SOURCE: “Poems (1833),” in Hartley Coleridge: Poet's Son and Poet, Oxford University Press, 1931, pp. 101-15.

In this critical overview of Poems, Hartman notes the technical skill of Coleridge's sonnets, remarking on the strong influence Wordsworth had on the younger poet.

Poems: (Songs and Sonnets) by Hartley Coleridge, issued by Bingley at Leeds early in 1833,¹ is the slender octavo volume upon which rests the poetic reputation of the son of S. T. C. ‘Some writers’, the author wrote a decade later, ‘maintain a sort of dubious, twilight existence, from their connection with others of greater name. … If aught of mine be preserved from oblivion, it will be owing to my bearing the name of Coleridge, and having enjoyed, I fear with less profit than I ought, the acquaintance of Southey and Wordsworth.’ Elsewhere he modestly refers to his ‘knack of verse’ as entitling him to rank as ‘one of the...