Many of the first editions of the writings of S. T. Coleridge are of very considerable scarcity, but the most uncommon of all is a thin quarto pamphlet of sixteen pages, entitled, "Ode | on the | Departing Year. | By S. T. Coleridge. [Quotation from Æschylus] | Bristol; | Printed by N.Biggs, | and sold by J. Parsons, Paternoster-row, London. | 1796." Of this brochure no copy is believed to have appeared for either public or private sale during the last eighteen years; and indeed, only three examples in all were until quite recently known to Coleridge specialists. One of these is in the Rowlant Library, the possession of Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson; a second is preserved in the British Museum—both being sadly "cut." Such being the case, the pamphlet has naturally been the object of keen search on the part of hunters after bibliographical rarities.
But a short while since a copy came to light, and was sold by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge on April 18 (the third day of the Buckley sale) for £21 10s., a by no means unreasonable price. It was bound up in a volume of old quarto tracts, amongst which was an example of Coleridge's "Fears in Solitude," Bristol, 1798; and also a very poor and much dilapidated copy of Wordsworth's "An Evening Walk," London, 1793. The volume was bought upon commission for Mr. Thomas J. Wise. And now another specimen has been unearthed. It was discovered by a fortunate individual who espied it lurking in a bundle of old books and tracts which was sold, with other lots, in the Romney sale at Christie's on Thursday last. It was not separately catalogued, and therefore passed almost unnoticed, and was knocked down for the modest sum of £4 3s., a splendid bargain for its lucky finder, who generously passed it on to his friend Mr. Wise. Both copies are in first-rate condition, being fresh and clean, with the leaves entirely untrimmed.
