort might be made to prevent both.My place is stated in a trice. Begin by makingover the Repository, to Mary Gillies andmyself, clear of all debts, and with aguarantee against loss (ie of money, by thechange being [known] &c) for the term ofthree months. I mean the guarantee for threemonths: not the Repository, for this wouldbe only giving us 3 months work. Nowcomes the equity. Supposing the Repositorycan be made to rise, it would be unjust thatall your previous labours, anxiety andexpense, directly and indirectly, should haveserved merely as the basis of our advantage.Therefore, as soon as the Repository rises (ifit may be granted by Providence) to a profitof 20£ per month, that sum only shall be theadvantage we have over you in return forour labours. You then claim all the profitover that until you have 10£ per month;after which 1/3 of all beyond 30£. Mary andmyself will thus be partners in 20£ profit:you will then have 10£ per month, and

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Messrs Fox, Horne and Gillies will bepartners in all the rising property. The onlylabour or attention from first to last whichwill be required of you would be half a sheetper month, wherever it was required by theacting partners. If you like thisproposal—think it good for the Repository,yourself, and all parties; please to talk thematter over before-hand, take time for thedecision to digest, be changed or confirmed,and then if you will let me know I will drawout the Shylockian bond with all its maindetails, as skrews [sic] of memory, andwhoever of the three departs therefrom shalllose partnership and be cut off with ashilling.27

Fox handed over the Monthly Repository toHorne in 1836, but like many of Horne’sventures it did not last and the next year hepassed the editorship on to Leigh Hunt.Horne made the most of his brief editorialauthority to sketch Hazlitt once more as amisunderstood genius in the preface to the1837 edition of Hazlitt’s Characteristics:Characteristics: In the Manner ofRochefoucault’s Maxims. By William Hazlitt.Second Edition. With Introductory Remarks bythe editor of the ‘Monthly Repository’(London, 1837).

In the 1840s Horne experienced brief famewith his epic Orion (1843), but hisHazlitt-mania caused grief again with thepublication of his two-volume A New Spirit ofthe Age (1844).28 Consciously modeled onHazlitt’s The Spirit of the Age (1824) Horne’shasty effort did not quite compare, but heremained undeterred. He had mirrored Hazlittbefore in 1841 with his two-volume TheHistory of Napoleon inspired by Hazlitt’sill-received Life of Napoleon Buonaparte(4 vols, 1828–1830). In order to recoup financiallosses Horne emigrated to Australia in 1852,and in 1863 he became part of the literary circlecentred around Henry Dwight’s bookshop in

Melbourne.29 The stamp of Dwight’s bookshopin the four Wordsworth volumes may wellexplain how the books ended up in Australia.Henry Tolman Dwight (1823?-1871) becameknown as the ‘colonial Quaritch’:

After experience in the London book trade,Henry migrated about 1855 to Melbourne,bringing with him a large stock ofsecond-hand books. Within months of hisarrival, he set up business at 234 BourkeStreet East. In 1864 he took over theGlasgow Book Warehouse at 232 BourkeStreet which had been opened the yearbefore by Robert Mackay, publisher ofMackay’s Australian Illustrated Almanac(1860–1877). Dwight used both premisesuntil 1870 when he retained 232 BourkeStreet only.30

Horne neglected his duties as registrar of minesat the Blue Mountain goldfield in favour ofspending time with the Melbourne literati, andin 1868 he was dismissed from his position.Always in financial dire straits, he may wellhave sold Hazlitt’s Wordsworth volumes toDwight before his final departure fromAustralia in 1869.

The Alexander Turnbull Library copy of theWordsworth volumes has, in addition toHazlitt’s name and the crosses in ink in thetables of content, a range of pencil marks whichare probably not Hazlitt’s but might very wellbe Horne’s.31 Within the confines of this essayI cannot give full survey of the marks andannotations, but the following examplesillustrate how Horne echoes and endorsesHazlitt’s views. Horne, in full ventriloquizingmode, may well have relished relying onHazlitt’s copy to do his own homework for hischapter on Wordsworth and Leigh Hunt inA New Spirit of the Age. The line ‘thy functionapostolical’ in ‘To the Same Flower [To theDaisy] (The Miscellaneous Poems of WilliamWordsworth, ii. 83) has three derogatory

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exclamation marks next to it. In A New Spiritof the Age Horne writes:

A minute observer of exterior nature, hishumanity seems nevertheless to standbetween it and him; and he confounds thosetwo lives—not that he loses himself in thecontemplation of things, but that he absorbsthem in himself, and renders themWordsworthian. They are not what hewishes, until he has brought them home tohis own heart. Chaucer and Burns made themost of a daisy, but left it still a daisy; MrWordsworth leaves it transformed into histhoughts. This is the sublime of egotism,disinterested as extreme.32

This comes very close of course to Hazlitt’sassessment of Wordsworth in The Spirit of theAge, including the example of the daisy.Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a correspondentand close collaborator on A New Spirit of theAge, begged to differ from Horne’s assessmentof Wordsworth:

I differ with you about Wordsworth (. . . )Wordsworth’s principle is that nothing meanis in Nature. True, as Nature herself! Yousay—to Wordsworth alone it is true; ifanybody else calls the daisy noble, he is animitator ‘by that sign.’ The daisy is a meanflower to all the world except WilliamWordsworth.

In which you are wrong, O Orion! (Iwave the ceremonials as commanded)—because that daisy under the heel of a clownhas lesson, if sought for. Yes, and a less‘Apostolical’ for the clown, though he neverheard of the master.33

The celandine comes in for similar derision, asHorne marks the line ‘prophet of delight andmirth’ (ii. 62) with three exclamation marks,and the preceding lines – ‘there’s not a place, /Howsoever mean it be, / But ‘tis good enough

for thee’ – attract the comment ‘Ahem!’ in themargin.

Both Hazlitt and Horne persisted in theirlifelong idolatry of Napoleon, which explainsthe marks on the page of Wordsworth’s sonnet‘Occasioned by the battle of Waterloo’ (iii. 269).The sonnet reveals Wordsworth in full patrioticfervour, praising the ‘intrepid sons of Albion’whose ‘prowess quelled that impious crew’(iii. 269). The word ‘impious’ is underlined,with a question mark in the margin, and belowthe sonnet is the annotation: ‘Trash!’.

A number of underlinings and marginalcomments question Wordsworth’s proseobservations. In his criticism of SamuelJohnson, Wordsworth writes: ‘How carelessmust a writer be who can make this assertion inthe face of so many existing title pages to belieit!’ (iii. 314). The word ‘careless’ is underlined,and the word ‘envy’ placed alongside in themargin. Wordsworth’s observation that ‘[i]nnature every thing is distinct, yet nothingdefined into absolute independent singleness’(iii. 325) is underlined and the marginalcomment reads: ‘Not at all times nor in allmoods of contemplation’. Wordsworth’s queryabout the survival of poetry – ‘And how does itsurvive but through the people? what preservesit but their intellect and their wisdom’(iii. 337) – is responded to with a marginal‘no – their best teachers’ [are the ones whopreserve it]. And finally, Wordsworth’sinsistence on the concrete and particular, sooften misunderstood by his contemporaries,comes in for a swipe here as well; his comment(with the underlining) that ‘[t]he Reader willfind that personifications ofabstract ideas rarely occur in these volumes’(iv. 296) is countered with ‘this is just why somuch reads so poorly’ in the margin.

Alexander Turnbull’s treasures highlight thevalue of the individual book. No digital databasecan quite make up for the idiosyncrasies andcharacteristics of a book which has been handledand passed on by real people who have left their

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marks on it. These marks of ownership, ofcorrection, and of reader-response convey thewonder of the book as a living organism whichcontinues to fascinate us.

Alexander Turnbull Library and VictoriaUniversity of Wellington

Notes1. Wellington Independent, 19 September 1868, 4.

For more about the Turnbull family, see E. H.McCormick, Alexander Turnbull: His Life, hisCircle, his Collections (Wellington, 1974).

2. Letter 17 April 1891, Alex H. Turnbull to RobertTurnbull, Alexander Turnbull ‘Letter bookvolume 1’, Alexander Turnbull Library[henceforth ATL] qMS-2053.

3. Letter 24 October 1913, Gorfin to Turnbull, ATLMS-Papers-0057-112/1912, V.

4. See for example letter 29 November 1892 Turnbullto Quaritch, Alexander Turnbull ‘Letter bookvolume 1’; letter 19 July 1912 Bernard Quaritch toTurnbull, ATL MS-Papers-0057-112/1912, II; andletter 18 July 1917 Maggs Bros to Turnbull, ATL,MS-Papers-0057-113.

5. Letter 10 March 1898 to Bernard Quaritch, ‘Letterbook volume 3’, ATL qMS-2055. For AlexanderTurnbull’s interest in the sea and seafaring, seeletter 23 December 1893, to J.K. Laughton, ‘LetterBook vol. 1’.

6. Letter 14 July 1892 Alex H. Turnbull to BernardQuaritch, Alexander Turnbull ‘Letter Book vol. 1’.

7. The copy is catalogued in the Rare Bookscollection as REng COLE Frie 1812.

8. S. T. Coleridge, The Friend, ed. Barbara E. Rooke,The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,Bollingen Series 75, 4 (2 vols, Princeton, 1969), ii.388. References hereafter in the text.

9. S. T. Coleridge, Poetical Works, ed. J. C. C. Mays,The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,Bollingen Series 75, 16 (6 vols, Princeton, 2001), I.i. 420–2.

10. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed.Earl Leslie Griggs (Oxford, 1959), iii.127–40. Citedhereafter as CL.

11. The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth,ed. Ernest De Selincourt, 2nd edn, The MiddleYears, Part I, 1806–1811, ed. Mary Moorman(Oxford, 1969), 282.

12. The Letters of Charles Lamb to Which Are AddedThose of His Sister Mary Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas(2 vols, London, 1935), ii. 60–1.

13. The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P. P.Howe (21 vols, London, 1930–4), vii. 115.

14. The exception is Deirdre Coleman’s short accountin Coleridge and ‘The Friend’ (1809–1810)(Oxford, 1988), 47–49. For an excellent account ofColeridge’s changing perspectives on his owncareer as a journalist, see Nikki Hessell,‘”Desultory Fragments” or “Printed Works”?Coleridge’s Changing Attitude to NewspaperJournalism’, Papers on Language and Literature,43.1 (2007), 24–44.

15. Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford, 2011).16. The copy is catalogued in the Rare Books

collection as REng WORD Misc 1820.17. The following poems are marked with a cross, in

ink, in the table of contents: Volume 1: ‘We areSeven’, ‘The Pet Lamb’, ‘The Idle Shepherd Boys’,‘To H. C.’, ‘The Female Vagrant’, ‘’Tis said, thatsome’, ‘The Complaint of an Indian’, ‘The last ofthe Flock’, ‘Laodamia’, ‘Michael, a Pastoral Poem’;Volume 2: ‘To the Daisy’, ‘The Waterfall and theEglantine’, ‘The Kitten, and the falling Leaves’,‘To the Cuckoo’, ‘Yew Trees’, ‘The Reverie ofPoor Susan’, ‘Resolution and Independence’, ‘TheThorn’, ‘Heart-leap Well’, ‘Tintern Abbey’;Volume 3: ‘Though narrow’, ‘Personal Talk [I amnot One who much or oft delight]’, ‘Continued[”Yet life,” you say, “is life; we have seen andsee,], ‘Continued [Wings have we,–and as far aswe can go]’, ‘Concluded [Nor can I not believe butthat hereby]’, ‘Composed upon WestminsterBridge’, ‘The World is too much with us’,‘Thought of a Briton on the subjugation ofSwitzerland’, ‘Written in London’, ‘Great menhave been’; Volume 4: ‘Expostulation and Reply’,‘The Tables Turned’, ‘Lines left upon a Seat, &c.’,‘Lines written in early Spring’, ‘Lines written on aTablet in a School’, ‘The two April Mornings’,‘The Fountain’, ‘Lines written in a Boat’,‘Remembrance of Collins’, ‘Animal Tranquillityand Decay’, ‘Ode.—There was a time whenmeadow’.

18. Sources on R. H. Horne’s life include Ann Blainey,The Farthing Poet: A Biography of RichardHengist Horne, 1802–84, A Lesser Literary Lion(London, 1968); Robert Dingley, ‘Horne, RichardHengist (1802–1884)’, Oxford Dictionary ofNational Biography (Oxford, 2004); Cyril Pearl,

Transporting English Romanticism to the Colonies 293

Always Morning: The Life of Richard Henry‘Orion’ Horne (Melbourne, 1960).

19. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 34 (October1834), 440–68, 440.

20. Monthly Repository, 9.97 (January 1835), 480–5,485.

21. The Letters of John Keats, ed. Hyder EdwardRollins (2 vols, Cambridge, 1958), ii. 82, 90.

22. William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man (Oxford,2008), 434.

23. Manuscript qMS-1006 in the Alexander TurnbullLibrary, Wellington, New Zealand.

24. Margaret Lesser, ‘Hazlitt, William (1811–1893)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford, 2010), [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/98381, accessed 5 Nov 2011].

25. R. K. Webb, ‘Fox, William Johnson (1786–1864)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford, 2009) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10047, accessed 7 October 2011].

26. Alexander Turnbull Library qMS-1006.27. Alexander Turnbull Library qMS-1006.28. For a positive assessment, see Paul Schlicke,

‘Hazlitt, Horne, and the Spirit of the Age’, Studies

in English Literature, 1500–1900, 45.4 (Autumn2005), 829–851.

29. Ann Blainey, ‘Horne, Richard Henry(1802–1884)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography(Canberra) [http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/horne-richard-henry-3797/text6011, accessed 8November 2011].

30. Ian F. McLaren, ‘Dwight, Henry Tolman(1823–1871)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography(Canberra) [http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/Dwight-henry-tolman-3460/text5289, accessed 8November 2011].

31. I am very grateful to Charles Robinson (emailcorrespondence 31 May 2011) and Duncan Wu(email correspondence 19 August 2011) for theirhelp. Duncan Wu points out that Hazlitt was nottypically an annotator, that the handwriting doesnot look like his, and that Hazlitt usually did notuse pencil.

32. A New Spirit of the Age, ed. R. H. Horne, 2nd edn(London, 1844), i. 312.

33. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Note onWordsworth, with a Statement of her Views onSpiritualism (London, 1919), 6.