desponding sonnet penned within two months of his engagement, and by a final effort, pathetic and not undignified, to assure himself of the exact state of the case as regarded Mary Evans, who was irrevocably pledged to another.

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 antiJacobin 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 progressing 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 sympathizers 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 rehabilitate 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.

Coleridge's fame had hitherto been merely local, his arena was now to be widened. The charm of his conversation had interested many, and his friends at Bristol-whither he had returned after an unsuccessful essay at love in a cottage at Clevedon-met one December evening at "The Rummer" and resolved to aid him to start a periodical, to be published every eighth day to avoid the stamp duty, and entitled "The

"The dress is precisely that which Mr. Coleridge wore when he preached his first sermon in Mr. Jardine's chapel at Bath."

Watchman." Coleridge himself started on a tour to the midland and northern counties to procure subscribers, and between his persuasive eloquence and the advertisement he obtained by preaching in every Unitarian chapel on the road, got nearly a thousand. The journal appeared in March, but reflecting no one's opinions except the author's, pleased no one else. If Coleridge conciliated any sect or party in one number he affronted it in the next, and only ten numbers appeared. Some friends, instigated by the everthoughtful Poole, made up the loss by a subscription, intended to have been the foundation of an annuity. Before this, "Religious Musings," with some companion poems, had appeared, and was pronounced to have attained "the top scale of sublimity."

All sorts of schemes for Coleridge's benefit continued to be tried during the summer of 1796, but came to nothing, until in September he accepted the proposal of Charles Lloyd, the culture-loving son of a Birmingham banker, whose acquaintance he had made in his January tour, to board with him for the sake of his instructions. Lloyd was an interesting and amiable person, but with an unhappy predisposition to insanity, foreshadowed by epileptic fits. Coleridge returned with him to Bristol to find that he was already a father, his son Hartley having been born on September 19th. In December he removed to the cottage at Nether Stowey which he has made so celebrated, a step which seems to have been chiefly dictated by the hope of partly supporting