Coleridge (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Coleridge

From September to December he was at Cambridge, which he quitted without taking a degree, though the indulgent authorities kept his name for some time upon the books. Instead of flying to his betrothed at Bristol, he repaired to London, beguiling the cares of life with poesy in Charles Lamb's company at the Salutation and Cat, until Southey came to look for him and carried him off. Southey himself had in the interim been ejected and disinherited by his anti Jacobin and monocratic aunt, and the financial prospect appeared blank in the extreme, until a Bristol publisher, Joseph Cottle, a Philistine and a poetaster, but able to discern in others the genius lacking to himself, came to the rescue by offering Southey fifty guineas in advance for his unfinished Joan of Arc, and Coleridge thirty guineas for his poems, the most important of which, Religious Musings, was then progress ing at the average rate of a line a day. Coleridge displayed more energy in the courses of political and theological lectures he delivered during the spring and summer, which, spirited, witty, and cogent, Obtained great success among sympa thizers with their principles. They could not, however, keep the Bristol lodgings going, much less equip a pantisocratic settlement. Another settlement had to be made or relinquished.

On October 4th Coleridge was united to Sarah Fricker, without doubt under pressure from Southey, who little foresaw that the result would be that he would have to keep Coleridge's family as well as his own. Coleridge's honour was saved, but his life was blighted. He made, it must be said, the best of the situation, and for a time all seemed to go well: but he must have felt bitter humiliation. Resentment combined with a pecuniary disappointment to prompt a tremendous Objurgation addressed to Southey in the following November for going to Lisbon, and thus, said Coleridge, betraying the sacred cause of Pantisocracy, which both knew to have been long extinct. This idle attempt to rehabili tate himself in his own good opinion at his Mentor's expense led to an interruption of their friendship until Southey's return, when, as Cottle beautifully expresses it, the relentings Of nature threw them silently into each other's arms. But they never walked arm in arm again, except once when they walked with the Devil! The beautiful passage on parted friendship in the second part of Christabel probably alludes to this estrangement.

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