And he continues: 

  ‘I am so weary of this doleful poem, that I must leave off....’

Another MS. copy of this poem, amongst the Coleorton papers, is signed “S.  T. Coleridge to William Wordsworth.”  Ed.

* * * * *

NOTE VII.—­GENERAL BEAUPUY

(See pp. 297 and 302, ‘The Prelude’, book ix.)

Professor Emile Legouis of Lyons—­a thorough student, and a very competent expounder, of our modern English Literature—­supplied me, some years ago, with numerous facts in reference to Wordsworth’s friend General Beaupuy, and his family, from which I extract the following: 

‘The Prelude’ gives us very little precise information about the republican officer with whom Wordsworth became acquainted in France, and on whom he bestowed more praise than on almost any other of his contemporaries.  We only gather the following facts:—­That his name was ‘Beaupuy’, that he was quartered at Orleans, with royalist officers, sometime between November 1791 and the spring of 1792, and that

    ’He perished fighting, in supreme command,
    Upon the borders of the unhappy Loire,
    For liberty, against deluded men,
    His fellow-countrymen....’

Though it seems very easy to identify a general even with such scanty data, the task is rendered more difficult by two inaccuracies in Wordsworth’s statement, which, however, can be explained and redressed without much difficulty.

The first inaccuracy is in the spelling of the name, which is ‘Beaupuy’ and not ’Beaupuis’—­a slight mistake considering that Wordsworth was a foreigner, and, besides, wrote down his friend’s name ten years and perhaps more after losing sight of him.  Moreover, the name of the general who, I think, was meant by Wordsworth, I have found spelt ‘Beaupuy’ in one instance, viz. the signature of a letter of his, as printed in ‘Vie et Correspondance de Merlin de Thionville’, publiee par Jean Reynaud, Paris, 1860 (2’e partie p. 241).

  The spelling of proper names was not so fixed then as it is nowadays,
  and this irregularity is not to be wondered at.

The second inaccuracy consists in stating that General Beaupuy died on the banks of the Loire during the Vendean war.  Indeed, he was grievously wounded at the Battle of Chateau-Gonthier, on the 26th of October 1793, and reported as dead.  His soldiers thought he had been killed, and the rumour must have spread abroad, as it was recorded by A. Thiers himself in his ‘Histoire de la Revolution’, and by A. Challemel in his ‘Histoire Musee de la Republique Francaise’.

  It is no wonder that Wordsworth, who was then in England, and could
  only read imperfect accounts of what took place in France, should have
  been mistaken too.