could all the influence of friends or of the sorely stricken parent avail to move the Provost of Oriel to reconsider his judgment, though a sum of £300 was paid to Hartley by way of compensation later in the year. The career of Hartley Coleridge, the "little Hartley," beloved of the Lakemen, who, it will be remembered, preferred both his verse and his company to those of the self-centred Wordsworth, is no less sad than that of his father, and was far less brilliant. He inherited all the curses that made the career of Samuel Taylor Coleridge so disastrous, he was constitutionally unable to settle down to hard work, he was weak, and prone to give way to temptation on the least provocation. A great part of his life was passed in the Lake Country, where William and Mary and Dorothy Wordsworth were his staunch friends, loving him perhaps as much for his father's sake as for his own. He died shortly before William Wordsworth, and the graves of the two men, so remote from each other in all things save affection, may be seen side by side in Keswick churchyard. Coleridge was soon reconciled to his erring son, but the blow was the more severe because he could see that he was the father of the lad's faults and failings.

In 1821 we find him turning to Allsop for pecuniary aid; self-respect must be laid aside in the face of financial straits. The excuse is the old one that age cannot wither nor custom stale. He is in sore distress, reduced to writing for Blackwood (who had been to Highgate bearing the olive branch, nearly two years before). He is even writing sermons for illiterate clergymen, he has four books well-nigh ready for press, he wishes to bring about a revolution in the world of French and English metaphysics through the medium of a work of far-reaching importance, still, of course, to be written. What remains, then, at a time when he is being pressed for money for the necessities of life, but an appeal to a few admirers who "think respectfully" of his gifts to subscribe an annuity of about £200 a year for three or four years? Nearly £100 has been promised by young friends whom he is engaged in teaching. Perhaps Allsop will suggest how, without loss of dignity, the appeal may be circulated in the proper quarters. Those of us who admire the work with which Coleridge has enriched his country may be pardoned if they regret the fact that this appeal ever saw the light. It had not even the negative virtue of success. The much-maligned Blackwood came to the rescue with an advance on account of work, and with the amount prepaid Coleridge went to Ramsgate for two months with the Gillmans, where he met Cowden Clarke, and derived benefit from the sea air and ample exercise.

The next plan that came to the fertile brain was an extension of the informal class in philosophy that he held at Gillman's, and something, but not much, was done in this direction. A long visit from Mrs. Coleridge and their daughter Sara marked the comparatively cheerful close of the year 1822. Henry Nelson Coleridge, the poet's nephew, son of Colonel James Coleridge and afterwards Sara's husband, was of the party; his Table Talk, in which Coleridge shows something of his conversational quality, may still be read with interest. These visits and the poet's fast-widening social sphere suggest that the opium habit was being conquered at last, that the closing years of a strangely troubled life were bringing with them some measure of tranquillity. There is yet another indication of improvement; the fire of poetic inspiration flared up for a little while in the fall of 1823, and "Youth and Age," was the result. Aids to Reflection was in the making in these days too, though it was not given to the world until the early summer of 1825, and then in a very slovenly form, which did little or nothing to diminish its value to thinking men and women. While the reception was a mixed one, there was a fairly substantial reward. The Royal Society of Literature gave him an Associateship carrying with it the welcome annuity of 100 guineas; there was balm in Gilead at last. In return for the honour, the poet read a paper on the "Prometheus of Æschylus" before the R.S.L. (May 1825). In addition to some definite relief from financial stress, Coleridge was entering upon a mental phase of infinite comfort to his remaining years. The transcendentalist became suddenly convinced of the efficacy of prayer, of the existence of a personal God, and of other tenets peculiar to Christianity. We cannot indicate the gradual processes by which the brilliant mind reached harbour in the last days. It may be that the futility of his own struggles was becoming apparent, that his reasoning faculties, strengthened by relief from drugs, reverted to the faith of earlier times at Ottery St. Mary when, a little boy with the page of his life fair and unstained, he listened to the teachings of his father, a man of godly ways and simple belief. It may have been the final sense of defeat in the long struggle to realise ambitions, to justify the hopes of friends, and to silence those whose doubts were openly expressed. Whatever the cause, the result was eminently satisfactory; the last years saw the poet baffled and beaten by the world, but for once strong in failure, full of a conviction that there lay beyond the grave that which should atone for unsuccess. There is more dignity and less querulousness in the years that followed publication of Aids to Reflection than in almost any of those that had passed since Coleridge left Cambridge; and for this spell of comparative tranquillity his latter-day admirers must needs be grateful.