of friends and the admiration of those with whom he came in contact. He could still hold an audience silent, still prove to his immediate circle that his intellect was of the keenest and highest order. But the world, which demands from all poor men a definite expression of their rights to live, was far too strong for him, nor could any of the chances that came his way, and they were many, give to his strange character the strength it needed. He seemed to have inherited the curse of Cain—"a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on the earth." So with a sick mind and an ailing body he cast about once more for the means to live in some position which should meet his own undefined requirements.

CHAPTER IV
TROUBLED YEARS

For a while Coleridge stayed with the Lambs, to whom his company was ever welcome, and then took up work in the office of the Courier, where he found a room. By the end of September he was at Greta Hall, where his relations with his wife, doubtless made more difficult by the undiplomatic but strenuous and honest Southey, must have gone from bad to worse, for by December the two had decided to separate, Coleridge being allowed to take the boys, Hartley and Derwent, on the understanding that they spent their holidays with their mother. He passed Christmas at Coleorton, lent by Sir George Beaumont to the Wordsworths, and it may be that the relief of the proposed separation accounted for better spirits, better health, and inclination to work. He was still far from well, no day seems to have passed without bringing some hours of pain and unrest, but there was some change, and it was for the better. Wordsworth's dedication of The Prelude may have given him a much-needed stimulus. In the early summer of 1807, Coleridge joined his wife for a time at Nether Stowey, where kindly Thomas Poole managed to patch up the differences between husband and wife, and brought Coleridge and Josiah Wedgwood together again. The poet had refused to answer his patron's letters or to supply promised material for a life of Thomas Wedgwood. In his letter to Josiah Wedgwood he declared that the contribution to the story of Thomas Wedgwood's life had been detained at Malta together with "many important papers," and that he had several works on the eve of publication. The measure of foundation upon which these statements stood was hardly sufficient to support them even in the pages of a letter to a fairly credulous patron. Soon the "penniless and friendless" man was to find another supporter, Thomas de Quincey, who, after meeting the poet and spending one evening in his company, supplied him anonymously, through Cottle the publisher, with a loan of three hundred pounds, without any conditions, in order that his financial troubles might be ended.

Here we have another proof of the extraordinary personal magnetism of Coleridge. However badly he might behave, his friends forgave him and continued to love him, strangers helped to smooth the rough road over which his follies drew him—all in vain. Coleridge accepted the gift from an unknown sympathiser without compunction—he was quite reconciled to doles—merely remarking that he hoped in twelve months to ask the name of his benefactor in order to show him the results of his gift. Towards the end of an unsatisfactory year, Coleridge returned to his room and his work in the office of the Courier, and set himself to prepare some long-promised lectures to be delivered at the Royal Institution. The first were heard in February 1808, and others followed in the spring; they seem to have attracted considerable attention and to have been representative of the lecturer's considerable gifts. This work over, he went to stay at Bury St. Edmunds with his friend Mrs. Clarkson, whose influence was wholly good, and helped in no small measure to restore his health and peace of mind. From there he went to visit the Wordsworths at Allan Bank, and the improvement in health was maintained. He was now separated from Mrs. Coleridge; they met as friends, united to some extent by a genuine interest in their children's welfare. The year 1809 saw the birth of a paper called The Friend, described as "a Literary, Moral, and Political Weekly Paper, excluding Personal and Party Politics and Events of the Day. Conducted by S. T. Coleridge of Grasmere, Westmorland." This was another ill-planned venture, foredoomed to failure from the start. It contrived to appear at regular intervals on twenty-seven occasions, and considering the enormous difficulties associated with its production, this was a remarkable achievement enough. Needless to say helpers came forward with hard work and advances of money. Wordsworth wrote much for the columns of his friend's venture, but success and Coleridge never could run in double harness.

By March 1810, after involving in endless trouble all who helped the editor, The Friend was numbered among the things that had been, and until October the poet lingered on in the Lake Country, apparently at his wits' ends once more. He took his latest failure very much to heart.

In October Coleridge accepted at short notice an invitation from Basil Montague, who was passing to London through Keswick, to stay with him in Soho, and this unfortunate journey led to a break in the very amicable relations that had existed so long between Coleridge and Wordsworth, and had been a source of great comfort to the less fortunate man. The author of The Prelude warned Montague that his friend's habits were not satisfactory, and that he had but little hope of their permanent improvement, and Montague, translating Wordsworth's tempered note of advice into harshest terms, gave Coleridge his own crude version of it. The breach was not mended for two years, and even then the marks of it made the old happy relations between two great poets, who were intellectually brothers, though morally as far as the poles asunder, impossible. Stricken to the heart, Coleridge left Frith Street at once and went to Hammersmith on what was practically a six years' visit to some Bristol friends, the Morgans, who had settled in the western suburb. He had the Lambs to turn to as well, and in their company met Henry Crabb Robinson, to whose voluminous diary students of the poet are so deeply indebted. He completely ignored his relatives and friends in the Lake Country, though their anxiety about him was unfeigned. In 1811 he worked on the Courier until the autumn, when he turned again to the lecture platform, which he could always adorn, for it was possible for Coleridge to speak without notes on almost any subject and to treat it luminously. These lectures, delivered in the rooms of the London Philosophical Society in Crane Court, Fetter Lane, were eminently successful, taking into consideration the conditions of their delivery. They were devoted to examination and criticism of the work of Shakespeare, Milton, and living poets, a study that Coleridge had made his own. The spring of 1812 was at hand before the series was completed, and at its conclusion the poet, who had delighted some of the sanest critics in London, set out for Greta Hall. While he was there—it was destined to be his last visit to the Lake Country—he was on the best of terms with his wife, but kept away from the Wordsworths because William had refused to apologise. It required the persistent efforts of Crabb Robinson to bring the two men together in May of 1812. One Brown, printer of The Friend, had left Penrith owing Coleridge money, so the poet went to his office to investigate the matter, and remained in Penrith for a month, without communicating with any of his anxious friends! Then he returned to the Morgans, who had left Hammersmith