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Samuel Purchas
1. Kubla Khan building a house of pleasure
Coleridge misremembered, reconstructed the following passage so it became much closer to
his poem than the original.
As misquoted by Coleridge, the text ran:
Here the Khan Kubla commanded a place to be
built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground
were inclosed with a wall.
But the original offers a possible cue to the origin of the name Xanadu, and
a reference to the Kubla Khan building a stately palace there, surrounding
miles of fertile ground with a wall. Next to the text appears a marginal
gloss, "House of pleasure."
Text
In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing
sixteen miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are
fertile Meddowes,
pleasant springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and
game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be
removed from place to place. --Purchas his Pilgrimage, p. 472. |
 Other sources
William Bartram |