Although Coleridge lived a most retired life, it was not enough to exempt him from the watchfulness of the spies of government whose employment required some apparent activity before they could receive the reward they expected. Nor did he escape the suspicion of being a dangerous person to the government; which arose partly from his connexion with Wordsworth, and from the great seclusion of his life. Coleridge was ever with book, paper, and pencil in hand, making, in the language of, artists, "Sketches and studies from nature." This suspicion, accompanied with the usual quantity of obloquy, was not merely attached to Coleridge, but extended to his friend, "whose perfect innocence was even adduced as a suspicion of his guilt," by one of these sapients, who observed that
"as to Coleridge, there is not much harm in him; for he is a whirl-brain, that talks whatever comes uppermost; but that Wordsworth! he is a dark traitor. You never hear him say a syllable on the subject."
During this time the brother poets must have been composing or arranging the
Lyrical Ballads
, which were published the following year, i. e. 1798. Coleridge also in 1797 wrote the
Remorse
, or rather the play he first called
Osorio
, the name of the principal character in it, but finding afterwards that there was a respectable family of that name residing in London, it was changed for the title of the
Remorse