his servant girl, were constantly arising to vex him. He had no fixed sources of income, or none that represented greater earnings than a guinea a week. Never was a man of great mental activity and adequate physical energy, a man with a larger capacity, and a keener anxiety for work, more hopelessly adrift in casual and unremunerative enterprises. Yet he had never lost a chance. He had never really had a chance. If in the early days of his career at Bristol some practical person had offered him a clerkship at a hundred a year, and he had rejected it, there would be more reason than there is to suspect Coleridge of deficiency in worldly wisdom. The earnings from the poems were a calculable quantity, and Cottle's story notwithstanding-we have Coleridge's authority for saying that only fifteen of the thirty pounds were received. An offer made by the bookseller of a guinea and a half for every additional hundred lines of verse was an indefinite commission such as rarely stimulates the energy of a man who writes for his bread. It is doubtful if Coleridge ever availed himself of it. The lectures at Bristol were not highly remunerative, and the only accusation against Coleridge's practical spirit in that regard is that, for reasons not given, he broke one of his engagements. That the subscribers withdrew from The Watchman in such numbers as to make the journal an unprofitable speculation may be a charge against Coleridge's ability as a journalist, but it is certainly not an impeachment of his common sense. And if he engaged in the composition of a tragedy without sufficient knowledge of the mechanism of the stage, he did not do so without the advice and encouragement

of one whose practical knowledge was beyond question. In short, the fact is clear that down to the autumn of 1798, Coleridge struggled on bravely at enormous odds, exhibiting throughout a sufficient equipment for life's battle. If moral weakness showed itself at a later period, the cause of the degeneration also became apparent. Meantime let it be said, with whatever emphasis the plain facts may justify, that vain and visionary as the youthful system called Pantisocrasy may appear, and much as we are wont to glance down at it with something of Malvolio's "demure travel of regard," the idea of betaking himself to America to farm the untouched prairie was as reasonable and practical a scheme as any other in which for four years afterwards Coleridge was permitted to engage. Pantisocrasy was not a whit less feasible, honourable, dignified, or hopeful than lecturing on French politics, and condensing English parliamentary reports, scribbling occasional verses, and talking philosophy and poetry for the benefit of the well-to-do young Birmingham gentleman of literary tastes, who paid for the poet's conversation, plus the use of his parlour and best bedroom.

Vexed by debts, and harassed by other troubles, Coleridge's mind seems to have reverted to the pulpit as a means of livelihood. A Unitarian chapel at Shrewsbury made him an offer, and he went down to that town early in 1798, to fulfil the ministerial duties. There he met a youth, William Hazlitt, who was to play an important part in his career as a public man. Hazlitt's father was a Dissenting Minister about ten miles from Shrewsbury, and he had himself been brought up with a view to the ministry, but had already abandoned that

profession in favour of art. Coleridge lodged with the Hazlitts during his stay in Shrewsbury, and Hazlitt has left a vivid portrait of the poet as he appeared at this time. "His complexion," he says, "was at that time clear and even bright. His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolled beneath them like a sea with darkening lustre. His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing-like what he has done. . . . Coleridge in his person was rather above the common size, inclining to be corpulent. . . . His hair (now, alas! grey) was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth masses over his forehead." More interesting still is Hazlitt's account of Coleridge's extraordinary powers of extempore speech in the pulpit. The effect produced by the poet on the young art aspirant was that of a man whose insight amounted to inspiration, whose gifts were the summit of genius.

Coleridge did not retain the Shrewsbury pulpit. From that fresh form of intellectual slavery he was saved by the brotherly liberality of the brothers Wedgewood. Two of this notable family of potters, Thomas and Josiah, sons of the first Josiah, who originated the art of English pottery, had become friends of Coleridge in the time of The Watchman. They were rich men, and they were honestly interested both in their friend and in his pursuits. Regarding with dismay the probability that the duties of the pulpit might endanger the development of Coleridge's genius as a poet, they made him the offer of a pension of

£150 a year (£75 to come from each), on condition that he would devote himself to the work for which nature had given him his best equipment. The offer reached the poet while he was staying with the Hazlitts, and Hazlitt tells us that he seemed to make up his mind to close with the proposal in the act of tying on one of his shoes. To learn the German language as a step towards the practical work of translation had been for some time a plan that Coleridge had cherished, and the Wedgewoods appear to have added to the pension the tender of the expenses that would be incurred in a tour into Germany.

Coleridge came to a decision with reasonable promptitude. He abandoned both the Unitarian pulpit and the Unitarian belief. Settling his pension on his wife and family, he set out from Stowey for Germany in the company of Wordsworth and his sister, whose expenses were probably defrayed by the friends who had provided for his

own.

This was in September, 1798. The party sailed to Hamburgh. There the poets visited KlopstockKlubstick as Coleridge nicknamed him-who was then an old man. The friends then separated. Wordsworth and his sister spent a bitter winter at Goslar. Coleridge went on to Ratzeburg, and established himself en pension with the parson. "You have two things against you,' Coleridge wrote to Wordsworth after they had parted: "your not loving smoke, and your sister. If the manners of Goslar resemble those of Ratzeburg, it is almost necessary to be able to bear smoke. Can Dorothy endure smoke? Here, when my friends come to see me, the candle nearly goes out, the air is so thick." From this it would appear

that Coleridge's memorable experiences at the house of the Birmingham patriot were not without their good effects, that he was already under weigh as a student of the language, and that the brilliant volubility which had distinguished him in England was producing its familiar effects in Germany also. He spent four months at Ratzeburg, and went on to Göttingen, where, during a five months' residence, he attended lectures on physiology and natural history. Then he made a tour into the Hartz Mountains in the company of three or four men whose names became somewhat famous. His companions describe him as ill-dressed and slovenly. He was the soul of the party. Rhyming and poetizing, singing and punning, and discoursing in eloquent monologue, as was his wont, on every subject, from the captivity of nations to the near approach of the millennium. He wrote home a series of letters on his German tour, and they were published many years later. These letters, entitled "Satyrane's Letters," exhibit Coleridge's powers in a new direction. Brilliant in style, full of suggestion, showing rare powers of observation, keen sense of character, and a fine, racy humour, they prove conclusively that Coleridge was not dependent on his much-abused metaphysics for whatever distinction he achieved as a prose writer. He remained abroad rather less than a year, and had then acquired a mastery of the German language. In June, 1799, he bade farewell to Germany, and received a farewell supper at the house of Professor Blumenbach, at Göttingen. His health was proposed-of course amid thick air—and he replied to the toast in fluent German, but with an execrable accent. He arrived in England sometime in