LITERARY FINDS

Evening Post, Issue 66, 15 September 1936, Page 5

LITERARY FINDS

SCHOLAR IN ENGLAND

CLOSED LIBRARIES

The volume of Elizabethan and ; seventeenth-century plays which I : have discovered recently at Coleorton ' Hall-must be one of the most unusual "finds" in recent years in connection with English drama (writes I Professor B. If or Evans in the "Observer").

Someone late in the seventeenth century collected into one vellum bound volume thirteen early plays, and at some time or other the volume found its way into the library of Sir George Beaumont. Much later someone else found that the library at Coleorton Hall had more books than it could house, and so this volume, along with a number of others, was placed in an attic, and that is where I found it. Its most interesting item is a unique copy of a play on the apocryphal story of Susanna, written by Thomas Garter about 1569, and published in black letter in 1578. Historians of the drama knew that such a play once existed, and in the middle of the eighteenth century Thomas Coxeter said that he had read "The Commody of Susanna." But since then there has been no trace of a copy, and the play had been given up as lost. ITS EXCITEMENTS. * '■ In part it is a morality play with the Devil, the "Vyce" and the "Sensualitas" and "Voluptas" as some of its characters, but it has its excitements, including a stoning, an execution, and a trial scene in which the prophet Daniel acts in some weird combination of judge and counsel for the defence. The play would stand a modern production if the audience were interested in the history of the drama. Actually I was not looking for plays when I came across this volume, but for traces of Coleridge and Wordsworth. The Sir George Beaumont who died in 1827, and whose collection of I paintings formed a basis for the NaUional Gallery, was a friend and patron of both the poets and of a number of artists. I have long wanted to write his life, but the material is, so far, inadequate. He was a far better artist than is j usually allowed, and he was undoubtedly a very fine man. The best tribute to him which I know is a note written by Coleridge in a copy of the "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius. Against the phrase in the "Meditations," "Nobody ever fancied they were slighted by him; or had the courage to think themselves his betters," Coleridge has written, "this reminds me of Sir George Beaumont." At Coleorton I have found a number of new traces of Coleridge and Wordsworth. One of the most interesting is a copy of Burns's "Poems," bought by Dorothy Wordsworth in Scotland during her tour with Wordsworth in 1803, and presented later to Lady Beaumont. This volume is particularly interesting because Wordsworth's poems on Burns date from this tour.

OTHER DISCOVERIES

Among other items the library has a copy of Wordsworth's "Excursion" with Coleridge's marking and comments, and a long series of manuscript notes by Coleridge on the difference between the language of imagination and slang. Coleridge makes a very vigorous aj-tack on slang in serious writing, and describes it as "Thames Waterman's language introduced by Sir Roger L'Estrange." He roundly condemns Jeremy Collier for slang and, for "squeezing maggots of wit" into, his style. '; '."'...'*.'.'

The Coleridge item at Coleorton which I, personally, value most, is a copy of Coleridge's "Poems" with the notes he made immediately after hearing Wordsworth read the "Prelude" for the first time. In many ways it is a pathetic document. There is also an early unpublished version of Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty."

There are in Great Britain many literary treasures still unrecorded, and if the owners of old libraries would only give access to scholars much might come to light. But many collections which would fill gaps in the knowledge of our literature have so far had their doors keot firmly shut against the scholar. The Beaumont Trustees have given me permission to prepare a reprint of the play of "Susanna" for the Malone Society Reprints. ■ .