But this was the worst view of Southey's character. He had that lower class of virtues which Coleridge had not, and out of his prudence and timidity sprung that worldly substance which Coleridge was never likely to acquire, and by which he kindly made up for some of Coleridge's deficiencies. Coleridge could not provide properly for his family; Southey helped to provide for them, and invited Coleridge's wife and daughter to his house, where for many years they had a home. In all domestic relations, Southey was admirable; he failed only in those which would have given him a name, perhaps, little short of Milton for glorious patriotism, had he proceeded to the end as he began.
Of the literary life of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, who soon after joined them in the west, I have yet to speak. We must now follow Coleridge.
The circumstances which had brought Coleridge to Bristol, though they did not end in pantisocracy, ended in marriage, which for some years fixed him in that part of the country. Cottle, who, a poet of some merit himself, saw the great talent of these young men, offered Southey fifty guineas for his Joan of Arc, and became its publisher. He also offered Coleridge thirty guineas for a volume of poems, the cash to be advanced when he pleased from time to time. On this slender foundation, Coleridge began the world. He took a cottage at Clevedon, some miles from Bristol, and thither he took his bride. It appears truly to have been the poetic idea—love in a cottage, for there was love and little more. Cottle says it had walls, and doors, and windows, but as for furniture, only such as became a philosopher. This was not enough even for poetic lovers. Two days after the wedding, the poet wrote to Cottle to send him the following unpoetical, but very essential articles:—"A riddle-slice; a candle-box; two ventilators; two glasses for the wash-hand stand; one tin dust-pan; one small tin tea-kettle; one pair of candlesticks; one carpet brush; one flour-dredge; three 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, rice, ginger, and mace."
So Coleridge began the world. Cottle, having sent these articles, hastened after them to congratulate the young couple. This is his account of their residence. "The situation of the cottage was peculiarly eligible. It was in the extremity, not in the center of the village. It had the benefit of being but one story high; and, as the rent was only five pounds per annum, and the taxes naught, Mr. Coleridge had the satisfaction of knowing that, by fairly mounting his Pegasus, he could make as many verses in a week as would pay his rent for a year. There was also a small garden, with several pretty flowers, and the 'tallest tree-rose' did not fail to be pointed out, which 'peeped at the chamber window,' and has been honored with some beautiful lines."
The cottage is there yet in its garden; but Coleridge did not long inhabit it. He soon found that even Clevedon was too far out of the world for books and intellect; and returning to Bristol, took lodgings on Redcliff-hill. From this abode he soon again departed, being invited by his friend, Mr. Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, to visit him there. During this visit, he wrote some of his first volume of poems, including the Religious Musings; he then returned to Bristol, and started the idea of his Watchman, and made that journey through the principal manufacturing towns, to obtain subscribers for it, which he so amusingly describes in his Biographia Literaria. This was a failure; but about this time, Charles Lloyd, the eldest son of Charles Lloyd, the banker, of Birmingham, whom Byron has commemorated in the alliterative line of
"— — — —Lovell, Lamb, and Lloyd,"
was smitten with the admiration of Coleridge's genius, and offered to come and reside with him. He therefore took a larger house on Kingsdown, where Lloyd was his inmate. Mr. Poole, of Stowey, however, was not easy to be without the society of Coleridge; he sent him word that there was a nice cottage there at liberty, of only seven pounds per annum rent, and pressed him to come and fix there. Thither Coleridge went, Lloyd also agreeing to accompany them. Unfortunately, Lloyd had the germs of insanity, as well as poetry, in him. He was subject to fits, which agitated and alarmed Coleridge. They eventually disagreed, and Lloyd left, but was afterward reconciled, well perceiving that his morbid nervousness had had much to do with the difference.
This place became for two years Coleridge's home. Here he wrote some of his most beautiful poetry. "The manhood of Coleridge's true poetical life," has been observed by a cotemporary, "was in the year 1797." He was yet only twenty-five years of age; but his poetical faculty had now acquired a wide grasp and a deep power. Here he wrote his tragedy of Remorse, Christabelle, the Dark Ladie, the Ancient Mariner, which was published in the Lyrical Ballads jointly with Wordsworth's first poems, his ode on the Departing Year, and his Fears in Solitude. These works are at once imbued with the highest spirit of his poetry, and the noblest sentiments of humanity. Here he was visited by Charles Lamb, Charles Lloyd, Southey, Hazlitt, De Quincy, who had previously presented him generously with £300; the two great potters, the Wedgwoods, and other eminent men. Wordsworth lived near him at Allfoxden, and was in almost daily intercourse with him. The foot of Quantock was to Coleridge, says one of his biographers, a memorable spot. Here his studies were serious and deep. They were directed not only to poetry, but into the great bulk of theological philosophy. Here, with his friend, Thomas Poole, a man sympathizing in all his tastes, and with Wordsworth, he roamed over the Quantock hills, drinking in at every step new knowledge and impressions of nature. In his Biographia Literaria, he says, "My walks were almost daily on the top of Quantock, and among its sloping coombs." He had got an idea of writing a poem, called The Brook, tracing a stream which he had found, from its source, in the hills, among the yellow-red moss, and conical glass-shaped tufts of bent, to the first break, or fall, where its drops become audible, and it begins to form a channel; thence to the peat and turf barn, itself built of the same dark masses as it sheltered; to the sheepfold; to the first cultivated spot of ground; to the lonely cottage, and its bleak garden won from the heath; to the hamlets, the market-towns, the manufactories, and the sea-port. It will be seen, that this was not quite on so fine a scale as Childe Harold, and that Wordsworth has carried out the idea, in the Sonnets on the river Duddon, not quite so amply as the original idea itself. He says, when strolling alone, he was always with book, paper, and pencil in hand, making studies from nature, whence his striking and accurate transcripts of such things. It will be noticed, in the article on Wordsworth, that these rambles, in the ignorant minds of the country people, converted him and Coleridge into suspicious characters. Coleridge was so open and simple, that they said, "As to Coleridge, he is a whirlbrain, that talks whatever comes uppermost; but that Wordsworth! he is a dark traitor. You never hear him say a syllable on the subject!"
Coleridge himself, in his Biographia Literaria, tells us, that a certain baronet, in the neighborhood, got government to send down a spy to watch them. That this spy was a very honest fellow, for a wonder. That he heard them, he said, at first, talking a deal of Spy Nosey (Spinosa), and thought they were up to him, as his nose was none of the smallest; but he soon found that it was all about books. Coleridge also gives the amusing dialogue between the innkeeper and the baronet, the innkeeper having been ordered to entertain the spy, but, like the spy, soon found that the strange gentlemen were only poets, and going to put Quantock into verse.
Many are the testimonies of attachment to this neighborhood, and the wild Quantock hills, to be found in the poems of Coleridge; and in the third book of the Excursion, Wordsworth describes the Quantock, and their rambles, with all the gusto of a fond memory. First, we have a peep at his own abode. We are conveyed—