From CHRISTIAN DOWDESWELL
Coleridge’s prose describing ‘a person on business from Porlock’ is
as great a piece of fiction as the poetry he wrote. The tale was invented
to enable the publication of a poem that might look incomplete to the general
public. Additionally, Coleridge disguised his source (Purchas: his Pilgrimage)
and misquoted the relevant passage (‘In Xanadu did Cublai Can build a stately
palace . . . ‘).
Christian Dowdeswell Lyon, France
