Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/311

 must be doubted how far this dream was seriously entertained, though for a year or two it was the theme of Coleridge's enthusiastic eloquence. The ‘Fall of Robespierre’ was projected by the three friends, each of them having one day agreed to produce an act of a tragedy by the next evening. Coleridge produced the first act, though not in the time proposed; Southey the second and ultimately the third, as Lovell's work would not fit. The tragedy was published as Coleridge's at Cambridge in September 1794. An appended prospectus of a work by Coleridge in two volumes, containing imitations from the modern Latin poets, with an essay on the ‘Restoration of Literature,’ shows that he was looking to writing for support (see, Rem. p. 73).

Coleridge left Cambridge without a degree at the end of 1794. He visited London during the winter, where he met Lamb, who has celebrated their meetings at the Cat and Salutation. The landlord is said to have found his conversation so attractive that he begged him to prolong his stay with free quarters. Ultimately Southey had to go to London to induce him to return to Miss Fricker at Bristol (ib. p. 405). On 24 Dec. 1794 he addressed a letter to Mary Evans, who had finally dismissed him, and says that his passion, now hopeless, will ‘lose its disquieting power’ (Morrison MSS., where there are other letters to the Evanses, written during his Cambridge career). Here he formed an acquaintance with Joseph Cottle, a young bookseller, already known to Lovell. The ‘pantisocratians’ lodged together at 48 College Street, and at present had not the funds to carry out their scheme or even to pay for their lodgings. Coleridge applied to Cottle for a loan of five pounds to enable him to discharge this bill. Cottle advanced the money, and then offered thirty guineas to Coleridge for a volume of poems, offering Southey fifty guineas at the same time for his ‘Joan of Arc.’ Both offers were gladly accepted, and the two young men endeavoured to increase their supplies by lecturing. Coleridge's first two lectures were delivered at the Plume of Feathers, Wine Street. Two more followed at the end of February 1795, which were published as ‘Conciones ad Populum.’ Two others were published as the ‘Plot Discovered.’ In June he gave a series of six political lectures, followed by six ‘On Revealed Religion: its Corruptions and its Political Views.’ The lectures all represented his strong political sympathies and were vehemently ‘anti-Pittite.’ The preparation of his volume of poems continued, though with many characteristic delays. At last Cottle offered him a guinea and a half for every hundred lines he should write after finishing his volume. He regarded this as a sufficient provision for a couple, and was married to Sara Fricker at St. Mary Redcliffe's on 4 Oct. 1795. He then settled at a small cottage at Clevedon, one story high, with a garden, for which the rent was 5l. a year. The cottage, described in his contemporary poems, still exists.

Southey married Edith Fricker 14 Nov. 1795, leaving his bride at the church door for Portugal. He wrote to Coleridge, stating that the scheme of pantisocracy must be abandoned. Coleridge was still so far an enthusiast as to take offence at this desertion, and a temporary coolness ensued, followed by a reconciliation on Southey's return to England next year. Lovell and Edmund Seward, another friend of Southey's, who had sympathised with the scheme, both died in the summer of 1796, and pantisocracy vanished.

At the end of 1795 Coleridge returned to Bristol, where his first volume of poems, including three sonnets by Lamb, was published by Cottle in April 1796. Another sonnet, twice printed as Lamb's, was afterwards published as Coleridge's. He now thought of journalism. In January 1796 he started on a tour to the north (described with great humour in the Biographia Literaria) to engage subscribers for his new venture. He visited Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, and other towns, and came back with a list of nearly a thousand names. A prospectus was issued of the ‘Watchman,’ price fourpence, which was to appear on 1 March, and on every eighth day (in order to avoid the tax payable on weekly newspapers), and to contain original matter, reviews, and full reports of parliamentary speeches. Cottle procured many subscribers at Bristol, and provided for part of the expenditure. The first number, as Coleridge tells us, was behind its time; the second (on ‘fast days’) lost five hundred subscribers by ‘a censurable application of a text from Isaiah for its motto’ (the motto was, ‘my bowels shall sound like an harp,’ Isaiah xvi. 11); the two next disgusted the Jacobins and republicans, and the work dropped at the tenth number, with a frank statement of the ‘short and satisfactory reason’ that it did ‘not pay its expenses.’ Many subscribers did not pay, and the result was a loss, borne chiefly, it would seem, by Cottle (, Reminiscences, pp. 74–82). Coleridge had become an occasional preacher in unitarian chapels. Frend, according to Gillman (p. 317), had influenced his studies. Cottle records his first performance in the chapel of David Jardine at Bath, where he discoursed in ‘blue coat and white waistcoat’ on the corn laws and the powder tax, and put to flight a very thin