was soon sent adrift from the other side. Coleridge started with a party of friends on a pleasure tour in Wales, and on the way he wrote this first letter to Southey at Oxford: "You are averse to gratitudinarian flourishes, else would I talk about hospitality, attention, etc., etc.; however, as I must not thank you, I will thank my stars. Verily, Southey, I like not Oxford, nor the inhabitants of it. I would say thou art a nightingale among owls; but thou art so songless and heavy towards night that I will rather liken thee to the matin lark; thy nest is in a blighted cornfield, where the sleepy poppy nods its redcowled head, and the weak-eyed mole plies his dark work; but thy soaring is even unto heaven. Or let me add (my appetite for similes is truly canine at this moment) that as the Italian nobles their new-fashioned doors, so thou must make the adamantine gate of Democracy turn on its golden hinges to most sweet music." Southey loved the blighted cornfield of Oxford as little as Coleridge; that matin lark thought so ill of Oxford's cowl-headed poppies and weak-eyed moles that it did not trouble to sing to them. Southey left abruptly without waiting for his degree. The long vacation commenced soon after Coleridge's departure for Wales, and Southey went down to visit an aunt at Bath. Coleridge returned by Bristol, and there the new friends clasped fraternal hands again.

There were many persons at Bristol with whom the young poets found themselves in sympathy. Foremost among these were a family of young ladies, the daughters of Stephen Fricker, lately dead, who had carried on a manufactory of sugar-pans at Westbury, and had fallen

into difficulties, and left a widow and six children wholly unprovided for. Southey was engaged to one of the Misses Fricker, and a young friend named Robert Lovell was already married to another of them. The eldest of the young ladies was Sara, then twenty-three years of age, and hitherto unappropriated. Coleridge promptly fell in love with her. The ladies were all comely and all religious, and one of them, the fitting one, appears to have been in trouble for the unorthodox soul of Southey. Robert Lovell was a Quaker, a poet, and a thoroughly good fellow. He attached himself to Coleridge as he had previously attached himself to Southey, but for a short time a cloud hung over their friendship. This was when Coleridge conceived the idea that Lovell was not promoting his union with Sara. Then they met without speaking, and passed as strangers. Matters came to a crisis, and Coleridge exclaimed, "Lovell! you are a villain!" "Oh, you are quite mistaken," said a friend, a bookseller, "Lovell is proud in the hope of having you for a brother-in-law, and only wishes you from prudential motives to delay your union." This was a possibility which had escaped Coleridge's observation, but it commended itself to his intelligence, and in a few days he and Lovell were as sociable as ever. The bookseller was Joseph Cottle, a year older than Coleridge, in business in Bristol, having a taste for literature, and some manuscript poems lying snugly in the drawer. Cottle turned out a useful acquaintance, and he was so far a man of reading and culture that the relation between him and the young poets from the universities was that of valued friendship. Southey had

brought with him from Oxford a young man of twenty, of fair abilities and amiable disposition, the son of a Somersetshire farmer, who intended him for the Church. This was George Burnet, destined to play a subordinate part in a forthcoming farce, and not altogether to play it with acceptance. Burnet followed the lead of Lovell, Southey, and Coleridge by proposing for Martha, a fourth daughter of the house of the Frickers; but the lady rejected him on the ground that, unlike her sisters, she did not choose to be made a wife in a hurry. She was permitted to abide by her resolution, and died a maid at seventy-three. The circle of literary people who found a rallying-point at Bristol, when Coleridge and Southey arrived there in 1794, included some notable names. There were Hannah More, whom Southey saw at Barley Wood; Robert Hall, the Baptist preacher; Ann Yearsley, the literary milkwoman; and William Gilbert, the inspired and deranged author of the "Hurricane," a poem which contains some exquisite passages of poetry accompanied by yet more noble passages of prose. The group was a goodly one of men and women living the intellectual life. Coleridge and Southey found the atmosphere congenial. Their presence in Bristol was a subject of interest. Lovell, being a Bristol man, introduced his friends to the Bristol people. "Never," says Cottle, "will the effect be effaced produced on me by Southey. Tall, dignified, possessing great suavity of manners; an eye piercing, with a countenance full of genius, kindliness, and intelligence." Coleridge produced an impression no less favourable. "I instantly descried his intellectual character," says the bookseller, "exhibiting as he did an

eye, a brow, and a forehead indicative of commanding genius."

The poets wrote a poem together, "The Fall of Robespierre;" but even poetry paled in interest before a socialist scheme which they now set afoot. Southey and Burnet at Oxford had talked over the tyrannical wickedness of the existing order of society, until they had conceived of a plan by which the coil of injustice was to be unravelled. This was the rather simple device of a community of persons settling in America on some spot that should be quite outside the range of governments, and therefore untroubled by laws and taxes. When Coleridge came up on his visit to Allen, he embraced the scheme of Southey and Allen, and gave it the help of his philosophic mind in formulating it into a political system. Forthwith the system came to be known as Pantisocrasy, and its aim as Aspheterism. Pantisocrasy meant the equal government of all; and Aspheterism meant the generalization of individual property. These two were to do the civilized world some general service, but they were especially welcome for the particular service they were to do the persons who discovered them. Southey writes to his brother, "You are unpleasantly situated, so is my mother; so were we all until this grand scheme of Pantisocrasy flashed upon our minds, and now all is perfectly delightful." Coleridge could have expressed himself in similar language. The vexed question of a profession was now finally set at rest. Unitarianism had banished

In 1836 Southey made an effort to repudiate his share in the "vain visions." He protested that the scheme of Pantisocrasy was introduced by Coleridge and his friend Hucks.

all idea of the Church; the dragoon regiment had imperilled the chances of college honours and a college life; authorship was a refuge for which none of the young men were yet sufficiently destitute; so colonization on a fresh principle, akin to that of the early apostles, who had all things in common, supplied the motive power for a great start in life. But Pantisocrasy was something more serious than the crutch that was to help a lame dog over a stile. It was to be the nucleus of a great socialistic regeneration.

It

The scheme was incomplete when the young men arrived at Bristol, and there it made notable strides. was decided that a ship must be chartered to take the party to the New World, that land must be purchased either before they set out or on their arrival in America ; that a body of farming implements must be bought and taken with them. But, above all, it was agreed and settled that for the future welfare of the colony, as well as for its immediate comfort and harmony, it would be necessary that each male colonist should be accompanied by a wife. This final condition was not a barrier. One of the Pantisocritans was already provided with a wife, two were about to be so provided, and it was not anticipated that the rest would fail in this regard. The more material conditions were a deal more troublesome. Chartering a ship and buying implements and land were processes involving the expenditure of money, and the Pantisocritans were penniless. They were, however, rich in hope, and looked confidently to a near future in which they should be rich enough in money also to realize their dream. At Bristol they talked over their plans, discussed