A Formerly Untraced Comment by ‘Coleridge’ in an Article by W. B. Yeats, and Its Origin in Coventry Patmore’s Writing

In an article whose final form was published in 1893 as part of The Celtic Twilight (and then excluded from subsequent editions), W. B. Yeats makes a bold statement in relation to how the wisdom of Irish folklore is rooted in visions of a spiritual world. The reference is made in the context of what was originally a review of Douglas Hyde's Beside the Fire in the National Observer for Feb 28, 1891 entitled 'Irish Folk Tales', and was here reprinted as the essay 'The Four Winds of Desire' (1893), with minor changes from the original. The comparison with witch-doctors--which here can also mean peasant mystics--stems from Yeats's reading of Swedenborg's Spiritual Diary when preparing his three volume edition of The Works of William Blake with Edwin J. Ellis, which he also published in 1893.