modations. These seemed to be unequal even to the poor poet's modest requirements. But by the end of the month Coleridge confesses to Poole that he is childishly impatient,' and, as nothing better offers, will put up with the cottage. One day he writes, 'I will instruct the maid in cooking'; the next that he will 'keep no servant' -will himself be everything, even 'occasional nurse.' This last heroic resolve was communicated to Poole in a letter of the 11th December. It was crossed by one in which Poole not only reiterated the disadvantages of the cottage, but dissuaded the poet strongly from burying himself in a village so remote, as was Stowey, from libraries and from the society of a stimulating and helpful group of friends. This letter caused Coleridge 'unexpected and acute pain.' His frenzied reply must be read at its full length of ten printed pages in Mrs. Sandford's book. No summary could do it the least justice. It is a whirl of appeals, adjurations, reproaches, cries v de profundis, plans and plans of life framed and torn up, and resumed to be again abandoned, in bewildering profusion: a vivid and sincere (because unconscious) revelation, not merely of the passing mood, but of the very deeps of character and nature, which is probably unique in autobiography. As truly as of any Lucy Gray-

'Tis of a little child

Upon a lonesome wild,

Not far from home, but she hath lost her way:

And now moans low in bitter grief and fear,

And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear. 2

IV. STOWEY-LYRICAL BALLADS

This letter was begun immediately on the receipt of Poole's, and concluded on the following day, but it concluded as it began, with the expression of a determination to settle at once in the cottage, if only Poole will assure him that he has kept back no reason to the contrary-for he fears that Poole's family connections are at the bottom of the dissuasion. He must have received the reassurance he wanted, for he took up his abode in the cottage on the last day of the year. A poor cottage now, then a poorer; but then it had a garden of an acre and a half, and that garden touched Poole's at the rear. Just then no place in the world could have been more attractive. 'Literature,' he told Poole, though I shall never abandon it, will always be a secondary object with me. My poetic vanity and my political furor have been exhaled, and I would rather be an expert self-maintaining gardener than a Milton, if I could not unite both.' To Thelwall he wrote, in an unpublished letter, a few days later: My farm will be a garden of one acre and a half, in which I mean to raise vegetables and corn for myself and wife, and feed a couple of snouted and grunting cousins from the refuse. My evenings I shall devote to literature, and by reviews in the Magazine [Monthly] and other shilling-scavengering, shall probably gain £40 a year-which Economy and Self-denial, gold-beaters, shall hammer till it covers my annual expenses. . . . I am not fit for public life; yet the light shall x stream to a far distance from the taper in my cottage window.'

Coleridge's last employment before finally quitting Bristol with his wife and child on the 30th December was to get some review-books off his hands.' 3 A week before, he had executed an order from his friend Benjamin Flower for an ode to be published 2 Dejection: an Ode, p. 162,

1 T: Poole and his Friends, i. 184-193.

3 Estlin Letters, p. 25.

on the last day of the year in the Cambridge Intelligencer-the paper he had recommended to the disappointed subscribers to the Watchman. The ode duly appeared, and at the same time Coleridge published it in an expanded form in a thin quarto pamphlet with the title, Ode on the Departing Year,1 and a dedication to Thomas Poole. The superfluous page at the end he filled with the lines to Charles Lloyd in his character of a young man of fortune who abandoned himself to an indolent and causeless melancholy (p. 68).

When Lamb heard of the farm,' he asked sceptically, And what does your worship know about farming?' and recommended the cultivation of the muse as something more in his friend's way, reminding him of a project for an epic on the Origin of Evil. But the first thing to be done at Stowey was to continue preparations begun three months before for a second edition of the Poems, the first having been sold out. The lines contributed to Southey's Joan of Arc were to be reclaimed, and recast into an independent poem, The Visions of the Maid of Arc, with which the new edition was to lead off. I much wish' (wrote Coleridge to Cottle early in January 1797) to send my Visions of the Maid of Arc and my corrections to Wordsworth, who lives not above 20 miles from me, and to Lamb, whose taste and judgment I see reason to think more correct and philosophical than my own, which yet I place pretty high.'2

The arrangement for a 'second edition' of the Poems had been made in October 1796. Cottle proposed to give Coleridge twenty guineas for an edition of five hundred, reminding us (as he probably reminded Coleridge) that this was an act of pure charity, the copyright being his. If the poet chose to omit and alter and add, it was his affair. In his reply, Coleridge hinted very strongly that he thought the proposal unjust, but that bartering' with Cottle was absolutely intolerable.' He was clearing out the rubbish, and especially the political verses the absence of which would widen the sphere of his readers '-and supplying their place with new poems of better and more attractive quality. If he left Cottle to reprint the old volume, and himself published the new, he would make more money, and save the copyright in them. He ends, however, by accepting Cottle's proposal, being 'solicitous only for the omission of the sonnet to Lord Stanhope, and the ludicrous poem' (IVritten after a Walk before Supper, p. 44).3 The printing dragged on till March 1797, and when the volume was almost completed, Coleridge wrote thus to Cottle, in a letter which has not been fully published: Charles Lloyd has given me his poems, which I give to you on condition that you print them in this volume-after Charles Lamb's poems.' He goes on to explain that although the bulk of the volume will thus be increased, so also will be its saleability, seeing

1 Estlin Letters, p. 26, 'I have printed that ODE-I like it myself.' See also 'APPENDIX K,' p. 539, and 'Note 103,' p. 586, post.

2 The letter is mutilated and inaccurately printed by Cottle. This portion occurs at p. 130 of the Reminiscences-another at p. 100. Wordsworth and his sister were then living at Racedown, in Dorsetshire (the post-town being Crewekerne), a house lent to them by a member of the Bristol family of Pinney. The precise date of the first meeting of Coleridge and Wordsworth (a point which has been discussed) has not been ascertained, but a careful examination of all the evidence available, published and unpublished,

has all but convinced me that the meeting took place in either September or October 1796. Mr. Ernest Coleridge arrived, independently, at the same conclusion. I may add that there are various indications, too minute for detail here, that the intercourse which took place between the two poets, previous to June 1797, had been more considerable than has hitherto been suspected.

3 See Cottle's Rem. p. 115. In the E. Recoll. (1837) Cottle suppressed most of Coleridge's letter; but pretends to give it complete in the Rem. I have not seen the original.

that, he doubts not, 'Lloyd's connections will take off a great many, more than a hundred.'

It was about this time that Coleridge received a request from Sheridan that he < would write a play for Drury Lane, and with a feeling in which confidence and misgivings were pretty equally mingled, Coleridge began the attempt. The composition occupied a good deal of his time until the middle of October, when the finished manuscript of Osorio was despatched to the theatre. But these months were varied by many other interests and occupations, and by one fateful event-the settlement of the Wordsworths at Alfoxden. On most Sundays-whether in blue coat and white waistcoat, or in some more conventional costume, is unknown-Coleridge preached in the Unitarian chapels of Bridgwater or Taunton, often travelling on foot, and never receiving hire on week-days he learned potato-culture and tanning, in the kindly companionship of Thomas Poole : Charles Lloyd occupied some hours of each morning when the neophyte's health permitted. Nor were the duties of 'occasional nurse' neglected. At my side, my cradled infant slumbers peacefully,' he says in Frost at Midnight, and to Thelwall he writes, You would smile to see my eye rolling up to the ceiling in a lyric fury, and on my knee baby-clothes \ pinned to warm.' Stowey had not brought wealth or even competency, but it had revived hope, and Coleridge generally found that a sufficing diet. He had not, perhaps, like another great poet, waited very patiently, but, nevertheless, his cry had been heard, he felt that his feet had been set upon a rock, and his goings established, and he was soon to learn that a new song had been put into his mouth.

2

About the beginning of June, Poole saw that a fresh subscription for Coleridge's X benefit was needful, and confiding his views to Lloyd and Estlin, begged the latter to be treasurer, and to apply to none but to those who love him, for it requires affection and purity of heart to offer, with due associations, assistance of this nature to such a man.' Coleridge had 'preached an excellent sermon at Bridgwater' on the previous day on the necessity of religious zeal in these times,'3 and from Bridgwater he seems to have proceeded to Racedown on a visit to Wordsworth. Thence, probably on the 9th, and again on the 10th, he wrote to Estlin 4 asking him to give to Mrs. Fricker and to Mrs. Coleridge five guineas each, out of the subscription money, expressing a hope and a trust that this will be the last year' in which he can conscientiously accept of those contributions, which, in my present lot, and conscious of my present occupations, I feel no pain in doing.' To Cottle he wrote 5 with some corrections for the Ode on the Departing Year (then at press for the Poems, 1797) and announcing his return to Stowey on a 'Friday,' which may be calculated as probably the 16th June. Wordsworth, he announces, admires his tragedy, which gives me great hopes'; and then he goes on to estimate Wordsworth's own tragedy in terms which, when we remember he is speaking of The Borderers, compel a smile. 'His drama is absolutely wonderful. . . . There are in the piece those profound truths of the human heart, which I find three or four times in the Robbers of Schiller, and often in Shakespere, but in Wordsworth there are no inequalities.' He feels himself a little man' by Wordsworth's side; and adds (a passage suppressed

1 The history of this effort, from its inception to its triumphant accomplishment at Drury Lane in 1813, is fully detailed in 'Note 230,' p. 649. 2 Unpublished letter of Feb. 6, 1797.

3 T. Poole and his Friends, i. 231, and Estlin Letters, p. 39.

4 Estlin Letters, p. 40.

5 Cottle prints this important letter (Rem. p. 142) in a form both garbled and incomplete, and with the date 'June 1796.' The original was lent me by the late Mr. F. W. Cosens.

by Cottle), T. Poole's opinion of Wordsworth is that he is the greatest man he ever knew. I coincide.' This seems to point to a previous visit or visits to Stowey paid by Wordsworth of which direct record is lacking. Curiously enough the letter makes no mention of Miss Wordsworth. Yet in 1845-across the mists of nearly half-acentury-she as well as her brother retained the liveliest possible image of 'Cole ridge's appearance' on his arrival at Racedown, how 'he did not keep to the high road, but leapt over a gate and bounded down the pathless field, by which he cut off an angle.'1

This is the portrait of Coleridge she drew at the time: He is a wonderful man. His conversation teems with soul, mind, and spirit. Then he is so benevolent, so good-tempered and cheerful, and, like William, interests himself so much about every little trifle. At first I thought him very plain, that is for about three minutes he is pale, thin, has a wide mouth, thick lips, and not very good teeth, longish, loosegrowing, half-curling, rough black hair. But, if you hear him speak for five minutes, you think no more of them. His eye is large and full, and not very dark, but grey -such an eye as would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression; but it speaks every emotion of his animated mind; it has more of "the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling" than I ever witnessed. He has fine dark eyebrows, and an overhanging forehead.'*

If Coleridge carried out his first intention of returning to Stowey on the 16th June, he must soon have gone back, for he appears to have arrived again at Stowey from Racedown on the 28th, and again on the 2nd July, on the last occasion bringing with him 2 the two Wordsworths on that famous visit to the Quantock country, which was destined to be prolonged for a whole year. The visitors spent a fortnight with Coleridge, and it was then that he drew his famous portrait of YX Wordsworth's exquisite sister.' 3 And it was in the course of the same fortnight that Charles Lamb came and spent his week's holiday at the cottage-the visit

* Memoirs of Wordsworth, i. 99. About six months earlier Coleridge sent this portrait of himself to Thelwall: Your portrait of yourself interests me. [The two men had not yet met.] As to me, my face, unless animated by immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, indeed almost idiotic, good nature. 'Tis a mere carcase of a face: fat, flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiognomically good; but of this the Deponent knoweth not. As to my shape, 'tis a good shape enough, if measured-but my gait is awkward, and the walk of the whole man indicates indolence capable of energies. . . . I cannot breathe through my nose, so my mouth with sensual thick lips is almost always open.' It is curious to find Carlyle noting, in 1824, the same indication in Coleridge's general appearance, 'weakness under possibility of strength' (Life of J. Sterling, p. 69). The self-portrait may be compared with the oil-sketch by Hancock done in the same year, and engraved in Cottle's books. The much more attractive drawing by Peter Vandyke, a reproduction of which forms the

frontispiece to the present volume, was done for Cottle a year earlier, in 1795.

It was about this time that the second edition of the Poems appeared. A full account of the contents of the volume will be found in 'APPENDIX K,' pp. 539-544. Lamb's contributions took the second place on the title, and the third in the book-regarding which changed order, and the feelings it occasioned, see Lamb's letter to S. T. C. of June 13, 1797 (Ainger's ed. i. 77). Cottle pretends to remember that the beautiful and touching dedication to the poet's brother George was prompted by himself, but the reasons he assigns for his alleged suggestion are so absurd that his memory most probably was at fault throughout. The 'Ode on the Departing Year' took the first place in the volume, vice 'The Visions of the Maid of Arc,' abandoned in deference to the criticisms of Lamb-possibly also to those of Wordsworth. See Note 102,' p. 584, post.

which the host commemorated in This Lime-tree Bower my Prison* (p. 92). In this poem Coleridge addresses his guests as

'Friends whom I never more may meet again:

Lamb, of course,. was a bird of passage, and so, to all appearance on that evening, were the Wordsworths, for Alfoxden had not yet been seen, or if seen had not yet been secured. But the delay was short. On the 14th August, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote thus from Alfoxden: We spent a fortnight at Coleridge's; in the course of that time we heard that this house was to let, applied for it, and took it. Our principal inducement was Coleridge's society. It was a month yesterday since we came to Alfoxden.'1 The Coleridges' guests had scarcely quitted them— Lamb for London, and the Wordsworths for Alfoxden-when, on the 17th July, a new claimant for hospitality, in the person of John Thelwall,+ arrived at the cottage. It was nine o'clock in the evening, and he found only Sara, who had left her husband at Alfoxden for a day or two that she might superintend the washtub.' In the morning, between five and six, Sara and her guest walked over to Alfoxden-a distance of about three miles-to breakfast.'2 Faith, we are a most philosophical party' (he writes to his wife), 'the enthusiastic group consisting of Coleridge and his Sara, Wordsworth and his sister, and myself, without any servant, male or female. An old woman, who lives in an adjoining cottage, does what is requisite for our simple wants.' The party remained there for three days. It was at this time, and in one of Alfoxden's romantic glens, that (as Wordsworth remembered long afterwards) Coleridge exclaimed, 'This is a place to reconcile one to all the jarrings and conflicts of the wide world!' and Thelwall replied, 'Nay, to make one

* The marginal note which Coleridge in 1834 wrote on the explanatory introduction to the poem (see 'Note 110,' p. 592) has led to the assumption that Mary Lamb accompanied her brother to Stowey in 1797. There can be little doubt that Coleridge's memory - after thirty-seven years-had failed him. In none of Lamb's letters to him, written either before or after the visit, is there any indication that he was to be, or had been, accompanied by his sister. Mary Lamb was at that period in a very precarious state of health, and living apart from her father and brother; and when six months later (Jan. 1798) Coleridge invited the Lambs to visit Stowey, Lamb replied: 'Your invitation went to my very heart; but you have a power of exciting interest, of leading all hearts captive, too forcible to admit of Mary's being with you' (Ainger's ed. i. 86. In other editions this letter is misdated and misplaced).

Known as 'Citizen Thelwall' in those days, and hardly known at all in these. Coleridge and he had been carrying on an extensive correspondence for about a year, but they had now met for the first time. By this time Thelwall had abandoned his somewhat silly, but always

honourably conducted career of political martyrdom, and desired to settle as meditative and poetical farmer in some remote part of the country. In quest of a suitable retreat he had travelled, mostly on foot, from London, and had now arrived at Stowey in acceptance of an invitation from the ever-hospitable Coleridge.

1 The agreement, dated 14th July 1797, is printed in full in T. Poole and his Friends, i. 225. It provided for a year's tenancy of the furnished house, etc., from Midsummer to Midsummer at the rent of £23, including all rates and taxes. Wordsworth may retain the house, etc., for an indefinite period beyond Midsummer 1798 at the same rent. In Thomas Poole and his Friends also is to be found the first accurate account of all the circumstances attending Wordsworth's occupation and forced quittance of Alfoxden-circumstances which have been the subject of much misrepresentation.

2 The details respecting Thelwall are partly taken from a letter to his wife printed in T. Poole and his Friends (i. 232); and partly from Thelwall's MS. Diary, now in my own possession.Sarah' had now become 'Sara.'