included the rest of the 'Pantisocrats' (Southey, Southey's friend George Burnett, and Lovell, who married Mary Fricker), and other friends, whom Coleridge had interested in the project (foremost among them Josiah Wade, who was kept constantly informed by Coleridge of the progress of his tour in search of subscribers).

18. that all might know the truth, &c. See copy of the original Prospectus (Life, Appendix). The flaming prospectus to which Coleridge here alludes was no doubt prepared specially for

the tour.

31. I was at that time, &c. Coleridge was converted to Unitarianism while an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1793. His conversion was due to the influence of W. Frend (Life, p. 25). In an early notebook (?1796) is the following entry: Unitarians travelling from Orthodoxy to Atheism. Why?' And in a letter to George Fricker (1807? Cottle's Reminiscences, p. 339) he declares that disappointment in the only deep wish I had ever cherished' first forced him to question his Socinian creed. This may refer to the Mary Evans affair in 1794. Yet in 1797 he still thought of be coming a Unitarian minister (Letters, p. 228), and in 1802 he wrote to Estlin: 'If there be any meaning in words, it appears to me that the Quakers and Unitarians are the only Christians.' He adds, however, that 'even of these I am sometimes jealous that some of the Unitarians make too much of an Idol of their one God'. And his wavering attitude appears in another letter of the same year (Estlin Letters, July, 1802): My Confessio Fidei, as regards the doctrine of the Trinity, is negative Unitarianism-a non liquet concerning the nature and being of Christ.' So his daughter writes of him that 'his Unitarianism was purely negative: not a satisfaction in the positive formal divinity of the Unitarians, but what remained to him to the last, a revulsion from certain explanations of the Atonement commonly received as orthodox'. In the same year (1802) he wrote (A. P., p. 26): 'Socinianism, moonlight; Methodism, a stove; O for some sun to unite heat and light!' And in 1805 (Gillman's Life, p. 160): 'Seven or eight years ago, my mind then wavering in its necessary passage from Unitarianism... through Spinosism and Plato to St. John. This I now feel that no Trinity, no God. That Unitarianism in all its forms is idolatry 'O that this conviction may work upon me and in me, and that my mind may be made up as to the character of Jesus and of historical Christianity, as clearly as it is of the Logos, and intellectual or spiritual Christianity'. It was not until his return from Malta that Coleridge definitely declared himself a Trinitarian (Cottle, Rem. pp. 314-25). See also Life, p. 165; Biog. Lit. i. 136. For his later opinion of Unitarianism, see Letters, p. 758; Emerson (on his visit to Coleridge) in English Traits; and for Coleridge's explanation of his attraction to the doctrine, T. T., June 23, 1834.

...

PAGE 117 1. 5. This took place at Manchester.

Cp. letter to

Josiah Wade (Biog. Lit. 1847, Biographical Supplement, ii. 353), Jan. 1796: This morning I called on Mr. with H's letter.

received me as a rider, and treated me with insolence

66

Mr. that was really amusing from its novelty. Overstocked with these articles.". People always setting up some new thing or other." -"I read the Star and another paper; what could I want with this paper, which is nothing more?"- -"Well, well, I'll consider of it." To these entertaining bon mots I returned the following repartee- "Good morning, Sir."'

PAGE 119 1. 15. how opposite even then my principles were. According to Dr. Carlyon (Early Years, &c., i. 27: quoted, Life, p. 41) Coleridge while still at Cambridge had occasion to correct a misapprehension on the part of the Master of his College, by informing him 'that he was neither Jacobin nor Democrat, but a Pantisocrat'. And of the Conciones ad Populum, delivered in 1795, Coleridge wrote, late in life: 'Except the two or three pages involving the doctrine of philosophical necessity and of Unitarianism, I see little or nothing in these outbursts of my youthful zeal to retract' (Biog. Lit. 1847, ii. 346). And the author of The Watchman is certainly no Jacobin. In April, 1798, Coleridge writes to his brother George: 'A man's character follows him long after he has ceased to deserve it; but I have snapped my squeaking baby-trumpet of sedition, and the fragments lie scattered in the lumber-room of penitence.' And in 1803 (?: Cottle, Rem. p. 110) to Miss Cruikshanks: As to my principles they were at all times decidedly anti-Jacobin and anti-revolutionary.' His disappointment in the outcome of the Revolution found expression in France: An Ode, written in Feb. 1798. As appears from the Ode itself, it was the base treatment of Switzerland by the revolutionary leaders which moved Coleridge to this public recantation. But no doubt his sympathy with the French Government had been for some time on the wane. Their detention of the Netherlands provoked him to a strong remonstrance in 1796. (See The Watchman, April, 1796.) But his assertion, made in 1832 (T. T., July 23, 1832), 'Before 1793, I clearly saw, and often enough stated in public, the vile mockery of the whole affair,' is not supported by the facts. (See Life, p. 85 f. n.; and The Friend (1818), § 1, 'On the Principles of Political Knowledge,' where Coleridge reprints one of the Addresses of 1795, as documentary evidence of the fact that he was never at any time of his life 'a convert to the system.')

PAGE 120 1. 1. a most censurable application of a text from Isaiah. 'Wherefore my Bowels shall sound like an Harp,' Isaiah. Cp. Letters, 157 (March, 1796): 'The Essay on Fasting I am ashamed of, but it is one of my misfortunes that I am obliged to publish extempore as well as compose.'

4. disgusted by their infidelity, &c. Cp. letter to G. Coleridge,

April, 1798 (Letters, p. 240): 'Equally with you I deprecate the moral and intellectual habits of those men, both in England and France, who have modestly assumed to themselves the exclusive title of Philosophers and Friends of Freedom. I think them at least as distant from goodness as from greatness.'

9. I levelled my attacks, &c. The article Modern Patriotism (Watchman, No. III) does not correspond to Coleridge's description. It is in effect an exhortation to the 'good citizen' to lead a moral life, give up Godwinism, and 'condescend to believe in a God, and in the existence of a Future State'. Neither in this nor other numbers do I find any reference to the 'gagging bills', or any plea for national education and the spread of gospels. Coleridge may, however, be thinking of the address delivered by him in the same year (printed in The Friend, 1818).

26. At the ninth number I dropt the work. Not at the ninth number, but the tenth. On the last page the reader was informed that This is the last number of the Watchman... The reason is short and satisfactory-the work does not pay its expenses'.

31. thrown into jail by my Bristol printer. According to Cottle (Rem., p. 83) Mr. C.'s memory was here grievously defective. The fact is Biggs the printer (a worthy man) never threatened or even importuned for the money The whole of the paper (which cost more than the printing) was paid for by the writer' (i. e. Cottle himself).

...

34. a dear friend, who attached himself to me. Sara Coleridge (Biog. Lit. 1847, i. 188) is apparently mistaken in thinking that Josiah Wade is here referred to. The dear friend is more probably Thomas Poole, at whose instigation a number of friends of Coleridge subscribed a purse of from £35 to £40, which reached him on the last 'magazine-day' of The Watchman (Life, p. 52; Thomas Poole and his Friends, by Mrs. Sandford, i. 142-5). Coleridge made Poole's acquaintance on his first visit to Bristol, 1794. Although after 1799 they saw and heard comparatively little of each other, they remained firm friends to the last.

PAGE 121 1. 5. Conscientiously an opponent of the first revolutionary war. Coleridge's chronology in this sentence is somewhat vague. The declaration of war with France took place in 1793: the invasion of Switzerland in 1798: and Coleridge's retirement to Stowey in 1796 (Dec. 30). See letter to Miss Cruickshanks (1803 Cottle, Rem. p. 110): 'At that time (1793) I seriously held the doctrine of passive obedience, though a violent enemy of the first war.'

16. by writing verses for a London Morning Paper. Coleridge apparently did not (see Life, p. 85) begin writing for the Morning Post before Jan. 1798. Between that date and his departure for Germany the following poems were printed in this paper: Fire, Famine, and Slaughter; The Raven; Lewti; The Recantation

(i. e. France: An Ode); and The Mad Ox. His chief earnings in 1797 seem to have come from the new edition of his poems, and occasional reviews, with other 'shilling-scavengering employments' (Life, p. 63).

33. Hartley's Essay on Man. The 'Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations, in two parts, 1748', to which frequent allusions have already been made.

PAGE 122 1. 1. my sole motive in choosing Stowey for my residence. The cottage at Clevedon, where Coleridge settled after marriage, was soon abandoned on account of its distance from the Bristol Library, and during the whole of 1796 he was without a settled home. No doubt the proximity to Poole was his main inducement in settling again in the country. In Nov. 1796, Coleridge wrote: 'To live in a beautiful country, and to inure myself as much as possible to the labour of the field, have been for this year past my dream of the day, my sigh at midnight. But to enjoy all these blessings near you, to see you daily... the vision-weaving fancy has indeed often pictured such things, but hope never dared whisper a promise.' Poole mentioned the cottage at Stowey, but at the same time tried to dissuade Coleridge from settling in it-thereby throwing his friend into a frenzy of doubt and misapprehension, which was, however, speedily resolved. (See Letters, pp. 173, 183, 187, 208, especially the very characteristic one, p. 187.)

2. I was so fortunate as to acquire. Coleridge first visited the Wordsworths at Racedown in Worcestershire on the fifth and sixth of June, 1797 (this was not, however, actually the first meeting between the poets). At the beginning of July they accompanied him to Stowey, and in the middle of the month took up their abode for a year at Alfoxden, about three miles from the Stowey cottage. Both Stowey and Alfoxden lie at the foot of the eastern slopes of the Quantocks.

6. His conversation extended to almost all subjects. To Estlin (May (?) 1798: Letters, p. 246) Coleridge wrote: On one subject we (Wordsworth and Coleridge) are habitually silent: we found our data dissimilar, and never renewed the subject. It is his practice and almost his nature to convey all the truth he knows without any attack on what he supposes to be false, if that falsehood be interwoven with virtue or happiness. He loves and venerates Christ and Christianity. I wish he did more; but it were wrong if an incoincidence with one of our wishes altered our respect and affection to a man of whom we are, as it were, instructed by one great Master to say that not being against us he is for us.' Poetry, Spinoza, and Necessitarianism were among the most frequent topics of conversation. In 1804 Coleridge wrote that 'Wordsworth was (i. e. in those days) even to extravagance a Necessitarian'. To Estlin, Coleridge adds: 'His (Wordsworth's) genius is most

apparent in poetry, and rarely, except to me in tête-à-tête, breaks out in conversational eloquence.'

II. extended to my excellent friend. In a letter of Oct. 1797 (Letters, p. 233), dissuading Thelwall from his project of settling in Stowey, Coleridge writes: "Very great odium T. Poole incurred by bringing me here. My peaceable manners and known attachment to Christianity had almost worn it away, when Wordsworth came, and he, likewise by T. Poole's agency, settled here. You cannot conceive the tumults, calumnies, and apparatus of threatened persecutions which this event has occasioned round about us.' According to Mr. Dykes Campbell (Life, 73), 'it was undoubtedly Thelwall's visit (in the summer of 1797) which brought about the cessation of Wordsworth's tenancy of Alfoxden.' (See T. Poole and his friends, i. 140; Cottle's Rem. p. 181; and Fenwick note to Anecdote for Fathers.)

20. the following deep remark. Cottle's Reminiscences (p. 181).

The same story is told in

32. the commencement of the Addington administration. Addington succeeded Pitt as Prime Minister in 1801. The Peace of Amiens was concluded in October of that year.

PAGE 123 1. 26. expatriating their hopes and fears. See The Watchman, No. 8, April, 1796, Remonstrance to the French Legislators: 'Every heart proudly expatriated itself, and we heard with transports of the victories of Frenchmen as the victories of Human Nature.' Cp. Wordsworth, Prelude, x. 283, &c. :

I rejoiced,

Yea, afterwards-truth most painful to record!—
Exulted, in the triumph of my soul,

When Englishmen by thousands were o'erthrown,
Left without glory on the field, or driven,

Brave hearts! to shameful flight;

and Coleridge's France: An Ode.

32. If in Spain too disappointment. The restoration of Ferdinand VII to the throne of Spain in 1814, in place of Joseph Buonaparte, proved disastrous to the cause of reform. Ferdinand reinstituted the old absolutism with all its abuses, and the Liberals were ruthlessly persecuted. This state of things lasted till 1820.

PAGE 124 1. 23. the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke. In earlier days, the democrat Coleridge thought less highly of Burke's insight, though he honoured his character. See the Sonnet to Burke (Morn. Chron., Dec. 9, 1794; Poet. Works, p. 38), the review of Burke's Letters to a Noble Lord (reprinted from The Watchman in Essays on his own Times, i. 107-19), and Letters, p. 157. And his estimate of Burke in 1809, which he reprinted in 1818 (Friend, sect. i, essay 4), is hardly so favourable as the present one. See also Letters, p. 640 (April, 1815), where Burke is said to