BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR, &C. 149 



Like all visionary enthusiasts, on quitting the University, Coleridge's mind was 

 for a time almost wholly absorbed with some crude notions of universal liberty, the 

 regenerating of mankind, and other Utopian reveries. He found coadjutors 

 equally ardent in Lovell and Southey. This youthful triumvirate proposed schemes 

 for regenerating the world even before the completion of their education ; and 

 fancied happy lives in aboriginal forests, republics on the Mississippi, and a newly 

 drawn philanthropy. In order to carry their ideas into effect, they began operations 

 at Bristol, and were received with considerable applause by several inhabitants of 

 that commercial city. Finding at last that the old world would not be relbrmed 

 after their mode, they determined to try and found a new one, in which all was to be 

 liberty and happiness — and for the site of this new golden region they fixed on the 

 deep woods of America ! There all the evils of European society were to be 

 remedied, property was to be in common, and every man a legislator. The name of 

 " Pantisocracy" was bestowed on the favoured scheme, while yet it existed only in 

 imagination. Unborn ages of imperishable happiness presented themselves before 

 the triad of philosophical founders of Utopian empires, while they were dreaming of 

 human perfectibility : — a harmless dream at least, and an aspiration after better 

 things than life's realities, which is the best that can be said for it. In the midst of 

 these plans of vast import, the three philosophers fell in love with three sisters of 

 Bristol, named Fricker (one of them, afterwards Mrs. Lovell, an actress of the 

 Bristol theatre, another a mantua-maker, and the third the governess of a day- 

 school), whom they respectively married, and thus all their visions of immortal 

 freedom faded into air. None ever revived the phantasy ; but Coleridge lived to 

 sober down his early extravagant views of political freedom into something like a 

 disavowal of having held them, but he never became a foe to the generous principles 

 of human liberty, which he ever espoused. 



With the avowed object of spreading these principles, he started a weekly paper, 

 called " The Watchman," which only reached its ninth number, though the editor 

 set out on his travels to procure subscribers among the friends of the doctrines he 

 promulgated, visiting Birmingham, Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, and Sheffield, 

 for this purpose. The failure of this speculation was a severe mortification to the 

 projector. He was in some measure consoled, however, by the success of a volume 

 of poems which he published, with some communications from his friends Lamb 

 and Lloyd. 



In the autumn of 1795, Coleridge married Miss Sarah Fricker, and in the 

 following year his eldest son. Hartley, was born. Two other sons, Berkeley and 

 Derwent, were the fruits of this union. At Nether Stowey, a village near Bridge- 

 water, in Somersetshire, where he resided in 1797, he wrote, at the desire of 

 Sheridan, a tragedy, which was, in 1813, brought out under the title of " Remorse :" 

 — the name it originally bore was Osorio. During his residence here he was in 

 the habit of preaching every Sunday at the Unitarian Chapel in Taunton, and was 

 greatly respected by the better class of his neighbours. lie enjoyed the friendship 

 of Wordsworth, who lived at Allfoxden, about two miles from Stowey, and was 

 occasionally visited by Charles Lamb, John Thelwall, and other congenial spirits. 

 About this period, he planned a poem called " The Brook," but it was never 

 completed. 



Having married before he possessed the means of supporting a family, and depend- 

 ing principally for subsistence, at Stowey, upon his literary labours, the remunera- 

 tion for which could be but scanty, Coleridge's situation at this period was not 

 the most felicitous. A change was, however, destined to come over his fortune. 

 After a long season of toil and privation, doubly vexatious to a literary man by 

 reason of his peculiar habits and notions, he was very unexpectedly, in 1798, sought 

 out and kindly patronized by the late Thomas Wedgwood, Esq. who granted him 

 a pension of £100 a year. This enabled him to plan a visit to Germany, to which 

 country he travelled with Wordsworth, studied the language at Ratzeburg, and 

 then proceeded to Gottingen. He attended the different lectures, but his attention 

 was principally directed to literature and philosophy. At the end of his *' Biographia 

 Literaria" Coleridge has published some letters, which relate to his sojourn in 

 Germany. He sailed Sept. 16th, 1798, and on the 19th landed at Hamburgh; 

 and on the 20th of the same month he was introduced to the brother of the great 

 poet Klopstock, to Professor Ebeling. and ultimately to the poet himself. An 

 impression of awe, he states, came upon him when he set out to visit the German 



NO. II. V 



