ABSTRACT
Joseph Cottle republished his Early Recollections: Chiefly Relating to the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1837) in a revised version, ten years later, and gave it a new title: Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey (1847). This is substantially the same work with some additions and rearrangements and, as the title suggests, with more space devoted to Robert Southey. Cottle’s apparent brashness in publishing independently is made by this to appear the only course open to him, given the whitewash being attempted by Coleridge’s more recent admirers. Cottle is himself the older friend and the more loyal one. Southey takes the opportunity to list Coleridge’s manifest failings, while giving his own account of the early years, his relative moderation even as a young man and his subsequent generosity to Coleridge’s neglected relations.
