diffusion of Christianity and the formation of modern languages; VII. on Shakespeare; VIII. A philosophical analysis of Romeo and Juliet and of Hamlet; IX. on Macbeth and Othello; X. on Shakespeare; and XI. and XII. on Paradise Lost. I have summarised the somewhat lengthy syllabus from the unique copy preserved by Robinson. It has no dates, price of tickets, or the like; but I have found that the lectures were given on consecutive Tuesday evenings; and that Robinson attended the first on Nov. 3. He says it was a repetition of former lectures, and dull. As the two men walked away from the lecture-room together, they talked of Spinoza, and Coleridge projected a series of lectures on Education, each to be delivered in a state in which it may be sent to the press.'1 Robinson seems to have attended only seven of the lectures. Of the earlier of those heard by him, he gives a poor account, but the twelfth he describes as a very eloquent and popular discourse on the general character of Shakespeare (the subject announced was Milton'), and of the concluding lecture (Jan. 26) he says that Coleridge was 'received with three rounds of applause on entering the room, and very loudly applauded at the close. . . . He this evening, as well as on three or four preceding nights, redeemed the reputation he lost at the commencement of the course.' So far as I am aware, Robinson's jottings form the only record of these lectures.

On Dec. 6, Robinson found Coleridge at Morgan's, in good spirits, and determined to devote himself to the Drama-chiefly to Melodrama and Comic Opera. On the following day he wrote to Robinson requesting the loan of Goethe's Theory of Colours, and repeating his determination respecting the drama-expecting to profit by Goethe's happy mode of introducing incidental songs. He mentions another little project, one steady effort to understand music.'

On December 22, Coleridge informs Stuart 3 that his play is in rehearsal, and that he finds the repeated alterations rather a tedious business. The managers are more sanguine than he is, and with one exception the performers are pleased and gratified with their parts. On the 23rd January 1813, Remorse was first produced at Drury Lane. All the accounts which have come down to us describe the performance as, on the whole, a great success.4 The best evidence, however, is the fact that it ran for twenty nights, and that Coleridge received for his share £400-the contract being that he was to get £100 for the 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 20th night. For the pamphlet of the play he received from the publisher two-thirds of the profits, and as it ran into a third edition, the author's share may have been something considerable. When Poole heard of his old friend's success, he was prompted to send him congratulations, and these, says Mrs. Sandford, drew forth an instant response penetrated with all the old tenderness.' In the same letter to Poole there followed 'an outpouring of grief and difficulties, with some allusion at the end to the withdrawal of the Wedgwood pension, and to the "year-long difference" between Wordsworth and himself, compared with the sufferings of which, he writes, "all former afflictions of my life were less than flea-bites." They were reconciled, indeed, "but—aye there remains the immedicable But."5

The reference in this letter is one of the earliest I have found as to the withdrawal by Josiah Wedgwood of his half of the pension of £150 granted in 1798.

1 Diaries, etc., i. 209.

2 Diaries, i. 222.

3 Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 217.

4 H. C. Robinson's Diaries, etc., i. 212; Autobiographical Recollections of C. R. Leslie, R.A., by T. Taylor, 1860, ii. 32-34. Newspaper

notices collected in OSORIO: a Tragedy. London: Pearson, 1873; Reminiscences (1826) of Michael Kelly, who composed the very successful incidental music. See also 'Note 230,' pp. 649-651, post.

5 T. Poole and his Friends, ii. 244.

As, it will be remembered,1 the total pension was granted to Coleridge for life, and absolutely free from conditions except the wreck of the Wedgwoods' fortune.' Josiah Wedgwood's present action is unaccountable save on the assumption that he had entirely forgotten the terms of his letter of Jan. 10, 1798. But this assumption is hardly tenable, for as a man of the strictest business habits, he must have kept an accurately filed copy of so important a letter. Had this, by some accident, been destroyed or mislaid, he could not have forgotten that the letter had been written, and before taking any action it was manifestly his duty to have used every means for procuring a sight of the original. The original may have been lost, but his inquiries would have included application to Poole, and among his papers a copy would have been found. Besides, Josiah Wedgwood cannot have been unaware that his brother's half-share had been at once secured legally to Coleridge for life, and this fact was of itself a strong indication that the whole had been granted on the same terms. Very reluctantly, for Josiah Wedgwood had otherwise shown himself to be just and generous, I am driven to the conclusion that the withdrawal was a high-handed proceeding, and that Coleridge, though aware of this, made no complaint, owing to a painful consciousness that the benefaction had not been used for the high purposes which had led both to the granting and to the acceptance of it. Practically, Mrs. Coleridge was the sufferer by the withdrawal of the half, for the whole had been for many years at her disposal. Neither did she, though sorely tried by the increasing expenses, actual and prospective, of the children, bring any accusation against Wedgwood.

On the 1st December 1812 a shadow was cast on Wordsworth's household by the death of his little son, Thomas. It seemed to them as if the sun had gone down, and Coleridge was deeply moved. As soon as the sad news reached him he wrote an affectionate letter 2: O that it were within my power to be with you myself nstead of my letter. The Lectures I could give up; but the rehearsal of my Play commences this week, and upon this depends my best hopes of leaving town after Christmas, and living among you as long as I live. . . . What comfort ought I not o afford, who have given you so much pain. . . . I am distant from you some hundred miles, but glad I am that I am no longer distant in spirit, and have faith, hat as it has happened but once, so it never can happen again.' Of this letter, in which Coleridge humbled himself in presence of the sorrow which had darkened his riend's home, Prof. Knight (who does not print the letter in full) says: "I fancy here were phrases and statements in it which the Wordsworths did not like, and that 10 immediate reply was sent to Coleridge.'. Whatever the obstacle, it seems only oo probable that no immediate reply was sent, and that Coleridge, with good reason, elt himself deeply wounded, for when he was free to go north he refrained. On March 10, Mrs. Clarkson wrote to Robinson: C., as I told you, wrote to them the Wordsworths] several times after the death of little Tom, and said that he would... certainly go were it [the play] successful. William and Dorothy have both written to him to say that nothing would do W. so much good as his company and conversation. He has taken no notice whatever of these letters; . . . and they ave heard by a letter from Mr. Morgan to Southey or Mrs. C., that C. is going out of town to the seaside!!! Imagine them in the depths of sorrow, receiving this

1 See p. xl. supra. It would seem that the vithdrawal took place at the end of 1812. Miss Meteyard's unsupported statement (Group of Englishmen, p. 378) that it took place in 1811, hich has been generally accepted, is untenable.

Her justification of Wedgwood was written in ignorance of the unconditional terms on which the pension had been granted.

2 Knight's Life of W. W. ii. 181.

cutting intelligence. . . . The account of the state of the family at Grasmere would make your heart ache-supposing myself to have been deeply injured, would one wish for a more noble triumph than to fly to the succour of the friend who had inflicted the wound?' It was at the request, expressed or implied, of the Wordsworths that Mrs. Clarkson was endeavouring to soften Coleridge's heart. She saw him at Morgan's, but he seems to have been obdurate. Mary Lamb took Coleridge's side, and after all' acknowledged Mrs. Clarkson on March 29th: I do incline to think with M. L[amb] that there is something amongst them which makes it perhaps better that they should not meet just now. I am, however, quite sure that . . . it rests with him [Coleridge] entirely to recover all that he has lost in their hearts.' I have no doubt Mrs. Clarkson correctly interpreted the Wordsworths' feelings, as they were at at the end of March, and that it would have been better for both parties, had Coleridge forgiven and forgotten the offence, when the Wordsworths had in their turn humbled themselves to him-but the documents which would enable us to judge with some approach to accuracy are not before us. A bond, such as had existed between Coleridge and Wordsworth, once broken may be mended, but it cannot be welded. It was broken by Wordsworth in an unguarded moment. But evils wrought by want of thought call up Nemesis as surely as those wrought by want of heart. The bond had been mended, as such bonds may; it would seem as if under stress of sorrow he had been driven to break it afresh; and one must regret that, when he became conscious of what he had thrown away, his cries were unavailing. But we need not be surprised, and our regret must be even greater on Coleridge's account than on Wordsworth's, for, in the conduct of life, Wordsworth was strong'strong in himself and powerful to give strength.' One feels, too, that with Coleridge it could not have been hardness of heart which held him in London when he was needed at Grasmere ; but rather paralysis of will. Whatever the cause, the effects were disastrous. Had Coleridge received an instant and worthy response to his letter of Dec. 7, his impulse, momentary though it may possibly may have been, to return to the Lake country as a permanent resident, might have been strengthened, and the current of his life turned into a smoother channel.1

He seems to have remained in London, doing nothing, until October. Southey came up to town in September and saw him several times. On the 4th October he took Coleridge to Madame de Staël's, and left him there in the full spring-tide of his discourse.' (It was that clever lady's first experience of his greatness in monologue.) Southey adds that Coleridge's time of departure seems still uncertain,' and that Mrs. C. will not be sorry to hear that he is selling his German books.'2 This evidently last desperate effort to raise money is also mentioned to Stuart of Sep. 27. In the same letter he asks him to look at what he should have called a masterly essay on the cause of the downfall of the Comic Drama, if he were not perplexed by the distinct recollection of having conversed the greater part of it at Lamb's.' The essay was in that day's Morning Chronicle, for which paper Hazlitt then acted as dramatic critic. Coleridge had not written to his wife since March, but wher Southey was in town, proposed to go home with him. Then came the invitation or proposal-from which side, I know not-to lecture at Bristol, and Coleridge assured Southey that as soon as the course was finished he would set out direct for Keswick.

1 See Knight's Life of W. W. ii. 181-187.

Letters of R. S. ii. 332.

XI. BRISTOL-CALNE

Some time in October Coleridge left London for Bristol by coach. morning preceding the day announced for his first lecture at the Great Room of the 'White Lion.' He talked incessantly for thirty miles out of London, . . . and afterwards with little intermission till the coach reached Marlborough, when he discovered' that a fellow-passenger was the sister of a particular friend, and on her way to North Wales. At Bath he took a chaise, and gallantly escorted the lady to her destination, arriving at Bristol two or three days behind time.1 He came as the guest of his faithful old friend Josiah Wade, and a fresh day was appointed for the opening lecture. It was Oct. 28, and after some difficulty the person of the lecturer was secured and deposited on the platform 'just one hour' (says Cottle) 'after all the company had impatiently awaited him.' After that evening 'no other important delay arose, and the lectures gave great satisfaction.' The six were completed on Nov. 16,2 the last being extra and gratuitous on account of the 'diffuseness he unavoidably fell into in his introductory discourse.' On Nov. 17 he appears to have delivered a seventh lecture on Education, but of this no record seems to remain. The same fate, unfortunately, attended a second and similarly successful course 3 of six lectures-two on Shakespeare and four on Milton-announced on Dec. 30, 1813.4 This was followed by a third of four lectures on Milton, delivered between April 5 and 14, 1814,5 which Cottle says were but indifferently attended.' He adds that Coleridge announced four lectures on Homer, hoping to attract the many,' but that only a few of his old and staunch friends attended.' All these Bristol lectures, Cottle tells us, were of a conversational character,' such as those with which he delighted his friends in private. The attention of his hearers [of the lectures] never flagged, and his large dark eyes, and his countenance, in an excited state, glowing with intellect, predisposed his audience in his favour.'

I have thought it best to keep together the records of the various courses of Bristol lectures, but the narrative must needs go back to October 1813. C. R. Leslie, the painter, then a promising Academy student of twenty, was at Bristol on a short visit to Coleridge's friends, the Allstons, and heard three of the first course of lectures. They gave him, he wrote at the time, a much more distinct and satisfactory view of the nature and ends of poetry, and of painting, than I ever had before.' It will be seen that Coleridge did not fulfil his promise to return to Keswick at the close of his lecture engagement. He did not even write to Keswickat all events up to Feb. 1814. His family had not then seen him for two years, and it was nearly one since they had received a letter from him.

In December 1813 I find him returning to Robinson two borrowed volumes of Spinoza's works, and anxious to procure some things of J. P. Richter, Fichte, and Schelling. He has just returned to Bristol from a visit to the Morgans, who had

1 Cottle's Rem. p. 353.

2 The lectures, which were on Shakespeare and Milton, were briefly reported in the Bristol papers, and from them transcribed by the pious efforts of Mr. George, the well-known Bristol bookseller. These reports are printed in Mr. Ashe's Lectures, etc., previously mentioned. 3 Cottle's Rem. p. 354.

4 ASHE, p. 456.

5 Ib. p. 457.

6 Rem. p. 354.

7 Leslie had accompanied the Allstons from London to Bristol. Mr. Allston fell ill on the way at Salt Hill, and Coleridge was sent for from town. Leslie says (Mem. i. 35): 'At Salt Hill and on some other occasions, I witnessed his [Coleridge's] performance of the duties of a friendship in a manner which few men of his constitutional indolence could have roused themselves to equal.'

followed him to the west country, and were now living in reduced circumstances, and as regards both ladies of the family with impaired health, near Bath. For the spring and summer of 1814, Cottle is almost the only authority,1 and unreliable as he is, the best has to be made of him. At some uncertain time previous to April, Coleridge borrowed of him ten pounds to pay off a dirty fellow' who had threatened arrest.

About the same time every one, save Cottle himself, had noticed in Coleridge's 'look and deportment' 'something unusual and strange'; and, soon after, while both were calling on Hannah More, Cottle observed that Coleridge's hand shook. On mentioning this to a friend next day, it was explained to him. That,' said the friend, arises from the immoderate quantity of opium he takes.' 'It was,' says Cottle, the first time the melancholy fact. . . had come to my knowledge.' A movement had been set afoot by Cottle for getting together an annuity of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, that Coleridge might pursue his literary objects without pecuniary distractions'; but the scheme appears to have been checked by opposition from Southey, who pointed out that Coleridge's 'distractions' were not primarily 'pecuniary,' but narcotic.

After hearing from Southey, Cottle sent to the culprit, on the 25th April, a communication, the tone and purport of which is sufficiently indicated by its opening sentence 2: I am conscious of being influenced by the purest motives in addressing you the following letter.' Next day Coleridge replied: "You have poured oil into the raw and festering wound of an old friend's conscience, Cottle! but it is oil of vitriol! I but barely glanced at the middle of the first page of your letter, and have seen no more of it-not from resentment, God forbid! but from the state of my bodily and mental sufferings, that scarcely permitted human fortitude to let in a new visitor of affliction. The object of my present reply is to state the case just as it is.' First, he goes on to say, the consciousness of his guilt towards his Maker has been his greatest anguish these ten years; secondly, he has never concealed the cause of his direful infirmity-and has warned two young men, inclined to laudanum, of the consequences, as exhibited in his own case; thirdly, he can say that he was ignorantly seduced into the habit, by bodily pain, and not by desire of pleasurable sensations. His case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement, an utter impotence of the volition, and not of the intellectual faculties. You bid me rouse myself; go bid a man paralytic in both arms to rub them briskly together, and that will cure him. "Alas!" he would reply, "that I cannot move my arms, is my complaint and my misery!" Had he 'but £200-half to send to Mrs. Coleridge, and half to place himself in a private madhouse where he could procure nothing but what a physician thought proper . . . for two or three months, there might be hope.' He would 'willingly place himself under Dr. Fox, in his establishment.' On the same day Cottle replied, counselling him to pray, and asking pardon if his former letter' appeared unkind; to which Coleridge instantly replied, assuring Cottle that he 'thanked' him, that he did endeavour to pray, but that Cottle had no conception of the dreadful hell of his mind and conscience and body. Probably on the day following, Coleridge wrote to Cottle a letter in which he enlarged, but calmly, on the reasonable expectations a Christian may entertain on the subject of sincere prayer, quoting and recommending Archbishop Leighton, and going on to express his resolve to put himself under Dr. Fox if money enough can be procured. Will Cottle see W. Hood and Le Breton and Wade as to this? Does he know Fox?

1 Rem. pp. 352-386.

2 Early Recoll. ii. 150; and Rem. p. 361. Cottle evidently could not refrain from garbling

his own letter, as he garbled the rest of the correspondence, for the text is not the same in both books.