"O Southey," wrote Coleridge just before his departure for Malta in the spring of 1804, "from Oxford to Greta Hall—a spiritual map with our tracks as if two ships had left Port in company." The lives of these two men, indeed, from their first meeting in 1794, were destined to be so inextricably interwoven that any consideration of the one necessarily involves a study of the other; and it would seem advantageous, therefore, to draw together Southey's many comments upon Coleridge. The remarks run the gamut from adulation to downright condemnation, representing as they do judgments based upon "the ups and downs" of a long association, but their total effect offers considerable information about Coleridge. While outhey's passing remarks are not often free from personal prejudice—perhaps they are mainly the result of it—they do show the impact of Coleridge's personality and genius upon a contemporary writer. Likewise, out of these comments arises a self-portrait of Southey, not always flattering it is true, but all the more real because it was presented unconsciously.

In order to understand the changing and at times contradictory comments upon Coleridge which follow, one ought to glance briefly at Southey's character. Gifted with powers of application and perseverance, he was intolerant of their lack in other persons. Self-disciplined, he not only deplored want of self-management in others but also offered active interference. Inclined to be meddlesome, he often seems no better than a busybody. When he was thwarted in his desires to regulate others, he quite naturally became bitter, even to pointing an accusing finger. Perhaps one might overlook this tendency in Southey, for it emanated from good intentions, but unfortunately there was combined with it an inability to rise above personal prejudice. In many ways Southey was an admirable man, but he was capable of petty jealousy and intolerance.

It should be remarked, too, that Coleridge and Southey were not especially suited to one another. Although their early revolutionary enthusiasm first drew them together and their marriage to sisters led to an intimacy not wholly compatible to either, almost from the first their diversity of temperament caused friction. Coleridge soon recognized this; Southey was slower to do so. It was Southey, far more than Coleridge, who sought intimacy and who spoke of congeniality. For Southey never truly understood Coleridge. Though he had more opportunities than most men for judging Coleridge, his own habits of mind, sense of propriety, and rigid morality led him to condemn what he did not understand. For a while he was caught by the dazzle of Coleridge's personality but was neither wise nor tolerant enough to forgive Coleridge's aberrations. Southey recognized Coleridge's genius, but personal considerations often modified and sometimes distorted his judgment. Perhaps, then, the orderly mind of a man of talent tried to evaluate the disorderly one of a man of genius.

In June 1794 Coleridge and Southey met in the latter's rooms in Balliol College, Oxford. Both were enthusiastic young revolutionaries, and both were embryonic poets. Each immediately conceived a warm affection for the other. Coleridge, Southey wrote to a friend on June 12, 1794, "is of most uncommon merit,—of the strongest genius, the clearest judgment, the best heart. My friend he already is, and must hereafter be yours." Together he and Coleridge proposed a scheme for forming an ideal community in America, where a practical experiment in human relations might be undertaken. This Utopian plan, which they called Pantisocracy, was a source of mutual enthusiasm and dominated their thoughts for many months. They talked and dreamed at Oxford; then after Coleridge's tour of Wales, they were reunited and stayed all summer in or near Bristol. Thus was Coleridge introduced to Sara Fricker, a sister of Southey's fiancee, to whom in a moment of Pantisocratic ardor he immediately proposed marriage. Another mutual enterprise of this summer was a tragedy entitled the Fall of Robespierre, of which Coleridge wrote the first act.

At the end of the summer Coleridge left Bristol and stayed in London for about a month on his way to Cambridge, but a few weeks later he abandoned the University and settled in London, Southey remaining in the West. Coleridge turned to other friends, particularly to Charles Lamb. He wrote only infrequently to Southey, who already had begun to complain of the neglect of himself and Sara Fricker. Coleridge, however, remained an ardent Pantisocrat, refusing advantageous employment with the Earl of Buchan and rejecting a liberal proposal from his family. Southey, probably spurred on by the Fricker sisters and already beginning his interference in Coleridge's affairs, went to London for the express purpose of seeking him out and returning him to Bristol. "Coleridge," he wrote to Joseph Cottle after Coleridge's death, "did not come back to Bristol till January, 1795, nor would he, I believe, have come back at all, if I had not gone to London to look for him. For having got there from Cambridge at the beginning of winter, there he remained without writing to Miss F[ricker] or to me." Southey's mission was successful, and early in 1795 the two men took up lodgings together in Bristol.

They now tried to earn enough for their emigration to America, though they later compromised on a settlement in Wales to try out their scheme. They were constantly together. "Coleridge," Southey wrote on February 8, 1795, "is writing at the same table; our names are written in the book of destiny, on the same page." They gave lectures. They wrote poetry. They planned a magazine. But for all their efforts they earned barely enough to support themselves.

Southey began to take stock of the situation, his examination of his affairs undoubtedly being induced by the promise of an annuity of £160 from his friend Wynn and the insistence on the part of his uncle that he go into the church or the legal profession. Southey wavered. Although responsible for Coleridge's return from Bristol, he was anxious to marry Edith Fricker as soon as possible, and he saw that their Pantisocratic plans were no nearer achievement than they had been a year before. He determined, therefore, to abandon Pantisocracy; and he made good his decision, when in November 1795, immediately after a secret marriage, he left for Portugal under his uncle's auspices.

From the beginning of Southey's defection Coleridge was profoundly moved. At first he sought to reconvert Southey, but when he saw that all efforts were hopeless, he penned a letter of bitter reproach, declaring that Southey had selfishly abandoned both his friends and Pantisocracy and that their friendship was at an end. Coleridge detailed his own sacrifices for the sake of principles and with irrefragable arguments proved the treachery of Southey's conduct. Thus the golden dream of Pantisocracy died. The only tangible result was Coleridge's marriage to Sara Fricker, soon to be the source of unending turmoil.

When Southey returned from Portugal in May 1796 he found Coleridge among new friends. He and his wife settled in Bristol across the street from the Coleridges, but the alienation continued. Southey took the first step towards a reconciliation when he sent over to Coleridge a slip of paper containing a sentence from Schiller: "Fiesco! Fiesco! thou leavest a void in my bosom, which the human race, thrice told, will never fill up." Southey's overtures produced only a temporary understanding. Coleridge was unmistakably clear on the subject. "We are now reconciled," he wrote to John Thelwall on December 31,1796, "but the cause of the difference was solemn, and 'the blasted oak puts not forth its buds anew.' We are acquaintances, and feel kindliness towards each other, but I do not esteem or love Southey, . . . and vice versâ Southey of me."

Two further matters caused a renewed breach between the brothers-in-law. In November 1797 Coleridge published three sonnets in the Monthly Magazine. They were signed Nehemiah Higginbottom and were intended as satires upon the poems of Lamb, Lloyd, and Coleridge himself. For some reason Southey assumed that the sonnet, "Simplicity," was a parody upon his early poems and took offense. Then, too, he became intimate with Charles Lloyd, an erstwhile housemate of the Coleridges, and like Lamb was turned against Coleridge by Lloyd's gossip and tale-bearing. Undoubtedly stung by Coleridge's aloofness, he was ready to quarrel anew, and these two reasons gave him an excuse.

There may have been a deeper cause for Southey's growing resentment, however. By the summer of 1797 Coleridge's acquaintance with William and Dorothy Wordsworth had ripened into a warm friendship. Wordsworth, now the repository of Coleridge's inmost feelings, had supplanted Southey. This may partly explain Southey's attack on the Lyrical Ballads. "Have you," he wrote to William Taylor on September 5, 1798,

seen a volume of Lyrical Ballads &c.? They are by Coleridge & Wordsworth but their names are not affixed. Coleridge's ballad of The Auncient Marinere is I think the clumsiest attempt at German sublimity I ever saw. Many of the others are very fine, & some I shall re-read, upon the same principle that led me thro Trissino, whenever I am afraid of writing like a child or an old woman.

Had Southey confined himself to criticism in a private letter, for undoubtedly he was incapable of appreciating the subtle merits of The Ancient Mariner, one could condone his conduct, but he saw fit to repeat his opinions in an unsigned article in the Critical Review, one of the leading reviews of the day. He must have known what injury such a review of the poems would inflict, not only upon the sale of the volume but upon the feelings of the authors; but apparently personal animosity determined his course of action. It would seem evident, too, that he expressed his opinion of the Lyrical Ballads to Mrs. Coleridge, for during Coleridge's absence in Germany, when she was with the Southeys a good deal, she twice wrote slightingly of that volume to Thomas Poole. "The Lyrical Ballads are laughed at and disliked by all with very few excepted," she wrote in March 1799; and a little later she was even more emphatic—"The Lyrical Ballads are not liked at all by any."

Southey's review appeared while Coleridge was in Germany, and in pleasant contrast to his treatment of the Lyrical Ballads, Southey ministered to Mrs. Coleridge during her husband's absence. When Berkeley, the Coleridges' second child, died, he saw to its interment. Thus, soon after Coleridge returned to England in July 1799 the two men resumed at least amicable relations. Coleridge, undoubtedly appreciative of Southey's kindness to Mrs. Coleridge and recognizing the affection of his three-year-old son for Southey—"little Hartley prattles about you"—made the first overtures. Southey, still resentful, accused Coleridge of having slandered him. Coleridge replied that he had "never charged Southey with 'aught but deep and implacable enmity towards himself," and appealed to both Poole and Wordsworth as witnesses. Finally Poole wrote to Southey to allay his suspicions—"In the many conversations I have had with Coleridge concerning yourself, he has never discovered the least personal enmity against, but, on the contrary, the strongest affection for you stifled only by the untoward events of your separation." Thus on August 20, 1799, Southey wrote to Charles Danvers:

I write to you from Stowey, and at the same table with Coleridge: this will surprise you. . . . However, here I am, and have been some days wholly immersed in conversation. In one point of view Coleridge and I are bad companions for each other. Without being talkative I am conversational, and the hours slip away, and the ink dries upon the pen in my hand.

On February 5, 1800, apropos of a poem in hexameters on Mohammed upon which he and Coleridge planned to collaborate, he remarked to William Taylor:

From Coleridge I am promised the half, & we divided the books according as their subjects suited us—but I expect to have nearly the whole work. His ardour is not lasting, & the only inconvenience that his dereliction can occasion will be that I shall write the poem in fragments & have to seam them together at last.

In the late summer of 1799 the Southeys accompanied the Coleridges to Ottery St. Mary to meet Coleridge's family. Afterwards Coleridge went off to London, and a number of friendly letters passed between him and Southey. Then, in April 1800, Southey departed for Portugal in search of health, but before leaving he made Coleridge his literary executor. "A man," the punctilious Southey wrote to Coleridge,

when he goes abroad should make his will; and this [Madoc and the completed portions of Thalaba] is all my wealth: be my executor, in case I am summoned upon the grand tour of the universe, and do with them, and with whatever you may find of mine, what may be most advantageous for Edith, for my brothers . . . and for my mother.

Southey also told Coleridge that he would take along a few books, and he specified, as if in atonement for his review, "your poems, the Lyrics, the Lyrical Ballads, and Gebir; . . . these make all my library." While in Portugal he begged Coleridge for "some long letters," and "your Christabell and your Three Graves, and finish them on purpose to send them." Nevertheless, he still had misgivings: "Coleridge ought to be upon the Life of Lessing: he ought also to write to me, and I have my fears lest the more important business should be neglected like the other." Elsewhere he was more critical. "Coleridge," he said, "has never written to me: where no expectation existed there can be no disappointment." It is, however, in a letter to Humphry Davy that Southey betrays what was, perhaps, the main cause of his adverse view of intimacy with the Wordsworths. When Coleridge renounced friendship in November 1795 he meant to make a complete break. Later family considerations forced a renewal of association with Southey, but new friendships had displaced the old. Southey knew that Coleridge had transferred his affection to Wordsworth, and he resented it. On July 26, 1800, having heard of the migration of Coleridge to the North, he wrote almost spitefully to Davy:

Coleridge's translation [of Wallenstein] is admirable; but Coleridge, who can write as well as Schiller, ought not to have translated. He has done wrong, I think, in removing so far from his other friends, and wholly giving himself to Wordsworth; it is wrong on his own account, and more so on his wife's, who is now at an unreachable distance from all her sisters. What of the life of Lessing? the [proposed] essay on the "Genius of Schiller" amused me, it is not the first nor the second time that he had advertised what has not been written.

To Coleridge, however, Southey continued cordial as ever. On March 28, 1801, he wrote from Lisbon, as if to wean Coleridge away from Wordsworth, that he wished they could settle together at Alfoxden; "there was a house big enough: and you would talk me into healthy indolence, and I should spur you to profitable industry." He suggested that they might undertake "some joint journeyman works, which might keep up winter fires and Christmas tables"; thus beginning a series of fruitless plans for collaboration and moneymaking.

Immediately upon Southey's return to England in July 1801 he and Coleridge began to talk of living together, but except for brief visits at Greta Hall, Keswick, where the Coleridges were domesticated, no plans materialized until later. Southey wrote frequently to his friends about Coleridge. "I am going to Keswick," he wrote to William Taylor on July 27, 1801,

to pass the Autumn with Coleridge—to work like a negro—& to arrange his future plans with my own. He is miserably ill, & must quit England for a warmer climate or perish. I found letters announcing his determination to ship himself & family for the Azores, the only spot his finances could reach. This I have stopt; & the probability is that he will accompany me abroad. Thus Edith will have one sister with her to reconcile her to an abandonment of the rest—& I shall have with me the man, to whom, in all the ups & downs of six years, my heart has clung with most affection, despite even of its own efforts.

By this time Southey has revealed the most important aspect of his own relationship to Coleridge. He found his friend irresistible. Like almost everyone else, he was spellbound by Coleridge's scintillating personality. He saw Coleridge's faults with unvarnished clarity and he wrote of them with relentless frankness; but when all was said and done, he knew he was in the presence of genius.

"Lamb I hear has been at Keswick this summer," Southey wrote to Rickman on October 18, 1802.

Conjugal vexation of which he speaks would not have affected me—indeed my presence would have greatly repressed it—for I am the only man among his acquaintance to whom Coleridge does not complain of his wife—& that I think implies some merit on my part. It is all from his want of calculation, from that constant sacrifice to present impulse which marks his character & blasts the brightest talents that I have ever witnessed. I very much wished you to have seen him once. Lamb knows him better than most men—& I thoroughly know him—you would have given a fair first-sight opinion—because you would have looked thro the dazzle of conversation. Lamb says "the rogue has given me philtres to make me love him"—I never feel so little satisfied with myself as upon recollecting that my inclination to like him has always got the better of a judgement—felt at first sight—& deliberately & perpetually strengthened by every experience.

By 1803 Coleridge's health had become so bad that his friends began to despair of his life, and Southey was ready to sympathize with him. To William Taylor he wrote on June 23, 1803:

Coleridge & I have often talked of making a great work upon English Literature—but Coleridge only talking—& poor fellow he will not do that long I fear—. . . by God it provokes me when I see a set of puppies yelping at him, upon whom he—a great good-natured mastiff, if he came up to them, would just lift up his leg & pass on . . . It vexes & grieves me to the heart that when he is gone, as go he will, nobody will believe what a mind goes with him, how infinitely & ten-thousand-thousand-fold—the mightiest of his generation!

In August 1803 the Southeys lost their only child, and, seeking solace, they went almost at once to join the Coleridges at Greta Hall, Keswick, on a visit which ended only with their deaths. Coleridge, trudging about Scotland in a desperate endeavor to regain his health, hurried home. Fate had again united his destiny to Southey's.

For a time Southey becomes a little more generous in his judgment. "Coleridge," he remarks in a letter of November 19, 1803, "is now in bed with the lumbago. Never was poor fellow so tormented with such panto-mimic complaints." Then after details of the illness, he continues:

He is arranging materials for what, if it be made, will be a most valuable work, under the title of "Consolations and Comforts," which will be the very essential oil of metaphysics, fragrant as otto of roses, and useful as wheat, rice, port wine, or any other necessary of human life.

Three weeks later Southey is even more eulogistic:

I know not when any of his works will appear—& tremble lest an untimely death should leave me the task of putting together the fragments of his materials—when in sober truth I do believe [his death] would be a more serious loss to the world of literature than it ever suffered from the wreck of antient science.

Among Southey's correspondents the one most severe in his judgment of Coleridge was John Rickman. "He is very unwell in body," Rickman wrote to Southey on March 26, 1804, ". . . and his Mind is very depressed, & very excitable by objects to other Men scarce visible or feelable . . . If he dies, it will be from a sulky imagination, produced from the general cause of such things: i.e. Want of regular Work or Application: which is a great pity." In his answer to Rickman, Southey is less sympathetic than usual.

You are in great measure right about Coleridge. He is worse in body than you seem to believe, but the main cause lies in his own management of himself—or rather want of management. His mind is in a perpetual St. Vitus's dance—eternal activity without action. At times he feels mortified that he should have done so little, but this feeling never produces any exertion—I will begin tomorrow—he says—& thus has all his life long been letting today slip. He has had no calamities in life—& so contrives to be miserable about trifles—picking every pimple into a wound. Poor fellow there is no one thing which gives me so much pain as the witnessing such a waste of unequalled powers. . . . Having so much to do, so many errors to weed out of the world which he is capable of eradicating—if he does die without doing his work—it will half break my heart, & he will deserve a damnation by the parable to a heavy amount! for no human being has had more talents allotted.

Though Coleridge had been talking of a stay in a warmer climate for two or three years, it was not until 1804 that he finally fixed upon Malta as his destination. Southey seems to have wished him well, and the series of friendly letters between them during the early months of this year suggests a continuation of their friendship. Southey's letter of February 1804, however, deserves special mention, for it shows an unquenchable desire to interfere in matters really none of his concern. He regrets to find Coleridge "so lavish of the outward and visible signs of friendship" with "a set of fellows whom you do not care for and ought not to care for." He warns Coleridge:

You have accustomed yourself to talk affectionately, and write affectionately, to your friends, till the expressions of affection flow by habit in your conversation, and in your letters, and pass for more than they are worth; the worst of all this is, that your letters will one day rise up in judgment against you . . . and you will be convicted of a double dealing, which, though you do not design, you certainly do practise.

Southey goes on to be more specific:

You say in yours to Sara, that you love and honour me; upon my soul I believe you: but if I did not thoroughly believe it before, your saying so is the thing of all things that would make me open my eyes and look about me to see if I were not deceived. . . . Your feelings go naked, I cover mine with a bear-skin; I will not say that you harden yours by your mode, but I am sure that mine are the warmer for their clothing.

Southey, nevertheless, sincerely regretted Coleridge's departure. "Coleridge and I are the best companions possible," he wrote in early 1804, "in almost all moods of mind, for all kinds of wisdom, and all kinds of nonsense, to the very heights and depths thereof; and to William Taylor he remarked that he had delayed reviewing the work of Malthus "in expectation that Coleridge would put his Samson gripe upon that wretched Philistine." To Coleridge he was equally pointed: "Your departure hangs upon me with something the same effect that the heavy atmosphere presses upon you." But the best commentary on Coleridge, and one which sums up the attitude of Southey, occurs in a letter to Miss Barker, dated April 3, 1804.

Coleridge is gone for Malta, and his departure affects me more than I let be seen. Let what will trouble me, I bear a calm face . . . It is now almost ten years since he and I first met, in my rooms at Oxford, which meeting decided the destiny of both; and now when, after so many ups and downs, I am, for a time, settled under his roof, he is driven abroad in search of health. Ill he is, certainly and sorely ill; yet I believe if his mind was as well regulated as mine, the body would be quite as manageable. I am perpetually pained and mortified by thinking what he ought to be, for mine is an eye of microscopic discernment to the faults of my friends; but the tidings of his death would come upon me more like a stroke of lightning than any evil I have ever yet endured; almost it would make me superstitious, for we were two ships that left port in company.

During the first part of Coleridge's long absence, which lasted until August 1806, Southey was genuinely concerned. Since Coleridge had left in wretched health, so bad, indeed, that his death seemed almost inevitable to his friends, Southey waited expectantly for letters; but when the absence lengthened into months, and Coleridge took on the private and then the public secretaryship to the Military Governor of Malta, his neglect of letter-writing caused irritation rather than solicitude. "I am more angry at his silence than I choose to express," Southey burst forth in a letter of May 13, 1806, on hearing indirectly of Coleridge's removal to Rome, "because I have no doubt whatever that the reason why we receive no letters is, that he writes none; when he comes he will probably tell a different story, and it will be proper to admit his excuse without believing it."

This marks a definite change in Southey's estimate of Coleridge. Henceforth there is less toleration and more condemnation. Disappointed by Coleridge's failure to perform, impatient at delay and excuse-making, he was coming to recognize that Coleridge would not be molded into a practical man. As long as they were in close association Southey could not for long withstand the spell of Coleridge's personality; now a long absence emphasized the utter diversity of their temperaments, characters, and minds. A greater man than Southey might have risen above petty irritations, but Southey, whatever his merits may have been, was unable to do so, and his fault-finding continued for many years.

The first unmitigated condemnation of Coleridge was written in April 1807, eight months after his return from Malta. Southey deals particularly with Coleridge's domestic disaster, but it should be noted, too, that he still looks upon the Wordsworths with bitter enmity. The letter is addressed to John Rickman.

What you have heard of Coleridge is true, he is about to seperate from his wife, & as he chuses to do every thing in a way different from the rest of the world, is first going with her to visit his relations where however she has long since been introduced. The seperation is a good thing,—his habits are so murderous of all domestic comfort that I am only surprized Mrs. C. is not rejoiced at being rid of him. He besots himself with opium, or with spirits, till his eyes look like a Turks who is half reduced to idiotcy by the practise;—he calls up the servants at all hours of the night to prepare food for him,—he does in short all things, at all times except the proper time,—does nothing which he ought to do, & every thing which he ought not. His present scheme is to live with Wordsworth—it is from his idolatry of that family that this has begun,—they have always humoured him in all his follies,—listened to his complaints of his wife,—& when he has complained of the itch, helped him to scratch, instead of covering him with brimstone ointment, & shutting him up by himself. Wordsworth & his sister who pride themselves upon having no selfishness, are of all human beings whom I have ever known the most intensely selfish. The one thing to which W. would sacrifice all others is his own reputation, concerning which his anxiety is perfectly childish—like a woman of her beauty: & so he can get Coleridge to talk his own writings over with him, & criticise them & (without amending them) teach him how to do it,—to be in fact the very rain & air & sunshine of his intellect, he thinks C. is very well employed & this arrangement a very good one. I myself, as I have told Coleridge, think it highly fit that the seperation should take place, but by no means that it should ever have been necessary.

For a time, however, Coleridge may have redeemed himself in the eyes of Southey by successfully completing a series of lectures at the Royal Institution, though Southey, with his usual propensity to meddle in Coleridge's life, had attempted to dissuade him from delivering them. Southey argued that the lectures would keep Coleridge "from what is of greater immediate importance; because he will never be ready, and therefore always on the fret; and because I think his prospects such that it is not prudent to give lectures to ladies and gentlemen in Albemarle St.—Sidney Smith is good enough for them." Southey was gratified to find Coleridge in agreement with him about the Roman Catholic Bill, and out of admiration for Coleridge's philosophical ability, remarked concerning Wordsworth's "Intimations" ode: "The Ode upon Pre-existence is a dark subject darkly handled. Coleridge is the only man who could make such a subject luminous." It is worth noting, however, that Southey thought him guilty of chameleon-like changes in his philosophical opinions:

[Coleridge] is at present with Mrs. Clarkson at Bury . . . . Dr. Sayers would not find him now the warm Hartleian that he has been. Hartley was ousted by Berkeley, Berkeley by Spinoza, & Spinoza by Plato. When last I saw him Jacob Behmen had some chance of coming in. The truth is that he plays with systems, & any nonsense will serve him for a text from which he can deduce something new &surprizing .

The circumstances surrounding Coleridge's periodical, The Friend, were such as to give Southey unlimited opportunities for advice and censure. Beginning with a prospectus in December 1808 Coleridge spent six months in feverish preparation. Since he had undertaken to publish The Friend himself, all the business problems, such as printing, circulation, and financial responsibility, fell upon his shoulders; and were the story of his mismanagement and ill-fortune not so tragic to him, it would be a comedy of errors.

When Coleridge issued the prospectus, Southey was skeptical. "Coleridge," he wrote to William Taylor on December 6, 1808, "I understand has ordered some of his Prospectuses to be sent to you, relying upon me to write to you on the subject. He manages things badly . . . a few advertisements in newspapers & magazines would have done better than any prospectus at all." In a letter to Rickman, Southey regretted Coleridge's precipitancy in issuing the prospectus "wet from the pen to the printer, without consulting any body, or giving himself time for consideration," and he expressed displeasure with its tone:

The prospectus looks too much like what it pretends to be, talks confidentially to the Public about what the Public cares not a curse for—& has about it a sort of unmanly humblefication, which is not sincere, which the very object of the paper gives the lie to, which may provoke some people, & can conciliate nobody. Yet such as it is I should augur best of those persons who expected most from it, such a habit of thinking & such a train of thinking is manifested there.

Southey was not sanguine concerning the appearance of The Friend—"For the Friend itself you may whistle these three months, & God knows how much longer," he wrote to Rickman, and he answered his own query, "Will he carry the thing on?" with "Dios es que sabe"; but he had no doubt of Coleridge's intellectual powers. Writing to William Taylor he says:

Assuredly if he carries it into effect great things will be done;—sounder criticism and sounder philosophy established as well as advanced, than modern ages have seen; great truths upholden, & the axe laid at the root of those great errors which have been for the last century held to be the very nine & thirty articles of philosophical faith.

On June 1, 1809, despite the fears of his friends, Coleridge issued the first number of The Friend. Southey, beyond his irritation over the irregular appearance of a paper which had been promised as a weekly periodical, confined his adverse criticism to Coleridge's style. "Coleridge," he wrote to William Taylor on September 7, 1809,

has sent out a fourth number today. I have always expected every number to be the last. He may however possibly go on in this intermitting way till subscribers enough withdraw their names (partly in anger at its irregularity, more because they find it Heathen Greek)—to give him an ostensible reason for stopping short. Both he & Wordsworth powerfully as they can write & profoundly as they usually think, have been betrayed into the same fault,—that of making things easy of comprehension in themselves, difficult to be comprehended by their way of stating them.—Instead of going to the natural spring for water they seem to like the labour of dipping wells.

Southey best expressed his judgment of Coleridge at this time in a letter written to Miss Barker on January 29, 1809. The letter is especially interesting because Southey offers an analysis of himself as well as one of Coleridge:

It is not a little extraordinary that Coleridge, who is fond of logic, and who has an actual love and passion for close, hard thinking, should write in so rambling and inconclusive a manner; while I, who am utterly incapable of that toil of thought in which he delights, never fail to express myself perspicuously, and to the point. I owe, perhaps, something of this to the circumstance of having lived with him during that year in my life which was most likely to give my mind its lasting character. Disliking his inordinate love of talking, I was naturally led to avoid the same fault; when we were alone, and he talked his best (which was always at those times), I was pleased to listen; and when we were in company, and I heard the same things repeated,—repeated to every fresh company, seven times in the week if we were in seven parties,—still I was silent, in great measure from depression of spirits at perceiving those vices in his nature which soon appeared to be incurable. When he provoked me into an argument, I made the most of my time; and, as it was not easy to get in more than a few words, took care to make up in weight for what they wanted in measure. His habits have continued, and so have mine. Coleridge requested me to write him such a letter upon the faults of the "Friend" as he might insert and reply to. I did so; but it was not inserted. . . . It described the fault you have remarked as existing in Burke . . . . So it is with C; he goes to work like a hound, nosing his way, turning, and twisting, and winding, and doubling, till you get weary with following the mazy movements. My way is, when I see my object, to dart at it like a greyhound.

The Friend ceased unceremoniously in medias res with the twenty-seventh number on March 15, 1810. After its demise, Coleridge returned to Keswick from the Wordsworths, with whom he had been domesticated for about two years. He remained for six months at Greta Hall under the watchful eyes of his wife and Southey, but before long he was determined to escape to London. Southey, who opposed such a plan, wrote pointedly to Rickman on August 1, 1810:

Coleridge who has been quartered here since the beginning of May, talks of a journey to London! God help him!—He has been in better health than usual, & excellent spirits,—reading very hard, & to no purpose,—for nothing comes of it, except an accumulation of knowledge equal to that of any man living & a body of sound philosophy superior to what any man either of this or any former age has possessed,—all which will perish with him. I do not know any other motive that he has for going to London, than that he becomes daily more & more uneasy at having done nothing for so long, & therefore flies away to avoid the sight of persons, who he knows must be grieved by his misconduct, tho they refrain from all remonstrances.

Undeterred, Coleridge left for London in October, and Southey, not without rancor, wrote to Charles Danvers on November 13:

Coleridge is in London—gone professedly to be cured of taking opium & drinking spirits by Carlisle—really because he was tired of being here, & wanted to do both more at his ease elsewhere. I have a dismal letter about him from Carlisle. The case is utterly hopeless—that is the moral case; for as for his body, it is yet sound if he would let it be so,—but the will is so thoroughly & radically diseased, that in this instance there is an actual fall of man, from which little short of a miraculous interposition can redeem him.

Four months later Southey repeats this estimate, a little more kindly perhaps, in a letter to Sir George Beaumont:

The more necessary it becomes for Coleridge to exert himself in providing means for meeting the growing demands of his children, the more incapable, by some strange and fatal infirmity, does he become of exertion. Knowing his prodigious powers, and that there is no bodily disease which incapacitates him, so that the mere effort of his own will would at any moment render him all that his friends and family wish him to be, it is impossible not to feel a hope that that effort will one day be made; yet this is hoping for an intellectual and moral conversion, a new birth produced by an operation of grace, of which there is no example to encourage us to hope for it.

Before Coleridge left for London, Southey made another effort to stir him to activity, in a series of articles to be drawn from their notebooks—a work eventually entitled Omniana. Most of the contributions were Southey's. "I urged Coleridge," Southey wrote,

to double the number of "Omniana" volumes, merely for the sake of making him do something for his family; this requiring, literally, no other trouble than either cutting out of his common-place books what has for years been accumulating there, or marking the passage off for a transcriber. He promised to add two volumes, and has contributed about one sheet, which, I dare say, unless he soon returns to Cumberland, will be all.

Southey, however, still reverenced Coleridge's intellectual powers. "If you talk to him about your theological theories," he wrote to William Taylor in November 1810, "you will find a man thoroughly versed in the subject,—bringing to it all that can brought from erudition & meditation"; and late in 1811 he made arrangements to have Coleridge's lectures taken down in shorthand: "I am very anxious that Coleridge should complete this course of lectures, because whatever comes from him now will not be lost as it was at the Royal Institution. I have taken care that they shall be taken down in shorthand."

From the time of his arrival in Keswick, Coleridge had been only a fitful occupant of Greta Hall, spending much of his time elsewhere. Then in 1812, after returning home for a stay of two months, a visit destined to be his last in the North, he departed for London, leaving his family to share the house with the Southeys; and with his departure the personal relations between himself and Southey, save for a few subsequent meetings in London, came to an end. Southey had hardened his heart against Coleridge. When Remorse appeared on the Drury Lane stage in January 1813 he did, indeed, wish "Coleridge joy of his Remorse;" but not without a sneer he went on to note that had Sheridan and Kemble

brought it out when it was written [1797], C. might probably (yea probably,—for the applause of pit, box & gallery are the best stimulants for him)—have produced a dozen other such plays, or better, in the years which have intervened since they rejected this. Better however late than [n]ever,—& it is a most seasonable prize in the lottery for his family.

In the autumn of 1813 Coleridge made his way to Bristol. Here he remained about a year and delivered several successful courses of lectures. His opium habit, however, had almost wholly possessed him, and this period (1813 to 1815) is the darkest of his life. In the spring of 1814 Joseph Cottle learned, apparently for the first time, of Coleridge's indulgence in opium. When confronted by Cottle, Coleridge frankly admitted his weakness. Cottle determined to procure among Coleridge's friends an annuity of £150 as the best means of helping him, but before proceeding in the matter, he sought Southey's advice. Southey replied on April 17, 1814, utterly disapproving of any such financial assistance and pointing out that Coleridge had long enjoyed an annuity from the Wedgwoods, though it had been reduced to £75 less taxes. He admitted that since the annuity was being paid directly to Mrs. Coleridge, Coleridge was not embarrassed by his family, "except that he has insured his life for a thousand pounds, and pays the annual premium." It would seem that Southey would sanction no plan for Coleridge save his own:

There are but two grounds on which a subscription of this nature can proceed: either when the object is disabled from exerting himself; or when his exertions are unproductive. Coleridge is in neither of these predicaments . . . . He is at this moment as capable of exertion as I am, and would be paid as well for whatever he might be pleased to do. There are two Reviews,—the 'Quarterly,' and the 'Eelectic,' in both of which he might have employment at ten guineas a sheet. As to the former I could obtain it for him. . . .

Southey went on to suggest that Coleridge return to Keswick, collecting money on the way by lecturing at Birmingham and Liverpool. He said he would be unwilling to contribute anything should Cottle persist in his plan for an annuity.

Not satisfied with this letter to Cottle, Southey wrote again the next day. Adverting to the Wedgwood annuity, he said Coleridge had long since enjoyed its benefits, though the previous day he had noted its payment to Mrs. Coleridge. Southey was determined to have his way:

You will probably write to Poole on this subject. In that case, state to him distinctly what my opinion is: that Coleridge should return home to Keswick, raising a supply for his present exigencies, by lecturing at Birmingham and Liverpool, and then, if there be a necessity, as I fear there will be (arising solely and wholly from his own most culpable habits of sloth and self-indulgence) of calling on his friends to do that which he can and ought to do,—for that time the humiliating solicitation should be reserved.

On receipt of the letters from Southey, Cottle accordingly dropped the plan of raising an annuity for Coleridge. Instead he wrote a long letter of advice and remonstrance to Coleridge on April 25th, suggesting that he would gladly defray Coleridge's expenses to Keswick, and assuring him that "with better habits, you would be hailed by your family . . . as an angel from heaven." Nor did Cottle conclude without bringing up the name of Southey, who, he said, "has a family of his own, which by his literary labour, he supports, to his great honour."

On April 26th, Coleridge replied to Cottle: "I but barely glanced at the middle of the first page of your letter, and have seen no more of it—not from resentment . . . but from the state of my bodily and mental sufferings." He went on to say that had he "but a few hundred pounds, but £200,—half to send to Mrs. Coleridge, and half to place myself in a private mad house . . . how willingly would I place myself under Dr. Fox, in his establishment." In another letter Coleridge wrote to Cottle that he was resolved to place himself in an establishment for a month or two, but had no money. He asked Cottle to confer with two or three friends in Bristol and see what could be done.

Again Cottle wrote to Southey for advice, this time forwarding all of his correspondence with Coleridge. Southey's answer shows how utterly incapable he was of understanding Coleridge, much less sympathizing with him in his hour of trial. "You may imagine," Southey replied,

with what feelings I have read your correspondence with Coleridge. Shocking as his letters are, perhaps the most mournful thing they discover is, that while acknowledging the guilt of the habit, he imputes it still to morbid bodily causes, whereas after every possible allowance is made for these, every person who has witnessed his habits, knows that for the greater, infinitely the greater part, inclination and indulgence are its motives. . . .

The Morgans, with great difficulty and perseverance, did break him of the habit, at a time when his ordinary consumption of laudanum was, from two quarts a week, to a pint a day! He suffered dreadfully during the first abstinence, so much so, as to say it was better for him to die than to endure his present feelings. . . .

Unquestionably, restraint would do as much for him as it did when the Morgans tried it, but I do not see the slightest reason for believing it would be more permanent. . . . Could he be compelled to a certain quantity of labour every day, for his family, the pleasure of having done it would make his heart glad, and the sane mind would make the body whole.

I see nothing so advisable for him, as that he should come here to Greta Hall. My advice is, that he should visit T. Poole for two or three weeks, to freshen himself and recover spirits. . . . When there, he may consult his friends at Birmingham and Liverpool, on the fitness of lecturing at those two places . . . . Here it is that he ought to be. He knows in what manner he would be received;—by his children with joy; by his wife, not with tears, if she can control them—certainly not with reproaches;—by myself only with encouragement.

He has sources of direct emolument open to him in the 'Courier,' and in the 'Eclectic Review.'—These for his immediate wants, and for everything else, his pen is more rapid than mine, and would be paid as well. . . . His great object should be, to get out a play, and appropriate the whole produce to the support of his son Hartley, at College. Three months' pleasurable exertion would effect this. Of some such fit of industry I by no means despair; of any thing more than fits, I am afraid I do. But this of course I shall never say to him. From me he shall never hear ought but cheerful encouragement, and the language of hope.

Coleridge, of course, would have none of this advice. Domestication with Southey, who now wished to regulate his every movement, no less than with Mrs. Coleridge, was utterly repugnant to him. It is worth remarking, however, that Coleridge's Bristol friends did not abandon him, and he was able to rouse himself far more than Southey predicted. Though the years 1814 and 1815 present a tragic spectacle in his abject slavery to opium and the evils attendant upon that habit, nevertheless the year 1815 saw the creation of his most sustained critical writing, the Biographia Literaria. His powers of thinking were unimpaired, and his almost complete emancipation from the drug after 1816 shows that his will was not so "radically diseased" as Southey had imagined.

In the autumn of 1814, however, Southey renewed his attacks. Since Coleridge did not reply to his letters about the entrance of Hartley Coleridge into college, Southey got in touch with Coleridge's brothers at Ottery and, with their financial assistance and that of friends, arranged for Hartley to attend Merton College, Oxford. The following extracts from two of his unpublished letters to George Coleridge show the nature of his resentment. On October 12, 1814, he wrote:

The task of addressing you upon this subject Sir is a painful one. It would be more so if I did not verily believe that your brother labours under a species of insanity. His intellect is as powerful as it ever was, and perfectly unclouded—but all moral strength is paralysed in him; and when any thing comes before him in the form of duty, it seems to take away from him not merely the inclination but even the power of performing it. It would scarcely be speaking too strongly were I to say that he has abandoned his family to chance and charity.

In his letter of November 14 Southey tried to be more generous in his estimate:

Impossible as it is to depend upon him, [Coleridge] I never have wholly given up the hope that in some fit of exertion he may produce some thing worthy of the powers with which he has been gifted—powers which considering their variety as well as their extent, exceed that of any person whom it has ever been my fortune to meet with. I do not mean to extenuate his total disregard of all duties,—but it must be some consolation to you to know that those persons who have been most intimately connected with him during the last twenty years, who best know his conduct and have most cause to deplore and to condemn it, retain for him thro' all a degree of affection which it is not easy to express.

On October 17, 1814, Southey wrote to Cottle:

Can you tell us anything of Coleridge? A few lines of introduction to a son of Mr. Biddulph . . . are all that we have received from him since I saw him last September twelvemonth in town. The children being thus entirely left to chance, I have applied to his brothers at Ottery . . . . Lady Beaumont has promised £30 annually for this purpose, Poole £10. . . . The brothers, as I expected, promise their concurrence, and I daily expect a letter stating to what amount they will contribute. What is to become of Coleridge himself! He may continue to find men who will give him board and lodging for the sake of his conversation, but who will pay his other expenses? I cannot but apprehend some shameful and dreadful end to this deplorable course.

Southey's personal animosity, indeed, knew no bounds, for a year later he began to fear lest Coleridge become a bad influence upon his son. Nowhere is his meddling interference more flagrant. Hartley's "greatest danger," he wrote to J. N. White on May 8, 1815,

arises from a mournful cause, against which it is impossible to protect, or even to caution him,—it arises from his father . . . . If Coleridge should take it in his head to send for the boy to pass any of his vacations with him, there is the most imminent danger of his unsettling his mind upon the most important subjects, and the end would be utter and irremediable ruin. For Coleridge, totally regardless of all consequences, will lead him into all the depths and mazes of metaphysics: he would root up from his mind, without intending it, all established principles; and if he should succeed in establishing others in their place, with one of Hartley's ardour and sincerity, they would never serve for the practical purposes of society, and he would be thrown out from the only profession or way of life for which he is qualified.

Southey, too, may have been responsible for Mrs. Coleridge's remarks about the publication of Christabel in 1816: "Oh! when will he ever give his friends anything but pain? he has been so unwise as to publish his fragments of 'Christabel' & 'Koula-Khan' Murray is the publisher, & the price is 4s 6d—we were all sadly vexed when we read the advertizement of these things." Southey's neglect of the poems seems deplorable. In 1808, he had written, "Puff me, Coleridge! if you love me, puff me! Puff a couple of hundred into my pocket!" for he knew how much reviewing did for the sale of a publication; but now, when he had become a mainstay of the Quarterly Review, he never lifted a finger, either in that publication or elsewhere.

When Southey's Wat Tyler, his youthful outburst written in the fervor of Republicanism in 1794, was published in a pirated edition, Coleridge loyally defended him in two letters to the Courier. Southey was stirred by Coleridge's vindication of him:

I am glad to see . . . that this business has called forth Coleridge, and with the recollections of old times, brought back something like old feelings. He wrote a very excellent paper on the subject in the 'Courier,' and I hope it will be the means of his joining us ere long; so good will come out of evil, and the devil can do nothing but what he is permitted.

Moved to temporary friendliness by Coleridge's defense, Southey wrote favorably to Humphrey Senhouse of Coleridge's second Lay Sermon a few days later:

There are some excellent remarks in Coleridge's second lay sermon upon the over-balance of the commercial spirit, that greediness of gain among all ranks to which I have more than once alluded in the Quarterly. If Coleridge could but learn how to deliver his opinions in a way to make them read, and to separate that which would be profitable for all, from that which scarcely half a dozen men in England can understand (I certainly am not one of the number), he would be the most useful man of the age, as I verily believe him in acquirements and in powers of mind to be very far the greatest.

In August 1817, Southey apparently paid a visit to Coleridge at Highgate. Writing to his wife on August 13, he speaks most unkindly of Coleridge and protests bitterly against Coleridge's suggestion, probably made only casually, of settling in Keswick. Southey's remarks seem quite contradictory to his positive recommendations to Cottle three years earlier. At that time the only solution for Coleridge had been to return to Keswick and work under Southey's surveillance:

I shall go to Highgate to-morrow. I gather from his [Coleridge's] note which I received this morning that he looks toward Keswick as if he meant to live there. At present this cannot be for want of room—the Rickmans being our guests—if he meant to live with his family it must be upon a separate establishment. I shall neither speak harshly nor unkindly, but at my time of life, with my occupations [the thing is impossible]. This is a hateful visit and I wish it were over. He will begin as he did when last I saw him, about Animal Magnetism or some equally congruous subject, and go on from Dan to Beersheba in his endless loquacity.

With Southey's visit to Highgate we come to the end of his comments on Coleridge during the latter's lifetime, save for a few passing references. Southey took no notice of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, nor did he see fit to review it, even though Coleridge had made so generous an estimate of him in that publication. Southey might have remembered Coleridge's defense of Wat Tyler in the Courier, but he remained ungraciously silent. With the publication of the Biographia Literaria and Sibylline Leaves in 1817, Coleridge had admirably fulfilled Southey's constant urgings to carry something through to completion. As Sir E. K. Chambers points out, the years 1815-1817 "represent Coleridge's most continuous period of literary activity." The Friend, reissued in 1818, the Aids to Reflection of 1825, the Poetical Works of 1828, and the Constitution of the Church and State of 1830 were further evidence of Coleridge's industry. Southey, though in a prominent and influential position, preferred to let Coleridge's works make their way without encouragement from his pen. Had he shown the same utter indifference to Coleridge during the early years of their association—had he, for example, refrained from active interference in the marriage—the whole pattern of Coleridge's life might have been different. Examined in the light of all the facts, the friendship between the two men handicapped rather than benefited Coleridge almost from the beginning.

Coleridge died on July 25, 1834. To Wynn, Southey merely noted the event—"Poor Coleridge has just died at sixty-two, of old age"—and to Mrs. Hughes he wrote:

It is just forty years since I became acquainted with Coleridge; he had long been dead to me, but his decease has naturally wakened up old recollections . . . . All who are of his blood were in the highest degree proud of his reputation, but this was their only feeling concerning him.

In two sentences from an unpublished letter to Rickman, Southey displays more feeling: "The day's letters bring the news of S.T.C.'s death.—It will not intrude much upon my waking thoughts, but I expect to feel it for some time to come in my dreams."

Unfortunately, this is not all. On February 20, 1835, Wordsworth and Tom Moore were guests at Samuel Rogers'. Coleridge came up for discussion. The report in Tom Moore's diary affords an unpleasant comment upon Southey:

[Wordsworth] talked of Coleridge, and praised him, not merely as a poet, but as a man, to a degree which I could not listen to without putting in my protest . . . . [I] hinted something of this in reply to Wordsworth's praises, and adverted to Southey's opinion of him, as expressed in a letter to Bowles, (saying, if I recollect right, that he was "lamented by few, and regretted by none,") but Wordsworth continued his eulogium. Defended Coleridge's desertion of his family on the grounds of incompatibility, &c. between him and Mrs. Coleridge: said that Southey took a "rigid view" of the whole matter.

Southey let his antagonism to Coleridge reach beyond the grave. In his will, Coleridge had left to the discretion of Joseph Henry Green, his literary executor, the publication of his remains, including letters, and accordingly applications for manuscripts were made to Coleridge's former intimates. Most of them willingly complied. Southey, however, refused. Writing to Coleridge's nephew on November 7, 1834, he said:

I have all the letters that I ever received from S.T.C. To make any selection from them is what I have not heart to do; & it is not a task that could be delegated to any one. A time will come when the whole may be published without offending the feelings, or gratifying the malice of any one; & they will lose none of their value by keeping.—Indeed as I hear nothing of any intended collection of his letters, I conclude that those who are most concerned agree with me in their opinion upon this point.

In 1835, Cottle determined to prepare a memoir of Coleridge. When the Coleridge family learned of his projected work, they succeeded, through the good offices of Thomas Poole, in persuading him to abandon plans for publication. Henry Nelson Coleridge discussed the matter in a letter to Poole on September 21, 1835:

Between ourselves, and without any undue disparagement of Mr. C[ottle] I think you have done us all a great service in extinguishing his publication. His materials, in any shape, must be most valuable of course; . . . I hope Mr. Cottle will not refuse to let Mr. Green have either the originals or copies of the letters . . . . I think it might be mentioned to him that my Uncle . . . has in his very solemn will committed the care of collecting letters to Mr. Green.

Again on April 16, 1836, he wrote to Poole: "Mr. Cottle's memoir will be most highly valuable in whatever shape he may think fit to compose it, and I wish you would express to him, as I believe Mr. Green will himself do, how grateful we shall be for his communication when he considers it finished."

As his memoir took shape, Cottle planned to send it as a contribution to James Gillman, who was writing a biography of Coleridge, with the approbation of Mr. Green. Since he had unbounded faith in Southey's judgment, however, Cottle first sent him the manuscript early in 1836. On March 5, Southey wrote a long letter in reply:

You will see that I have drawn my pen across several passages in your MSS. The easiest way of showing you the incorrectness of these passages will be by giving you a slight summary of the facts. Let me however premise that this is only for your satisfaction and for your own use, if you should like to draw up your own Reminiscences, and leave them for publication at some proper time. . . . But with regard to Mr. Green's intended publication without intending the slightest disrespect to him, my desire is that as little as possible concerning me may be communicated to it. Reserve for my own memoirs (whenever they may be wanted) such materials in your possession as belong to them, and do not send them to S.T.C.'s executors, for a work of which it is desirable that I should be kept as clear as possible. Whatever shew of respect may be made in it, I very well know that it will be composed in no spirit of good will to me.

Southey went on to tell Cottle of a letter he had just received from Edward Moxon, stating that at his "earnest solicitation, many objectionable passages" respecting Southey and Wordsworth had been expunged from Allsop's Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge, which he had published. Southey remarked that "there is nothing in this work relating to myself of the slightest consequence" and that "Mr. Green certainly will not be guilty of any such indiscretions; but beyond a doubt he has been imbued with the same feelings toward me."

Not satisfied with this outburst and determined to exert his influence over Cottle, Southey wrote again on April 14, 1836, emphatically declaring that "it is my wish that nothing of mine may go into the hands of any persons who are concerned in bringing forward his [Coleridge's] papers," and pointing out that "If you were drawing up your 'Recollections of Coleridge,' for separate publication, you should be most welcome to insert anything of mine which you thought proper." Southey added a very significant warning: "If you send what you have written, upon this subject, [Coleridge's opium habit] it will not be made use of, and . . . Coleridge's biographer will seek to find excuses for his abuse of that drug." Nor could Southey refrain from an acrimonious attack on Coleridge:

I know that Coleridge at different times of his life never let pass an opportunity of speaking ill of me. Both Wordsworth and myself have often lamented the exposure of duplicity that must result from the publication of his letters, and of what he has delivered by word of mouth to the worshippers by whom he was always surrounded. To Wordsworth and to me, it matters little. When our lives come to be written there will be nothing that needs either concealment or varnishing.

Southey's letter apparently led Cottle "to stipulate [to Coleridge's biographer, Gillman] that, whatever else was omitted, the opium letters should be printed verbatim. But this being promptly refused, I determined to throw my materials into a separate work."

Realizing that they would be unable to stop Cottle's book, both Mr. Green and the Coleridge family now tried to induce him to delete two parts of it: the reference to DeQuincey's gift of £300 to Coleridge in 1807, DeQuincey having attacked him so bitterly in Tait's Magazine, and allusions to the opium habit, including a letter to Wade, in which Coleridge solemnly requested the publication of the full opium story after his death. John Taylor Coleridge, the poet's nephew, being in the Lake Country in the autumn of 1836 and wholly unsuspecting Southey's disloyalty, requested him to influence Cottle to make these omissions. Southey claimed ignorance of Wade's letter but said that Cottle had told him the circumstances of DeQuincey's gift. He assured John Taylor Coleridge that he would write to Cottle and induce him, if possible, "to forego—or modify his intention."

Southey's letter to Cottle of September 30, 1836 advised that "Coleridge's relations are uneasy at what they hear of your intention to publish," and declared: "They cannot say that any one of themselves will bring out a full and authentic account of C. because they know how much there is, which all who have any regard for Coleridge's memory, would wish to be buried with him." In this letter Southey noticeably fails to write anything to induce Cottle to give up or modify his plan.

On October 10, 1836, he wrote again to Cottle, apparently in consequence of a letter he had just received from John Taylor Coleridge on the subject of Cottle's proposed memoir. Unable to resist a criticism of Coleridge, he remarked: "I have long foreseen that poor S. T. Coleridge would leave a large inheritance of uneasiness to his surviving friends, and those who were the most nearly connected with him." He still makes no attempt to persuade Cottle to give up the publication, but he suggests that

A few omissions (one letter in particular, respecting the habit of taking opium,) would spare them great pain. . . . You have enough to tell that is harmless as well as interesting, and not only harmless, but valuable and instructive, and that ought to be told, and which no one but yourself can tell. . . . I will read over the Memoir when we meet.

On receipt of this letter Cottle says "his first impression" was "wholly to withdraw the work," but he resolved to suspend his decision until he had talked to Southey. In November, Southey visited him, and having re-read the whole manuscript urged him to publish the work. Southey also changed his opinion in regard to any omissions in deference to the wishes of the Coleridge family. He objected alone to "a few trifles, which were expunged" and gave his "unqualified approval" to the publication of the opium letters.

Accordingly, in 1837, Cottle issued his Early Recollections with its revelations. Southey, it will be seen, not only refused to cooperate with Coleridge's executor, but was actually responsible for the publication of a work whose contents brought suffering and humiliation to all bearing the name of Coleridge.

After so much ado, one might expect Southey to have approved of Early Recollections when it appeared. On the contrary, he was most displeased with the book. Nowhere is his duplicity more blatant. In an unpublished letter to Mrs. Septimus Hodson he wrote on August 7, 1837:

Cottle's book would have been much more disagreeable to Coleridge's friends than it is, if I had not prevailed on him to strike out many parts. Painful enough the book still is to those who have any regard for his memory: & never surely was there any book that would so completely mislead any one who should use it as materials either for Coleridge's biography or mine, the confusion of dates & circumstances being such as I never saw elsewhere.

The foregoing judgments of Coleridge, albeit they are often harsh and dictated by personal resentment, are among the fullest of contemporary accounts. Perhaps the animosity was increased by Coleridge's well-intentioned but often forthright criticism of Southey's poetry. Coleridge's daughter sums up the matter rather well:

My father had a strong impression that Southey took a dislike to him from his free & friendly criticism of his verses—& I know that my Uncle did not take this sort of thing genially & frankly. . . . The severity, the bitterness, of my Uncle's censures of my Father arose from the ill offices of tale bearers, & from a suspicion in my Uncle that my father despised & disparaged openly his productions & joined with his disparagers & enemies. . . . My Uncle would have been lenient enough to such shortcomings as my Father's—was lenient to misconduct of a worse kind, had not resentment taken the form of disapprobation & given it an edge.

The forty-year association of Coleridge and Southey is, with the exception of that with Charles Lamb, the longest of Coleridge's career. At first Southey loved Coleridge, then pitied him, came to condemn him, and finally, as far as he was able, tried to forget him.