3

tion as the incarnation of the principle of Liberty. The Revolutionist leaders' base treatment of Switzerland had opened his eyes.* * Though not published till April, the ode was dated February 1798'; Frost at Midnight bears the same date; and in April came Fears in Solitude, written during the alarm of an invasion.' In the meantime these three poems were published in a little quarto pamphlet.1 The Wanderings of Cain and The Nightingale: a Conversation Poem belong to this rich spring and summer, which also saw the gathering together of the Lyrical Ballads. We have seen that before the end of March The Ancient Mariner was ready; on the 12th April, Wordsworth tells Cottle he has been going on 'very rapidly, adding to his stock of poetry.' The season, he adds, is advancing with extraordinary rapidity, and the country becomes almost every hour more lovely.' 4 It was of this season of traditional splendour that he reminded Coleridge in the closing lines of The Prelude:

:

That summer, under whose indulgent skies,
Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved
Unchecked, or loitered 'mid her sylvan combs,
Thou in bewitching words, with happy heart,
Didst chaunt the vision of that Ancient Man,
The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes
Didst utter of the Lady Christabel ;

And I, associate with such labour, steeped
In soft forgetfulness the livelong hours,

Murmuring of him who, joyous hap, was found,

After the perils of his moonlight ride.

The prospect of Wordsworth's enforced quittance of Alfoxden at Midsummer seems to have produced as early as March a feeling of unrest among the whole party. 'We have come to a resolution' (wrote Wordsworth to his Cumberland friend Losh),5 'Coleridge, Mrs. Coleridge, my sister, and myself, of going into Germany, where we purpose to pass the two ensuing years in order to acquire the German language, and to furnish ourselves with a tolerable stock of information in natural science.' As time and discussion went on, this large scheme underwent some modification. It was probably in April that Hazlitt paid the visit to Coleridge which he has brilliantly described in The Liberal. He heard Coleridge recite 'with a sonorous and musical voice the ballad of Betty Foy.' He saw Wordsworth, ‘gaunt and Don Quixote-like,' in his 'brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons.' 'Wordsworth read us the story of Peter Bell in the open air. There is a chaunt in the recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth which acts as a spell on the hearers, and disarms judg

The Raven (pp. 18, 475); Lewti (p. 27); The
Recantation [i.e. France: an Ode, p. 124]; and
The Mad Ox [i.e. Recantation, p. 133].

* 'No man was more enthusiastic than I was for France and the Revolution; it had all my wishes, none of my expectations. Before 1793, I clearly saw, and often enough stated in public, the horrid delusion, the vile mockery of the whole affair' (Table Talk, July 23, 1832). The editor of T.T. quotes, in support of Coleridge's imperfect recollection, stanzas iv. and v. of France. It would have been more useful had he quoted stanzas ii. and iii. in correction of it.

1 See 'Notes' 117, 118, 119, pp. 607-610, and 'APPENDIX K,' V. p. 544.

2 See p. 112, and 'Note 115,' p. 600. Hazlitt says Coleridge told him the Valley of Stones near Linton was to have been the scene. (My first acquaintance with Poets.)

3 See 'Note 121,' p. 611.

4 Rem. p. 175.

5 Letter of March 11, 1798, quoted in Knight's Life, i. 147.

6 No. III., 1823, My first acquaintance with Poets.

ment. Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and varied; Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and internal. Coleridge told me that he himself liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling branches of a copsewood. . . Returning that same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the nightingale to his sister, in which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elmtrees and listening to the bees humming around us while we quaffed our flip.' Coleridge took Hazlitt on a walk to Linton. That the long distance of roughest road was covered in one day—‘our feet kept time to the echo of Coleridge's tongue -speaks convincingly as to Coleridge's robust health at this time.

Of Coleridge's literary likes and dislikes as then pronounced, Hazlitt gives a tolerably long list. His narrative is not improbably tinged a little by his own prejudices, and distorted by the perspective of a quarter of a century, but it is doubtless in the main a true account of the vivid impressions he carried away, and should be read in its entirety. Another account of the Coleridge of this period has survived; but as it was written by himself to his brother George, on whom he was doubtless anxious to produce a favourable impression, it must be received with due caution. It is a very long and deeply interesting letter, and will doubtless be printed in full in the biography now preparing by the poet's grandson. Coleridge begins by saying that he has been troubled by toothache, and has found relief in laudanum-not sleep, but that kind of repose which is as a 'spot of enchantment, a green spot of fountains and trees in the very heart of a waste of sand.' He has snapped his squeaking baby-trumpet of sedition,' and given himself over entirely to poetry and philosophical contemplation - but he decorously refrains from mentioning the preaching in Unitarian chapels. The letter ends by proposing an early walk down to Ottery. Had he carried out this intention he would doubtless have announced the German plan which was then chiefly occupying his thoughts.

This was written in April. In the same month, probably, but certainly about this time, came the rupture with Lloyd; and, consequent on the painful depression it produced, that famous retirement 'to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton,' and resort to an anodyne,' of which Kubla Khan was the costly but delightful result.

*

On the 14th May his second child was born, and named (but not baptized) 'Berkeley' in honour of the philosopher, the keystone of whose system was still, in his disciple's eyes, indestructible. In announcing this event to Poole, then waiting by his brother's death-bed, he claims to be the better able to sympathise with him because of sorrows of his own that have cut more deeply into his heart than they

In the Preface to Kubla Khan (see 'Note 111, p. 592) the date is given as 'the summer of 1797,' and I have so placed the poem (p. 94). But, since the Poems' and 'Notes' were printed off, a MS. note by Coleridge, dated Nov. 3, 1810, has been discovered, in which it is stated that the retirement to the farm-house, and the recourse to opium-he calls it 'the first,' meaning, doubtless, the first recourse for relief from mental troublewere caused by the breach with Lloyd. He goes

on to say that the nervous disquietude and misery which he suffered prevented him from finishing Christabel. Coleridge is generally unreliable in the matter of dates assigned to particular single events, but I think we may trust him when he synchronises. Besides, it seems far more probable that Kubla Khan was composed after Christabel (I.) and The Ancient Mariner, than that it was the first breathing on his magic flute.

ought to have done,' alluding, doubtless, to the rupture with Lloyd, and to his knowledge that Lamb was being alienated from him by Lloyd.

1

In March there had been talk of a third edition of Coleridge's poems, and on hearing of it Lloyd begged Cottle to 'persuade' Coleridge to omit his. This caused Coleridge to reply, smilingly, that no persuasion was needed for the omission of verses published at the earnest request of the author; and that though circumstances had made the Groscollian motto now look ridiculous, he accepted the punishment of his folly, closing his letter with the characteristically sententious reflection—' By past experience we build up our moral being.' 2 The story is much obscured by Cottle. He mixes up with it the Higginbottom Sonnets of November 1797, and omits to supply his documents with dates, but it would seem that by June some sort of reconciliation between Lloyd and Coleridge had been patched up. 'I love Coleridge,' wrote Lloyd to Cottle,3 and can forget all that has happened'; but things must have gone wrong again, for Lloyd resumed, and too successfully, his attempt to poison Lamb's mind. On July 28, Lamb wrote thus to Southey: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the eternal regret of his native Devonshire, emigrates to Westphalia. "Poor Lamb" (these were his last words), "if he wants any knowledge, he may apply to me." . . I could not refrain from sending him the following propositions, to be by him defended or oppugned (or both) at Leipsic or Göttingen'; and then come the Theses quædam Theologica. If any such speech was ever uttered by Coleridge, it must have been curiously misrepresented to have aroused in Lamb's gentle spirit the extreme bitterness manifested in the letter 5 he wrote to Coleridge conveying the Theses. In after-years Lamb told Coleridge that the brief alienation between them had been caused by Lloyd's tattle, adding that Lloyd's unfortunate habit had wrought him other mischief.* The quarrel must have been a source of much pain to Coleridge, who was doubtless conscious of having thought no evil of Lamb. His feelings towards Lloyd had by this time (July 1798) been embittered by the publication of Edmund Oliver, the novel in which, under the thinnest disguise, and in no particularly friendly spirit, Coleridge's enlistment and other adventures had been introduced. The irritation could not have failed to be increased by the circumstances, that the book was dedicated to Charles Lamb, and published by Cottle. During this

4

In May, Cottle was invited to Alfoxden and spent a week there. visit, arrangements were made for the publication of the Lyrical Ballads, and he carried off with him the MS. of The Ancient Mariner. The price of the copyright was fixed at thirty guineas, payable in the last fortnight of July-the 'money being necessary to our plan,' wrote Coleridge—the plan being doubtless the German one,

* '[Coleridge, in 1821] spoke in the highest terms of affection and consideration of Lamb. Related the circumstance which gave rise to The Old Familiar Faces. Charles Lloyd, in one of his fits, had shown to Lamb a letter, in which Coleridge had illustrated the cases of vast genius in proportion to talent, and predominance of talent in conjunction with genius, in the persons of Lamb and himself. Hence a temporary coolness, at the termination of which, or during its continuance, these beautiful verses were written' (Allsop's Letters, etc. p. 141). The Old Familiar Faces was first printed in Blank Verse (by C. L. and C. Ll.) 1798, and dated 'January 1798. As this date is probably correct, the 'friend of my

bosom' was certainly Coleridge; the friend whom Lamb had left like an ingrate,' 'Lloyd,—and Allsop's (or Coleridge's) recollection, therefore, as regards Lamb's verses, at fault.

1 See 'APPENDIX K,' IV. p. 539.

2 S. T. C. to Cottle, March 8, 1798, in Rem. p. 164.

3 Birmingham, June 7, 1798. In the same letter he mentions that Lamb had quitted him the day before after a fortnight's visit, and that he will write to Coleridge (Rem. p. 170).

4 Ainger's Letters of Lamb, i. 88.
5 Ainger's Letters of Lamb, i. 321.

6 See 'Note 113,' p. 600, and 'Note 116,' p. 607.

although its details had not then been finally arranged. It was probably with the view of consulting the Wedgwoods* that about the middle of June, Coleridge paid them a visit at Stoke d'Abernon, near Cobham,1 during which he learnt that Godwin was anxious to be reintroduced to him. Coleridge hopes to see him in the following week, but I do not think the meeting took place until 1800. On the 3rd August he was with the Wordsworths at Bristol, and wrote to Poole that he considered the realisation of the [German] scheme of great importance to his intellectual activity, and, of course, to his moral, happiness.' 2 He is doubtful whether Mrs. Coleridge should accompany him, but inclined to think that as this would involve borrowing,' he had better go alone-at first, at all events. He begs for Poole's advice to be laid before him on his return to Stowey, in a week, after he has taken a 'dart into Wales.' The Wordsworths had quitted Alfoxden at Midsummer, and, after staying a week with the Coleridges, they walked to Bristol, where they took lodgings, and superintended the printing of the Lyrical Ballads. Before the end of August they were in London, in readiness for their journey.

We have no details, but during these weeks it must have been settled that Mrs. Coleridge should remain at Stowey, under the wing of Poole, and that Coleridge should take with him a young Stowey man named John Chester, of whom Hazlitt has left a graphic account in My first acquaintance with Poets. Coleridge met the Wordsworths in London about the 10th September, and spent a few hurried days. He arranged with Johnson (Cowper's publisher), in St. Paul's Churchyard, for the printing of the little quarto which contains Fears in Solitude, etc.,3 but unfor

* It may be as well, at this point, to clear away a misunderstanding with regard to the relations between the Wedgwoods on the one part, and Coleridge and Wordsworth on the other, in the matter of the cost of the German expedition. In her very interesting mélange, A Group of Englishmen (1871, p. 98), Miss Meteyard quotes from the accounts - current between the Wedgwoods and their Hamburg Agents, P. and O. Von Axen, entries of large payments to Coleridge and Wordsworth during the poet's residence in Germany. She jumps to the conclusion, which unfortunately has been accepted by biographers of both, that (1) Wordsworth's expenses came out of the Wedgwoods' pockets, and (2) that this was the case also with Coleridge's, over and above his annuity. I know nothing at all about the matter as regards Wordsworth, but I would submit that nothing could well be more improbable than that he received any pecuniary assistance from the Wedgwoods, with whom he was never on any specially intimate terms. He needed none, his narrow means being strained no more by residence in Germany than at Alfoxden. I have no doubt that Wordsworth simply banked with Von Axens under an ordinary 'Letter of Credit' issued, for due consideration, by the Wedgwoods. In Coleridge's case there could have been no 'consideration,' and he seems to have been

allowed to overdraw the instalments of his annuity, but I know that all such overdrawings were debited to it, and that no extra allowance was granted to him over and above. Whether he ever repaid these overdrawings, I cannot say, but I know nothing to the contrary. In Dec. 1799 he told Southey that he was striving hard to clear himself, his German expenses having necessitated the anticipation of the whole of his annuity for the year 1800. There are other allusions to the same effect in his correspondence with Poole. There are also several indications that the amounts appearing to Coleridge's debit in the Von Axens' accounts include Chester's expenses as well as his own.

† He describes Chester as having been attracted to Coleridge's discourse as bees in swarming-time to the sound of a brass pan, and as following the poet about as a faithful collie. Coleridge makes no allusion to Chester in his published letters from Germany, but Carlyon (Early Years and Late Reflections, i. 131) speaks of him as one whose honest good nature had made him a favourite with us all.' He remained with Coleridge in Germany and returned with him.

1 T. Poole and his Friends, i. 271.

2 lb. i. 272.

3 See 'APPENDIX K,' V. p. 544, post.

tunately he found no time for his most important call-that on Daniel Stuart respecting promised contributions to the Morning Post. The party left London on the 14th, and, having taken packet at Yarmouth on the 16th, reached Hamburg on the third day after.

The volume of Lyrical Ballads, with a few other Poems, had been published a few days before. It was anonymous, and in the preface ('Advertisement') no hint was given that more than one author was concerned. Coleridge's contributions were :- -The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (p. 512; see also 'Note 112,' p. 593); The Foster-Mother's Tale (p. 83); The Nightingale: a Conversation Poem (p. 131; see also 'Note 121,' p. 611); and The Dungeon (p. 85). The reception accorded to the little volume was far from being enthusiastic, but, everything considered, was not altogether discreditable to the reviewers. If they were shocked by the Ancient Mariner, so were Southey and Lloyd, and so, a little, was William Wordsworth. They saw merit in Goody Blake and in The Thorn and in The Idiot Boy, but only Southey, among them all, took the least notice of Lines at Tintern Abbey. He was likewise alone in noticing the Lines left on a Yew-tree Seat; and not even he was attracted by 'It is the first mild day of March,' or 'Written in Early Spring,' or by the exquisite close of Simon Lee-plain evidence of the small extent to which the sweet influences of Cowper and Burns had up to that time affected the dry places of metropolitan criticism. The sale of the volume was slow, but the poets heard nothing at all about it during their absence, except a cheerful report from Mrs. Coleridge that the Lyrical Ballads are not liked at all by any.'1

V. GERMANY

The passage from Yarmouth and the events of the early days spent by the united party at Hamburg, are amusingly described by Coleridge in his 'Satyrane's Letters.' 2 In Hamburg they greatly enjoyed themselves in simple tourist fashion. They met Klopstock and had discussions, of greater length than importance, with him on the literatures of their respective countries. After four days' junketing, Coleridge went off by himself to Ratzeburg, carrying a letter of introduction to the Amtmann (Magistrate) of that town, who introduced him to a pastor, with whom he arranged to live (himself and Chester) en pension. He then returned to Hamburg, said good-bye to the Wordsworths, and on the 1st October departed again for Ratzeburg, remaining there for the next four months. The early separation from the Wordsworths has never been explained, and has given rise to unfounded suspicions, such as those which seized on Charles Lamb when he heard the news 3 that the poets had quarrelled. The only allusion to the reasons

1 T. Poole and his Friends, i. 301. Cottle wrote to neither. The account he gives of his dealings with the book (Rem. pp. 257-258) must be untrue, and the letter from Wordsworth (p. 258) is garbled. The original is in the Forster Library.

2 Spenser's Satyrane (F.Q. I. vi.)— 'Who far abroad for strange adventures sought.'

The Letters were first printed in The Friend

for Nov. 23, Dec. 7, and Dec. 21, 1809. They were reprinted in the Biog. Lit. vol. ii. Coleridge, I believe, saw Klopstock only on the first occasion, and the whole of the account of the conversations must have been taken from Wordsworth's notes, for the language used was French, which was unintelligible to Coleridge.

3 Lamb to Southey, Nov. 28, 1798 (Ainger's ed. i. 98).