NOTEBOOK 30

BM Add MS 47, 527

COVER

Brown leather and board; faint traces of the original red remain. On the front cover is written in black ink in a large hand (?Mrs Gillman’s) “1823. 1824/Rams-gate/ on the back “Ramsgate”. On the front is a white home-made label on which is written 30”. The inside of the front cover (f1^v) has entry 5098, the inside back cover (f69), entries 4826 and 5005, front and back being determined by Coleridge’s main page-numbering.

WATERMARK

H M [no date]

SIZE AND CONDITION

×4′′, 67 leaves, 136 pages, including the inside of the front and back covers and the inserted scraps, foliated// to f69. Rectos were numbered by Coleridge (f2, ff5–67, f69), with the odd numbers from 1 to 129, and, with the notebook turned (ff69, 67^v–48^v), with 1, 2 and the even numbers to 40. Numbers are centered at the top of the pages. Two leaves were excised between f51^vand f52 leaving stubs not included in Coleridge’s numbering or the foliation. (For the missing leaves, now in PML, see below 5102 and n.) Entries are in ink except where otherwise indicated in the notes.

In the BM rebinding three loose scraps of paper have been attached to three leaves inserted for the purpose. These scraps are foliated 3, 4, and 68. Their stubs appear between ff10^v and 11, and ff59^v and 60. F3 reads, in Mrs Gillman’s hand: “if this <little paper> does not belong to this Book—it belongs to an old red book 1804.” This possibly refers to ff4–4v which is written on in ink:

line of p. H. insert:

For if the fact of the prior annunciation and acceptance of the Christian Faith, on which the <sacred> authority of the Scriptures is grounded, be equal to the weight which it is to support, we must presume that the first Receivers of the Faith had found it in it a fulfilment of those conditions, under which alone the authenticity of the writings could confer a binding authority on them: even if the authenticity itself could be sufficiently established, by independent of this criterion. (Tho’ it be in some measure an anticipation and therefore a departure from our scheme of arrangement, we will yet, try for the purpose of illustration alone, observe that the Epistle of S^t Barnabas affords an instance in which both may be exemplified: if rejected as spurious (for which no other but internal reasons, and those not historical or chronological, can be assigned) by on the cause grounds of its this rejection;—but if acknowledged as genuine, then in the fact and justification of its non-admission into the Sacred Canon.) The Conversion Faith of the first Believers, antecedent to the existence of the sacred Writings may be supposed to fall from defects in the superstructure.

Coleridge’s footnote sign indicating insertion on a mysterious “p[age] H” may be another pointer to a lost notebook; see N 28 Gen N. f68 gives a recipe, not in coleridge’s hand.

PERIOD OF USE

The notebook was in use over a relatively short period of time, from September–October 1823 to January 1824, when Coleridge was reading in church histories for his life of Leighton, although one entry (4826) may have been put in as early as September 1821. The notebook, like many others, was used from the back towards the front, with the book reversed, as well as from front to back. About half the entries are in one sequence, half in the other, although there is evidence that neither sequence is in straight chronological order.