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volume of poems, the money to be advanced as required. Coleridge had a good many short poems ready in his portfolio, but his magnum opus, Religious Musings, was incomplete,1 and it was not completed until the following year, after all the rest of the volume had been printed. Probably one of the first of his early poems which he revised was the Monody on the Death of Chatterton, adding the passages respecting Pantisocracy, which had become but a memory before the volume was published. We are principally dependent on Cottle for information regarding this period, and he may be believed when he pictures Coleridge as spending much time in conversation.' It was probably, as in after-days, chiefly monologue, and besides Pantisocracy ('an everlasting theme'), his 'stock subjects were Bishop Berkeley, David Hartley, and Mr. Bowles, whose sonnets he delighted in reciting.' Cottle forgets politics, but the lecture-pamphlets are there to testify to the vigour of Coleridge's campaign against the tyranny of Pitt.

The course of true love seems to have run smooth, but not so that of friendship. Letters written by Southey and Coleridge show that up to the middle of September no breach had taken place, but a letter of Southey (July 19, 1797) 2 shows that he had lost confidence as early as the summer of 1795.' The joint lodging had to be given up, for financial reasons, says Southey, who returned to his mother at Bath. Our arrears were paid with twenty guineas which Cottle advanced to him. During all this . . . [Coleridge] was to all appearances as he had ever been towards me; but I discovered that he had been employing every calumny against me, and representing me as a villain.' 3 The only probable explanation of the conduct attributed to Coleridge is that he must have seen that Southey's enthusiasm for Pantisocracy had been waning. It had so far waned by the summer that, although he could not agree to prepare for the Church, as he was urged to do by his uncle Hill, he somewhat promptly determined to study law. In Coleridge's eyes this must have been black treason, and it is a thousand pities that he did not say so at once and openly. It was only in November, when Southey was about to sail for Lisbon, that he formally announced to Coleridge his abandonment of Pantisocracy. Coleridge broke out in extravagantly-worded upbraidings, and the quarrel was not made up until Southey's return in the summer of the following year.4

When he betook himself to his solitary lodging at 25 College Street, Coleridge must have earned some ready money by his pen, for the thirty guineas received for the copyright of his poems could not nearly have sufficed to support him during the many months which preceded publication, or the settlement of accounts with Cottle on the 28th March 1796. But Cottle must be held responsible for Coleridge's determination not to postpone his marriage. He offered to buy an unlimited number of verses from the poet at the fixed rate of a guinea and a half per hundred lines (which works out at nearly fourpence apiece), for when asked by a friend 'how he was to keep the pot boiling when married,' Coleridge 'very promptly answered that Mr. Cottle had made him such an offer that he felt no solicitude on that subject.' 5

III. MARRIAGE-THE WATCHMAN

In August, consequently, a little cottage was taken at Clevedon (it is still shown

1 See Note 63,' p. 573; and 'Note 87,' p. 579.

3 Letters of R. S. i. 41. 4 Cottle's Rem. pp. 104-107.

2 Letters of R. S. i. 41. See also letter in Cottle's Rem. p. 406. 5 Rem. p. 39.

6 See 'Note 83,' p. 578.

to the pilgrim and the tourist), and on the 4th October 1795, Coleridge and Sarah Fricker were married at the great church of St. Mary Redcliffe, and the honeymoon began. The cottage wanted papering, and a good many indispensable housekeeping articles 1 had been forgotten, but Cottle promptly supplied all deficiencies. Burnett and one of Sarah's sisters for a time shared the limited accommodation of the rosebound dwelling; and we learn by some jottings in the Commonplace Book 2 that the household work was shared by all. The two men got up at six, put on the kettle and cleaned the shoes; at eight Sarah laid the breakfast table, and so on. But Clevedon being found too far from Bristol Library, was soon abandoned for rooms on Redcliffe Hill. Religious Musings was still on the anvil, but it was left there, for the prosecution of a great project in which he had interested a number of friends, probably as inexperienced, if not quite as enthusiastic and unbusinesslike, as himself. One evening in December the party met at the Rummer tavern,' and it was settled that Coleridge should bring out a periodical, something between a newspaper and a magazine, to be called The Watchman. To avoid the stamp-tax it was to be issued, not weekly, but on every eighth day; and No. I. was announced to appear on the

95

1st of March, price fourpence.' Early in January, Coleridge started on a tour of 96 the north country to procure subscribers-preaching,' as he says, 3 by the way in most of the great towns, as an hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on me. For I was at that time and long after, though a Trinitarian (i.e. ad normam Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in religion.' Through eight pages of the Biographia Coleridge gives a most vivid and humorous account of his tour, from which, he says, he returned with a subscription list of nearly a thousand names.4

On the appointed day, March 1st, No. I. appeared, but it disappointed the subscribers by its dulness. No. II. offended many by the choice of Isaiah xvi. II as motto for an essay on 'National Fasts'; succeeding numbers gave umbrage to Jacobin, Democrat, and Godwinite 5 patrons, without attracting opposite factions-and on the last page of 'No. X.' (May 13, 1796) an 'address to the reader' informed him that this is the last number of the Watchman ; the reason is short and satisfactory-the work does not pay its expenses.' Six weeks before, the ever-helpful Thomas Poole had foreseen the inevitable. He set to work to gather a little money for Coleridge, and on the last 'magazine-day' of the Watchman, its baffled proprietor was cheered by the receipt of a purse of forty pounds, together with a kindly and delicately-worded letter. This produced a grateful reply to Poole, which the ex-dragoon closed by asking for a horse of tolerable meekness' on which to ride over to Stowey. The request was granted, and he spent a peaceful fortnight with Poole.

Before this, late in March, the Poems on various subjects had been published. The volume attracted the notice of the principal reviews and magazines its reception being generally favourable, and in one or two instances enthusiastic. Some reviewers detected 'turgidness' - the Monthly thought that 'Religious Musings' reached the top scale of sublimity.' Coleridge 8 agreed with both sets of critics, and so did Lamb.9

6

At the end of June, Grey, the co-editor with Perry of the Morning Chronicle, died, and through Dr. Beddoes, Coleridge received a proposal that he should replace him. This he at once accepted, and on the 5th July expected to hear particulars from Perry. My heart is very heavy' (he wrote to Estlin),1 'for I love Bristol, and I do not love London. Besides, local and temporary politics are my aversion. . . . But there are two giants leagued together, whose most imperious commands I must obey, however reluctant,—their names are BREAD and CHEESE.' An undated letter from S. Purkis to T. Poole 2 shows that Coleridge intended to go up to London to see Perry, but at this point our information fails, and we only know that the negotiations ended fruitlessly. Next came an arrangement by which Coleridge was to undertake the education of the sons of Mrs. Evans of Darley Abbey, near Derby-a lady, it may be as well to mention, entirely unconnected with the family of his old sweetheart, Mary Evans. This having been settled during a visit to Darley Abbey, Coleridge left his wife there, and, about the end of July, paid a visit of reconciliation to his family at Ottery. Of this visit he wrote to Estlin3: I was received by my mother with transport, and by my brother George with joy and tenderness, and by my other brothers with affectionate civility.'

On his return home on the 7th August, a fresh disappointment awaited him in the shape of a letter from Mrs. Evans, informing him that her trustees would not consent to the arrangements which had been made, but begging him to come to her at once. This request he complied with. At the end of a ten days' visit there was an affectionate parting, and Mrs. Evans, he wrote, insisted on my acceptance of £95, and she had given Mrs. Coleridge all her baby-clothes, which are, I suppose, very valuable.' 4 Before leaving Derby, Coleridge was further consoled by a proposition made by Dr. Crompton, that he should set up a school at Derby, under the active patronage of Mrs. Evans's influential family connections. An unfinished house was at once engaged 'to be completed by the 8th October, for £12 a year,' and the landlord won Coleridge's heart by promising 'to Rumfordize the chimneys.' 5 This scheme also came to nothing. On September 24, Coleridge writes to Poole 6 that his heart is heavy respecting Derby '-which I interpret as meaning that he feared to settle so far away from Bristol and from Poole. A house at Adscombe (near Stowey), with some land attached, was his desire, and apparently with Poole's approval Derby was given up, and a letter written to Dr. Crompton to which Coleridge received a very kind reply.' 8

On his way home from Derby, Coleridge had spent a week at Moseley, near Birmingham,* and there renewed the acquaintance with the Lloyds which had been formed during the Watchman tour in January. Charles Lloyd had been fascinated by Coleridge, and having a turn for verse-making and meditation, rather than for the

* 'I preached yesterday morning from Hebrews iv. 1, 2. It was my chef d'œuvre. I think of writing it down and publishing it with two other sermons. . . . I should like you to hear me preach them. I lament that my political notoriety prevented my relieving you occasionally at Bristol.' S. T. C. to Estlin, August 22, 1796 (Estlin Letters, p. 15).

1 Unpublished Letters of S. T. C. to the Rev. J. P. Estlin, printed for the Philobiblon Society, p. 17.

2 Printed in T. Poole and his Friends, i. 151, 152.

3 Estlin Letters, p. 11. The letter is there misplaced.

4 Estlin Letters, pp. 12, 13.

5 Biog. Lit. 1847, ii. 372. See 'Note 89,' p. 581, post.

6 T. Poole and his Friends, i. 158.

7 Ib. i. 188.

8 Biog. Lit. 1847, ii. 377. See Lamb's letters to Coleridge of October 17 and 24, and November 8, 1796 (Ainger's ed. i. 39 et seq.)

T

family business of banking, was extremely desirous of becoming a philosopher and a poet under the guidance and under the roof of the philosopher and poet who was but two years his senior. Nothing was then settled, but towards the end of September, Lloyd's parents gave their consent, and invited1 Coleridge to pay them a visit. Mrs. Coleridge having miscalculated times and seasons allowed him to go, and while at the Lloyds' house he was surprised by an announcement that on the previous day, the 19th September, he had become the father of a son. He hastened home, taking Charles Lloyd with him. The poet's and the father's tumultuous feelings in presence of this crisis required three sonnets 2 for their expression, but they were summed up in these lovely lines:

4

So for the mother's sake the child was dear,
And dearer was the mother for the child.

The father having at this period a great dislike for all sacramental rites,3 the son was not baptized, but he was named David Hartley,' in honour of the wisest of mortal kind,' and solemnly dedicated to the service of the truths 'so ably supported by that great master of Christian Philosophy.'5 So he informed Poole, going on to write about his other son, born to him, as it were, on the same day as David Hartley. Charles Lloyd wins upon me hourly. . . . I believe his fixed plans are of being always with me. . . . My dearest Poole, can you conveniently receive us in the course of a week? We can both sleep in one bed, as we do now; and I have much, very much, to say to you, and to consult you about; for my heart is heavy respecting Derby; and my feelings are so dim and huddled, that though I can, I am sure, communicate them to you by my looks and broken sentences, I scarcely know how to convey them in a letter. C. Lloyd also wishes much to know you personally.'6 Poole, of course, replied, 'Come at once'; and truly Coleridge was never more in need of the wise sympathy and advice which always awaited him at Stowey. He had no settled prospects. Lloyd's contribution to the household expenses was limited to £80 a year, and this was supplemented only by the proceeds of a little reviewing, etc., which Coleridge hoped might yield £40 in a year. The deficiency could not always be filled up by sympathetic offerings, nor could he have contemplated with complacency the continued acceptance of such aid. His consuming desire was to live in the country, near Poole, and to support himself by a mixture of literature and husbandry.

We are fortunate in possessing a vivid and comprehensive picture of his views and tastes at this period in a series of unprinted letters addressed by him to Thelwall, once in the late Mr. F. W. Cosens's MS. collections. I have room for only a few sentences: 'I am, and ever have been, a great reader, and have read almost everything. . . . I am deep in all out-of-the-way books, whether of the monkish times or of the puritanical era. I have read and digested most of the historic writers, but I do not like history. Metaphysics and poetry and "facts of the mind" (¿.e. accounts of all strange phantasms that ever possessed your philosophy-dreamers, from Theuth the Egyptian to Taylor the English pagan) are my darling studies. In short, I seldom read except to amuse myself, and I am almost always reading. Of useful knowledge

1 S. T. C. to Poole, September 24; printed

in Biog. Lit. 1847, ii. 374.

2 Page 66, and 'Notes,' 94-96, p. 582, post. 3 Letter to Estlin (Estlin Letters, p. 35).

4 Religious Musings, 11. 368, 369, p. 60, post. с

5 Letter to Poole, Sept. 24, 1796 (T. Poole and his Friends, i. 157).

6 Biog. Lit. 1847, ii. 375.

7 T. Poole and his Friends, i. 189.

C

sept 1796

Hail

I am a so-so chemist, and I love chemistry-all else is blank-but I will be (please God) an horticulturist and farmer. I compose very little, and I absolutely hate composition. Such is my dislike that even a sense of duty is sometimes too weak to overpower it.' A month later he writes to the same unseen friend : As to my own poetry, I do confess that it frequently, both in thought and language, deviates from "nature and simplicity." But that Bowles, the most tender, and with the exception of Burns, the only always natural poet in our language, that he should not escape the charge of Della-Cruscanism, this cuts the skin and surface of my heart.' His own poetry, he goes on to say, 'seldom exhibits unmixed and simple tenderness or passion; my philosophical opinions are blended with or deduced from my feelings, and this, I think, peculiarises my style of writing, and like everything else it is sometimes a beauty and sometimes a fault. But do not let us introduce an Act of Uniformity against Poets. I have room enough in my brain to admire, aye, and almost equally, the head and fancy of Akenside and the heart and fancy of Bowles, the solemn lordliness of Milton, and the divine chit-chat of Cowper, and whatever a man's excellence is, that will be likewise his fault.' He speaks of Bowles as 'the bard of my idolatry,' and sends a commission to Thelwall to buy for him the works of Jamblichus, Proclus, Porphyry, the Emperor Julian, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Plotinus a little Neo-Platonic library.

In the summer of this year (1796) Southey had returned from Portugal. The quarrel revived, but about the time of Hartley's birth Southey made overtures which were accepted with seeming cordiality.2 But it was only seeming, for at the end of the year Coleridge wrote to Thelwall: We are reconciled . . . ; we are acquaintances, and feel kindliness towards each other, but I do not esteem or love Southey as I must esteem and love whom I dare call by the holy name of Friend! . . . And vice versa, Southey of me. 3 As the days shortened, Coleridge grew more and more impatient with the delays and disappointments which dogged his efforts to find a house near Poole. He was sick at heart, and the depression brought on neuralgia, and the neuralgia brought on laudanum-a disease of which he was never completely cured. The attack of the temporary evil, which began on the 2nd November, was renewed on the 3rd, when Coleridge took 'between 60 and 70 drops of laudanum, and sopped the Cerberus just as his mouth began to open. . . . My medical attendant decides it to be altogether nervous, and that it originates either in severe application or excessive anxiety. My beloved Poole, in excessive anxiety, I believe, it might originate. I have a blister under my right ear, and I take 25 drops of laudanum every five hours, the ease and spirits [italics in original] gained by which have enabled me to write you this flighty but not exaggerating account.' 4

The baby son flourished, but not so Lloyd; and the epileptic fits to which he was subject, caused the household much anxiety. Its master had yet found no moneymaking employment, so that a gift of fifteen guineas, which came through Estlin, must have been welcome. On the 15th November he wrote to Poole: 'My anxieties eat me up. . . . I want consolation-my Friend! my Brother! write and console me.'5 Poole's consolation was of a modified character. He told his friend of a wayside cottage obtainable at Stowey, but had little but evil to say of its accom

1 See also Lamb's letter to Coleridge, July Ist, 1796.

2 Biog. Lit. 1847, ii. 376.

3 Unprinted letter once in Mr. F. W. Cosens's collection.

4 S. T. C. to Poole, Nov. 5, 1796 (T. Poole and his Friends, i. 177, and Biog. Lit. 1847, ii. 380).

5 T. Poole and his Friends, i. 179.