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352 Southey was however admitted at Balliol College, and went into residence in January, 1793. The principal event that marked his college career was his acquaintance with Coleridge. That singular compound of grandeur and littleness was an undergraduate at Jesus College, Cambridge. In June, 1794, he visited Oxford, was introduced to Southey, with whom a common sympathy in tastes and opinions begat an intimacy which speedily ripened into friendship.

Those were days of excitement, nay, of frenzy. The French Revolution had burst upon Europe; political trials tore in pieces the usual equanimity of English society, and the writings of Burke were the theme of universal laudation or invective. Coleridge talked, debated, speculated, with all the ardour of his imaginative and capacious intellect; while the writings of Godwin and Rousseau had excited in Southey's mind the most distorted views of the capabilities and ends of civil society. Then did these two dreamers converse gravely of Pantisocracy. The distracted world was to be edified by the visible realization of a scheme, more ideal and perfect than had ever amused the fancy or beguiled the tedium of poet or philosopher. On the banks of the Susquehannah a community should arise, in which patriarchal innocence and European refinement were to harmonize in blending beauty. Laws would be superfluous; selfishness proscribed; contention, discord, and crime become unknown words. Their territory, the purchase of their joint contributions, should be tilled by their common labour. The wives of the party were to perform all the necessary domestic offices, and no unsympathizing bachelor was to profane by his presence that select elysium. Lovell, a quaker-poet, and another Oxford man, named Burnett, embraced their views; and their number eventually swelled to twenty-five. Gradually, however, the enthusiasm was neutralized, by the very