SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 137 



ment one of the gentlemen began the conversation, with " Have 

 you seen a paper to day, Mr. Coleridge 1 " " Sir ! " (I replied, 

 rubbing my eyes) " I am far from convinced, that a Christian is 

 permitted to read newspapers or any other works of merely poli- 

 tical and temporary interest." This remark so ludicrously inap- 

 posite to, or rather, incongruous with, the purpose, for which I 

 was known to have visited Birmingham, and to assist me in which 

 they were all then met, produced an involuntary and general burst 

 of laughter; and seldom indeed have I passed so many delightful 

 hours, as I enjoyed in that room from the moment of that laugh 

 to an early hour the next morning. Never, perhaps, in so mixed 

 and numerous a party have I since heard conversation sustained 

 with such animation, enriched with such variety of information 

 and enlivened with such a flow of anecdote.'' 



This circumstance, so honestly and unaffectedly told, was ex- 

 ultingly laid hold of by the clever fellows of Blackwood's ma- 

 gazine ; and they perverted it into Coleridge's getting dead drunk 

 (at a prayer meeting, I think they said, but speak from recollection 

 only) ; however, they made him dead drunk and abused him for it 

 with a consistency equal to that of their jeers at Sir Humphrey 

 Davy for recommending sobriety, (in a review of his work on 

 fly-fishing.) Sweet, honest fellows who seldom have allowed a 

 month to pass without glorying in their own — assumed — matchless 

 capacity for the absorbtion of alcohol. 



In 1 796, his eldest son, Hartley, was born : he had subsequently 

 two others, Berkley and Derwent. In 1797, he lived at Nether 

 Stowey near Bridgewater, where he * provided for his maintenance 

 by writing verses for a London Morning paper; here he also 

 wrote part of" Christabel," and a tragedy, called " Osorio," which, 

 in 181 3, was brought out under the name of" Remorse." He com- 

 menced, at the same time, a poem called " The Brook." At this 

 period he preached every sunday in the Unitarian chapel at Taunton. 



In 1798, the generous and munificent patronage of Mr. Josiah, 

 and Mr. Thomas Wedgewood enabled him to finish his education 

 in Germany. 



After acquiring a tolerable sufficiency in the German language 

 at Ratzeburg, which with his voyage and journey thither he has 

 described in The " Friend, " he proceeded through Hanover to 

 Gottingen. 



Here he regularly attended the lectures on physiology in the 

 morning, and on natural history in the evening, under Blumen- 

 bach, a name as dear to every Englishman who has studied at 

 that university, as it is venerable to men of science throughout 



* Lit, Biog ., p. 177. 

 VOL. IV. — 1834. s 



