of verse himself, Coleridge returned for the last time to Cambridge. Here he published "The Fall of Robespierre," a drama written jointly by himself and Southey. It was little better than a versified newspaper, and did not possess merit enough to supply the want of dramatic interest common to it with most plays founded on contemporaneous events. He then went to London, and renewed his friendship with Lamb. They used to meet in the evenings at the Salutation and Cat Inn, and here, "drinking egg-hot, and smoking Orinooko," ("associated circumstances," as Lamb said, "which ever forcibly recall to my mind our evenings and nights at the Salutation,") they sat together through the winter nights, building up golden plans, unsuspicious of impending sorrows.

Early in 1795, still full of Pantisocracy, he returned to Bristol and Southey, intending to set sail for America in March. But a serious question arose: how they were to obtain the means necessary to carry out their scheme. Both the young men, moreover, had fallen in love, and with sisters, Sarah and Edith Fricker, and they wanted something to enable them to make provision for their marriage. They therefore determined to give public lectures at Bristol, and the winter and spring were occupied in this way. Coleridge lectured on political, religious, and moral subjects, Southey on historical. Two of his lectures Coleridge published under the title of "Con

ciones ad Populum," and a third called "The Plot Discovered;" but they did not attract much attention, or add much to his income.*

About this time, at Cottle's solicitation, Coleridge was preparing a volume of poems, for which he was to receive thirty guineas. His indolence and frequent neglect to furnish copy at the time promised are curiously illustrated by the notes which Cottle has preserved. Sometimes one engagement interfered, sometimes another; now a devil, a very devil had got possession of his left temple, eye, jaw, throat, and shoulder," and he could not write; now, he was "over the mouth and nose doing something of importance at Lovell's;" and so on, until Cottle at last grew tired of urging.

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The volume was still further delayed by Coleridge's marriage, which took place on the 4th of October, 1795. He went immediately with his wife to a cottage at Clevedon, near Bristol, which must have been fitted up rather to gratify the taste than to satisfy the wants of its occupants, as two days after his marriage we find Coleridge writing to Cottle to ask him to send down "a riddle slice; a candle-box; two ventilators; two glasses for the wash-hand stand; one tin dustpan; one small tin teakettle; one pair of candlesticks; one carpet-brush; one flour-dredge; three

*"Your Conciones ad Populum," writes Lamb, in the earliest letter of his that has been preserved, "are the most eloquent politics that ever came in my way."

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tin extinguishers; two mats; a pair of slippers; a cheese-toaster; two large tin spoons; a Bible; a keg of porter; coffee; raisins; currants; catsup; nutmegs; allspice; cinnamon; rice; ginger and mace."* The next day, probably after the receipt of these articles, Coleridge writes to Poole, calling it our comfortable cot." In the same letter, he says, "In the course of half a year I mean to return to Cambridge, having previously taken my name off from the University's control, and, hiring lodgings there for myself and wife, finish my great work of Imitations in two volumes. My former works may, I hope, prove somewhat of genius and of erudition; this will be better; it will show great industry and manly consistency."† But before the end of the year he had moved from Clevedon to Bristol, then, to Stowey, to visit Mr. Poole, and then back again to Bristol. Here once more he set about preparing his poems for publication; but delay on delay occurred as before, and the volume made but slow progress. In February, he wrote, during a fit of despondency occasioned by the clouds hanging over the future, and by the sense of his own remissness,

"It is my duty and business to thank God for all his dispensations, and to believe them the best possible; but, indeed, I think I should have been

*Cottle's Reminiscences, p. 30.

↑ Biographical Supplement, Biographix Literaria, ii. 348.

more thankful, if he had made me a journeyman shoemaker instead of an author by trade. I have left friends; I have left plenty; I have left that ease which would have secured a literary immortality, and have enabled me to give to the public works conceived in moments of inspiration, and polished with leisurely solicitude; and, alas! for what have I left them? For who deserted me in the hour of distress, and for a scheme of virtue impracticable and romantic."

It is not plain what prospects of plenty or ease Coleridge can refer to in this letter, as having been left by him, or of whose desertion he complains, unless it be that of Southey, with whom he had had a quarrel some months before, on oc casion of the abandonment of the Susquehanna scheme, which Southey's good sense and improved prospects had led him to renounce, before Coleridge was convinced of its extravagance.

At last, in April, 1796, his volume of poems appeared, containing most of those pieces which have since been published under the title of Juvenile Poems. Among them were his well-known sonnet to Schiller, and the long poem called Religious Musings, which contains passages of much beauty. Meanwhile, Coleridge, who had "given up" in October "all thoughts of a Magazine for various reasons," had issued proposals in December for "a Miscellany to be called The Watchman, to be published on every eighth day from

the first of March, to supply at once the places of a Review Newspaper, and Annual Register." He spent a month on a tour to solicit subscriptions, and visited Worcester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and other places, preaching as a Unitarian wherever he could get an invitation to do so. He returned to Bristol in February, 1796, having succeeded in obtaining a large number of subscribers. The first number of The Watchman was issued on the 1st of March, the tenth and last on the 13th of May. The causes of its sudden failure were numerous. Coleridge himself wrote not more than a third of it, and even his portion had little striking merit. The prospectus had promised too much; the subscribers, becoming dissatisfied, fell off faster than they had been obtained, till at length the work did not pay its expenses.* Whatever in it was valuable and of a permanent nature was included in his later publications.

Plan after plan now succeeded, with such rapidity as to prevent any one of them from being carried into execution. First, Poole proposed to

* In a letter to Poole, Coleridge says:· "I have received two or three letters from different Anonymi, requesting me to give more poetry. One of them writes thus:

'Sir, I detest your principles; your prose I think very so so; but your poetry is so beautiful that I take in your Watch man solely on account of it. In justice therefore to me, and some others of my stamp, I entreat you to give us more verse and less democratic scurrility.

'Your Admirer, -not Esteemer.'"