three weeks after I received a letter from him from White Horse Stairs, Piccadilly; he was just arrived in town, had been ill, owing to sitting in wet clothes, had passed three weeks at the house of a Mr. Morgan, and had been nursed by his wife and her sister in the kindest manner. C. found Davy very ill. The Lectures on that account were postponed. Stewart [sic] had insisted on his being at the Courier office during his stay in town. . . . Wordsworth obtained a few lines from him ten days ago. Davy was better, and the Lectures were to commence in a fortnight. Since then we have heard nothing. Dr. Stoddart is arrived from Malta. He has brought with him C.'s papers. C. wrote to him to expostulate with him for having detained them so long [receiving an abusive reply, and a demand for £50 expenses]. He [S. T.C.] has published in the Courier lately "The Wanderer's Farewell."'1

This very interesting letter of Mrs. Coleridge gives a succinct account of her husband up to the end of 1807. It will be observed that it contains no mention of De Quincey's bounty. He, of course, would say nothing to Mrs. Coleridge, and Coleridge himself had evidently been equally reticent. His detention, we may assume, was not unconnected with the delay in receiving the three hundred pounds, which was paid on November 12, at least a fortnight after Mrs. Coleridge's departure.

Coleridge resumed his old quarters at the top of the Courier building in the Strand.2 His sole duty being to prepare his lectures, no doubt he gave to them such time as he could spare from assisting Stuart and Street in the conduct of their newspaper. Of this, the first 3 course of lectures delivered by Coleridge, but a scanty and fragmentary record remains. 4 Lamb writes to Manning on February 26, 1808: 'Coleridge has delivered two lectures at the R.I.; two more were attended, but he did not come. It is thought he has gone sick upon them. He ain't well, that's certain. Wordsworth is coming to see him.' This sounds a little unfeeling, as coming from Lamb; but it was Coleridge's own letters, etc., confirmed by one from Mary Lamb,7 which were bringing Wordsworth to town. I gather that Lamb suspected that opium was largely responsible for his friend's illness, and that Wordsworth's moral influence would be more powerful than his own. Wordsworth came and Southey followed; and during their stay in town Coleridge recovered, and before Wordsworth left on the 3rd April he had heard two lectures, which (he says) 'seemed

1 See page 179, and 'Note 185,' p. 636.

2 See De Quincey's amusing account of Coleridge's situation in Works (1863, ii. 98).

3 It was really the first, notwithstanding statements by Coleridge and his editors to the contrary.

4 The following is a list of all the lectures of which there is any general or particular record, printed and unprinted: I. Jan. 12, 1808; II. Feb. 5; III. and IV. before April 3. At least three more were given before May 15, and several more in the course of the succeeding five or six weeks. Notes of four were made by H. Crabb Robinson-see his Diary, etc., 1872, i. 140; and Mrs. H. N. Coleridge's Notes and Lectures on Shakespeare [by S. T. C.], 1849. These are not included in Lectures and Notes on Shakspere and other English Poets, by S. C. T., now first collected by T. Ashe (Bell, 1883), a useful, and in

many respects an excellent compilation.

5 To the confusion of the sense, this word has hitherto been printed 'intended.' I quote from the original letter.

6 On this, see Mem. of Coleorton, ii. 35.

7 Coleridge had been ill and better again in December 1807 (Mem. of Coleorton, ii. 41). On Feb. 18, 1808, he reports to Beaumont that he has been 'very ill' for many weeks, with only two 'day-long intervals.' He has been able to do nothing except to write 'a moral and political defence of the Copenhagen business,' which requires only a concluding paragraph. This no doubt was for the Courier (see H. C. Robinson's Diary, etc., 1872, i. 138). 'I shall disgust many friends,' he adds, 'but I do it from my conscience. What other motive have I?' (M. of C. ii. 47). There is not a word of lectures.

to give great satisfaction,' although Coleridge was not in spirits, and suffered much during the week both in body and mind.'1 About this time Coleridge reviewed his friend Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the Slave-trade' in the Edinburgh. He had begged Jeffrey to be merciful to an imperfect book for the sake of the almost perfect character of the author; on which Jeffrey asked Coleridge to be himself the critic. He afterwards complained of gross mutilation of his MS. and of inversion of some of his sentiments, especially as regards Pitt, whose sincerity in the matter of Abolition, Coleridge had asserted. He proposed to republish his review, corrected and augmented, but he did not, and it has never been reprinted.2 In May, Coleridge writes 3 of himself as correcting and revising Wordsworth's White Doe of Rylstone, then ready for the press. He is hampered by 'the heat and bustle of these disgusting lectures,' the next of which will be his first on ' Modern Poetry,' to be followed, later on, by one on Wordsworth's 'System and Compositions.' The lectures came to an end late in June.4 De Quincey's statements 5 respecting Coleridge's condition during the period of the lectures, and of his frequent failure to appear at Albemarle Street, have much the appearance of exaggeration. They are in no way corroborated by Crabb Robinson, and the two failures reported by Lamb were probably all that took place.

When the lectures were over, Coleridge went to Bury St. Edmunds on a visit to the Clarksons. Mrs. Clarkson was one of his most devoted and sympathetic friends, and one whose high qualities of mind and heart were greatly appreciated by him. It was no doubt owing to her good influence that he at this time relinquished laudanum, or at least the abuse of it. Soon after this visit he wrote thus to Stuart: 'I am hard at work, and feel a pleasure in it which I have not known for years; a consequence and reward of my courage in at length overcoming the fear of dying suddenly in my sleep, which, Heaven knows, alone seduced me into the fatal habit, etc. . . . If I entirely recover I shall deem it a sacred duty to publish my cure, for the practice of taking opium is dreadfully spread.' This was written from Allan Bank,' Wordsworth's recently-entered and very uncomfortable house at Grasmere. Coleridge has arrived at last' (wrote Southey to his brother Tom, September 9, 1808), about half as big as the house. He came with Wordsworth on Monday, and returned with him on Wednesday. His present scheme [which was carried out] is to put the boys to school at Ambleside and reside at Grasmere himself.' 7 At Stowey, a year before, some such arrangement had been discussed as a contingency, but up to June 1808 nothing further had been said to Mrs. Coleridge. She was anxious, on the children's account,' that Greta Hall might be decided on, and the landlord, Jackson, was seconding her efforts by building some additional accommodation, fearing that Coleridge found too little privacy, owing to the presence of the Southey family. On December 4, Miss Wordsworth writes from Allan Bank to Mrs. Marshall: At the time of the great storm, Mrs. Coleridge and her little girl were here, and Mr.

1 Mem. of Coleorton, ii. 48.

2 Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 180; Allsop's Letters, etc., p. 185; Frag. Rem. p. 102. 3 Knight's Life of W. W. ii. 100.

4 Whether he delivered the full contract number of sixteen, I know not, but it seems probable he did, for he received the full fee of a hundred pounds-£40 advanced in October 1808 and £60 in March 1809. In April 1808 he had applied for the £60, and been refused. This lack of confidence was much resented by him, and he imme

C

Coleridge is with us constantly. . . . Mr. Coleridge and his wife are separated, and I hope they will both be the better for it. They are upon friendly terms, and occasionally see each other. In fact, Mrs. Coleridge was more than a week at Grasmere [Allan Bank] under the same roof with him. Coleridge intends to spend the winter with us. On the [other] side of this paper you will find the prospectus of a work which he is going to undertake; and I have little doubt but that it will be well executed if his health does not fail him; but on that score (though he is well at present) I have many fears.'1

The 'prospectus' was, of course, that of The Friend. Coleridge and his friends of this period must have used up a ream or two of it in their correspondencea fly-leaf of the foolscap having been left blank expressly for this purpose. Early in December Coleridge wrote to Davy 2: My health and spirits are improved beyond my boldest hopes. A very painful effort of moral courage has been remunerated by tranquillity-by ease from the sting of self-disapprobation. done more for the last ten weeks than I had done for three years before. . . . I would willingly inform you of my chance of success in obtaining a sufficient number of subscribers, so as to justify me prudentially in commencing the work, but I do not possess grounds even for a sane conjecture. It will depend in a great measure on the zeal of my friends.' To Stuart and to Poole he wrote in the same strain, but to them he added an intimation that he had consulted a physician. To Poole he says he is now feeling the blessedness of walking altogether in the light.' We may perhaps interpret this to mean that he had suspended opium-eating for a time. to the physician, it is a little suspicious that he says nothing of him to Davy.3

As

The prospectus' mentioned by Miss Wordsworth was sent out without consultation with any one, and the first number was announced for the first Saturday in January 1809,' 'in case of a sufficient number of subscribers being obtained.' 'Will he carry the thing on? Dios es que sabe,' wrote Southey to his brother Henry 5. 'if he does but fairly set it forward, it shall not drop for any accidental delay of illness on his part. Of course The Friend did not appear on January 7. On January 18, Southey told Rickman: Meantime a hundred difficulties open upon him in the way of publication, and doubtless some material changes must be made in the plan. I advise half-a-crown or five shilling numbers irregularly, whenever they are ready ; but no promised time, no promised quantity, no promised anything. [The Friend] is expected to start in March.' Stuart suggested monthly instead of weekly numbers, and Wordsworth urged that the advice should be taken, but Coleridge objected strongly. At first The Friend was to be printed and published in London: next in Kendal; but in February Coleridge arranged with a clever young man,' Mr. John Brown, to print and publish for him in Penrith. Then he discovered that this clever young man had not type enough, and Coleridge had to buy £38 worth.

1 Knight's Life, ii. 120.

2 Frag. Rem. p. 101.

3 In all these letters of December, Coleridge writes of The Friend as of something of which they had been previously aware. Can it have been to some such project that Coleridge alluded in a mutilated passage of his letter to Wordsworth of May 1808? He has been writing of Wordsworth's pecuniary anxieties, and goes on: 'Indeed, before my fall . . . I had indulged the hope that, by division of labour, you would have

no occasion to think about... as, with very warm and zealous patronage, I was fast ripening a plan which secures from £12 to £20 a week (the prospectus, indeed, going to the press as soon as Mr. Sotheby and Sir G. Beaumont had read it).' Knight's Life, ii. 102.

4 Letters of R. S. ii. 120.

5 lb. ii. 114.

6 A promise of assistance which was neve: rendered, though that may not have been Southey's fault.

By the 23rd March, Wordsworth had become very anxious, and wrote to Poole 1: 'I give it to you as my deliberate opinion, founded upon proofs which have been strengthening for years, that he neither will nor can execute anything of important benefit to himself, his family, or mankind'; all is frustrated by a derangement in his intellectual and moral constitution. In fact, he has no voluntary power of mind whatever, nor is he capable of acting under any constraint of duty or moral obligation.' The Friend may appear, but it cannot go on for any length of time. I am sure it cannot. C., I understand, has been three weeks at Penrith,' and will answer no letters. And then he calls on Poole to come to the rescue-in summer, for it is of no use to attempt to stop Coleridge now. A week later (March 30) Wordsworth wrote again to Poole-Coleridge, he says, has not been at Grasmere for a month. He is now at Keswick, 'having had a great deal of trouble about arranging the publication of The Friend. . . . I cannot say that Coleridge has been managing himself well.' Probably he had heard from Southey that opium was again in the ascendant. Poole, Stuart, Montagu, and Clarkson were advancing money for the stamped paper. It was sent (of course) by the wrong route and did not arrive till May 8. At last, but not until June 1st, The Friend No. I. appeared. 3 The mode of payment by subscribers will be announced in a future number,' promised Coleridge, and in No. II. this promise was fulfilled, characteristically, by a vague proposal that payment should be made at the close of each twentieth week '—the third number to be deferred for a fortnight (instead of a week) to allow lists of subscribers to come in, and arrangements to be made for mode of payment. Nothing more was said about the matter until after the issue of the twentieth number, at the end of the year.

Having seen No. II. despatched on June 8, Coleridge returned from Penrith to Grasmere and wrote to Stuart : 'I printed 620 of No. I. and 650 of No. II., and 30 many more are called for that I shall be forced to reprint both as soon as I hear from Clarkson [regarding fresh stocks of paper].5 The proof-sheet of No. III. goes back to-day, and with it the "copy" of No. IV., so that henceforth we shall be secure of regularity.' Alas! No. III. appeared on August 10-seven weeks late; and No. IV. on September 7-again three weeks late. And no wonder. The conditions were impossible. There was Coleridge himself; there were the imperfect arrangenents for supplies of paper; and, as if these hindrances were not enough, there were he relative situations of Grasmere and Penrith. The mere distance, 28 miles, was nothing; but there was no direct post, and Kirkstone Pass lay, a veritable lion, in he path. After months of experience, the best line of communication Coleridge could devise was to send his 'copy' on Friday by carrier to Keswick, the carrier ending the parcel on by the Saturday coach to Penrith. And vice versa. The correction ind re-transmission of the proofs were entrusted to Southey. How long the round

1 Knight's Life of W. W. ii. 124.

2 The stamp on each number was 31d., but here were discounts which reduced the cost to ittle more than 3d.

3 'THE FRIEND; a Literary, Moral, and Poliical Weekly Paper, excluding Personal and Party Politics and Events of the Day. Conlucted by S. T. Coleridge of Grasmere, Westnoreland. Each number will contain a stamped heet of large Octavo, like the present; and will e delivered free of expense by the Post, throughut the Kingdom, to Subscribers. The Price ach number One Shilling. . . . Penrith: Printed

and Published by J. Brown.' The continuity of issue was frequently broken-thus there were eight blank weeks between II. and III.; three between III. and IV.; one between XI. and XII.; one between XX. and XXI.; and one between XXVI. and XXVII. and last.

4 Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 165. 'June

13.'

5 A collation of a set of stamped, with the set of unstamped, numbers issued with a title-page in 1812, shows that the first twelve numbers in the volume were revised reprints done in 1809.

6

journey occupied, I do not know, but probably neither conveyance ran daily. The system was only ameliorated by the passage of chance chaises either way, but once when the printing-house rats had devoured a page-long motto from Hooker, and duplicate transcripts were entrusted by Coleridge to two drivers, both failed of delivery to the printer; and No. VIII. was, in consequence, issued a week after due date. Then the subscription-list plan proved a bad one, as Coleridge publicly confessed in afteryears. 1 In January 1810 he made the same confession in a letter to Lady Beaumont 2-many subscribers withdrew their names, and many of those who did not, withheld the money. Nearly all complained that the contents were too dull, and an attempt was made to enliven the pages by printing Satyrane's Letters.' These, with contributions in prose and verse from Wordsworth, practically filled up the numbers from November 23 to January 25 (1810), when the Sketches and Fragments of the Life and Character of the late Sir Alexander Ball'* began a series, too long indeed, but destined never to be completed. While The Friend was being abandoned to Satyrane and Wordsworth, Coleridge was contributing a series of letters to the Courier On the Spaniards,' with the view of exciting British sympathy in the struggles of that nation against Napoleon. His own feelings were thoroughly roused-for this' (he wrote) is not a quarrel of Governments, but the war of a people against the armies of a remorseless invader, usurper, and tyrant.' 'Coleridge's spirits have been irregular of late,' wrote Miss Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont (February 28-March 5, 1810). He was damped after the twentieth number by the slow arrival of payments,5 and half persuaded himself that he ought not to go on. We laboured hard against such a resolve, and he seems determined to fight onwards.' And she proceeds to describe how, from the commencement, The Friend had been produced by fits and starts-sometimes a number in two days, sometimes not a line composed for weeks and weeks'; the papers being generally dictated to Miss Sarah Hutchinson, and never re-transcribed. In the same letter Miss Wordsworth announces that Miss Hutchinson's prolonged visit was to come to an end in a fortnight. Coleridge most of all will miss her, as she has transcribed almost every paper of The Friend for the press.' So much did Coleridge miss his devoted secretary, that The Friend came to an end with her visit to Allan Bank-flickering out with No. XXVII., Thursday, March 15, 1810'-the last printed words, '(To be concluded in our next number),' referring to the articles about Ball.

So perished, one cannot say untimely, a work which Hazlitt not inaptly described as an enormous title-page . . . an endless preface to an imaginary work.' But i was, like all that came from Coleridge, an integral part of himself, and therefore a heap of ore rich in finest metal. The Friend of Highgate and 1818, which he was

* It is commonly stated, on what authority I know not, that Coleridge and Ball got on very badly, and that the laudation in The Friend was insincere. All the evidence derivable from Coleridge's correspondence and diaries of the period points in the opposite direction. I suspect that Stoddart spread reports about Coleridge which were coloured by his resentment of real or imaginary injuries.

1 Biog. Lit. 1817, i. 162. The real facts of the story there given about 'the gentleman who procured nearly a hundred names' will be found in Mem. of Coleorton, ii. 99. The collation of the two versions will repay the curious student.

2 Mem. of Coleorton, ii. 96-108.

3 No. 1. appeared on December 7, 1809, and No. VIII. and last on January 20, 1810. Re printed in Essays on his own Times, pp. 593 676.

4 Mem. of Coleorton, ii. 109-115.

5 'Of the small number who have paid in thei subscriptions, two-thirds, nearly, have discon tinued the work.' S. T. C. to Lady Beaumont January 21, 1810 (Mem. of Coleorton, ii. 97).

6 The MSS. with some correspondence there with connected are preserved in the Forste Collection at South Kensington.