The Person from Porlock
Jeremy Reed, 15 July 1982
“... In the summer of the year 1792, the author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton ...’ Coleridge At first, there was no cause for suspicion, the gentleman rooted in solitude had taken possession of a small farm, and rarely showed. We’d seen him walk the lane, encumbered by a trunk, on arrival, a scholar, so we heard, and indisposed, given over to verse and reverie: attentive about his despatch of mail, perhaps distracted, but not sinister ... ”