especially those by Burke, of whom he was an ardent admirer. This interest in current political thought was of advantage to him later when he was asked to write for London periodicals. His Cambridge career was broken and all but terminated in 1793 by his sudden departure for London, where he enlisted in the Light Dragoons under an assumed name. What caused this surprising interruption of Coleridge's career is not entirely clear; he may have simply wanted a change or he may have grown despondent over love or debt. A few months of military duties were quite enough for this poetic and philosophic youth. Released from the service through the efforts of an officer who had discovered the recruit's dislike of his new duties as well as his unfitness for them, Coleridge returned to Cambridge, but his stay there was short. In June of 1794 he met Southey at Oxford and the two young poets planned an idealistic community on the banks of the Susquehanna in America, under the name of "Pantisocracy." When, for lack of money, this scheme had to be abandoned, Coleridge married in 1795 Sara Fricker, of Bristol, whose sister Edith was soon to become the wife of Southey.

The next three years were spent at Bristol and nearby regions-Clevedon, Nether Stowey, and Alfoxden, where in 1797 Coleridge first met Wordsworth and his sister. In 1796 Joseph Cottle, publisher, of Bristol, brought out "Juvenile Poems," a little volume of Coleridge's earliest verse. Meanwhile he had given some lectures on political subjects at Bristol and was planning a periodical, to be called "The Watchman." In order to get subscribers for this, Coleridge made a trip to Birmingham, Manchester, and other cities, preaching on the journey as a Unitarian minister. "The Watchman" lived a little over two months, through ten numbers. One anonymous subscriber advised the young editor to write "more verse and less democratic scurrility." The subscription list, long at the start, rapidly fell off; some of his readers

"relinquished it," wrote Coleridge, "because it did not contain sufficient original composition, and a still larger part because it contained too much." The periodical did not pay expenses, and was accordingly discontinued. "The Watchman" was only one of Coleridge's many short-lived enterprises, enthusiastically planned and soon abandoned; but it contained essays on a variety of themes of high literary merit which won for the young journalist the friendship of several men of prominence and influence, among them Thomas Poole and Charles Lloyd.

The year 1797 may be regarded as the most fruitful of Coleridge's life in poetic achievement. The second edition of his poems appeared; he spent much time with Wordsworth; he dreamed high dreams and translated them into immortal verse. "The Ancient Mariner" was written, to be published the following year in his and Wordsworth's memorable volume, "Lyrical Ballads," which marks the beginning of a new era in English poetry. The first part of "Christabel" was composed, to be followed by such other notable productions as the "Ode to France," the exquisite fragment "Kubla Khan," the lines on "Love,' and his one successful tragedy, "Remorse." So greatly impressed with the genius and promise of the twenty-fiveyear-old poet were two patrons of literature, the Wedgewood brothers, that they settled upon Coleridge an annuity of £150.

In the autumn of 1798 Coleridge went with Wordsworth and his sister to Germany, where he spent nine or ten months learning the language and reading widely in German literature and philosophy, an experience which had an abiding influence on his own thinking. Soon after his return he visited the Lake Country, where, after a short residence in London as contributor to "The Morning Post," he settled with his wife and child in the summer of 1800. At Greta Hall, near Keswick, he lived until 1803, when Southey came to occupy the mansion which was thenceforth Southey's home as well as that of Mrs. Cole

ridge and her three children. Coleridge, with whom the opium habit had become as chronic as his mental and physical restlessness, sailed for Malta in April 1804. His health was failing and his spirits depressed. The insidious effects of opium increased his temperamental irresolution and threatened his life with utter shipwreck. The fifteen months in Malta, during a part of which he acted as public secretary of the island, neither remedied this weakness nor restored his health, but his association with Sir Alexander Ball, civil commissioner of Malta, made those months, in his own words, "in many respects the most memorable and instructive period of my life." From Malta Coleridge proceeded to Italy, stopping for a while in Sicily and at Naples. After spending five months in Rome, where he met some notable persons, among them Allston the American painter, Coleridge returned to England in 1806. His departure was hastened by a report to the effect that certain letters written by him for the London "Morning Post" attacking Napoleon were about to cause his arrest on orders from France.

The ten years after 1806 seem to have been passed principally in the Lake Region, London, and Bristol, but there are still gaps in our knowledge of that decade. He had become a wanderer, staying at no one place very long, indolent, irresolute, self-reproachful, forever purposing but never accomplishing. One admirer after another furnished him money, lodging, some sort of support. Alienated from his family, who now lived with Southey, he spent a while with the Wordsworths; then he was off to London to write fitfully for "The Courier" and to give lectures at the Royal Institution; then back to the Lakes as a guest at Wordsworth's house editing "The Friend,' a periodical which lasted less than a year; then to London again, living with the Montagus and the Morgans and lecturing on Shakespeare; then to Bristol for three courses of lectures. His last visit to the Lakes was in 1812. During these years of intermittent editorial activity and

lecturing one event stands out prominently, that is, the production of Coleridge's early tragedy, "Osorio," renamed "Remorse," under Byron's patronage. The play was performed on January 23, 1813, at the Drury Lane Theatre, and ran for twenty nights. It was a brilliant success and brought to the author's empty purse the considerable sum of four hundred pounds.

The final period of Coleridge's life, the peaceful chapter in his troubled career, began in 1816, with his permanent settlement in the house of James Gillman, a physician living at Highgate, near Hampstead, once the abode of Keats. Recommended to Gillman by another medical man whom Coleridge had consulted, the shattered poet and philosopher was promptly received by this new friend as an inmate of his home. Gillman undertook gradually to reduce the quantity of laudanum which Coleridge had long been taking daily and succeeded in restoring him to health, though not to complete abstinence. Cheerfulness returned to him and more of happiness than he had probably known since youth. While the clearness of his marvellous mind was but little dimmed, the long years of indulgence in opium had weakened a will never very strong. With the exception of a tour on the Rhine with Wordsworth and a brief visit to Cambridge, Coleridge spent the rest of his life in the Gillman household "on the brow of Highgate Hill," where he died July 25, 1834. He talked and wrote, lectured occasionally in London, revised and published his poetical works, finished his "Biographia Literaria," wrote "Aids to Reflection" and other essays on philosophy and religion. Troops of admirers journeyed regularly to the Gillman home to see the famous sage and hear his amazing monologue. Carlyle's account of these occasions is the classic one, too long to quote entire. It may be found in his "Life of John Sterling"; two paragraphs, however, will give a clear idea of Coleridge's gifts as a converser and a vivid impression of his personality:

Here for hours would Coleridge talk concerning all conceivable things; and liked nothing better than to have an intelligent, or, failing that, even a silent and patient human listener. He distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at least the most surprising talker extant in this world-and to some small minority, by no means to all, as the most excellent.

The good man-he was now getting old, towards sixty perhaps, and gave you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings; a life heavyladen, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were round and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspiration; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping attitude; in walking he rather shuffled than decisively stept; and a lady once remarked he never could fix which side of the garden-walk would suit him best, but continually shifted, corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both; a heavyladen, high-aspiring, and surely much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong; he spoke as if preaching-you could have said preaching earnestly and almost hopelessly the weightiest things. I still recollect his 'object' and 'subject,' terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he sang and snuffled them into "om-m-ject' and 'sum-m-ject,' with a kind of solemn shake or quaver as he rolled along. No talk in his century or in any other could be more surprising.

Others have borne testimony to the extraordinary powers of Coleridge. Wordsworth said that Coleridge was the only wonderful man he had ever met, though he had seen many men do wonderful things. "He is the only person I ever knew," declared Hazlitt, "who answered to the idea of a man of genius." De Quincey praised the subtlety of his intellect and the severe logic of his reasoning processes. A reader of Coleridge to-day, however, is more likely to be impressed with his imagination than with his logic. His reading was vast and varied and it was apparently easy for him to draw at need from his large storehouse of information, promptly arrange the material and give it out to an admiring audience. The fragments of his table-talk preserved by his nephew show the wide range of his interests, his acuteness, common