238 -^**- Leslie SUplien [March 9, 



in September, 1798, when he was just twenty-six, in company with 

 the friend who alone could be compared to him in intellectual 2)ower. 

 Wordsworth had been attracted, as Lamb and Southey had been 

 attracted before him. Coleridge and Wordsworth had discussed the 

 principles of their common art ; and Coleridge had applied them in 

 those wonderful poems, the ' Ancient Mariner ' and ' Christabel ' 

 (the first part), which were to be but the prologue to a fuller utter- 

 ance; a wonderful prologue, for, though followed by nothing, it 

 remained unique and inimitable. Coleridge was not yet deterre, as 

 Pope said of Johnson ; the ordinary critics had only a passing smile 

 or sneer for the little clique which published its obscure utterances 

 in a provincial town. Monthly and critical reviewers — the arbiters 

 of taste — would have been astonished to hear that Coleridge and 

 Wordsworth and Lamb and Southey would soon stand in the very 

 front ranks of English literature ; and he must have a clearer con- 

 science than I who would cast a stone at critics for not at once detecting 

 the first germs of rising genius. But, as ex post facto prophets, we 

 are able to see that Coleridge already had not only given proofs of 

 astonishin*^ power, but had won what was even more valuable, the 

 true sympathy and cordial affection of young men who were the dis- 

 tinct leaders of the next generation. Even material supj)ort was not 

 wanting from such men as Poole and Wedgwood sufiicient to ensure 

 a fair start for the little band of prophets. We should have been 

 justified in foretelling, with unusual confidence, a career of surpassing 

 brilliancy for the youth, of whom it seemed only questionable whether 

 he would choose to be a second Bacon or a second Milton. 



And if, at that time, any one could have shown us the same 

 Coleridge at a distance of eighteen years, the worn, depressed, pre- 

 maturely aged man who took up his abode with Gillman in 1816, we 

 should have been shocked, and yet, perhaps, have been able to utter 

 our complacent " I told you so." What so far had been the achieve- 

 ments of the most brilliant genius of the generation : a man not only 

 of surpassing ability, but of surpassing facility of utterance ; a man 

 whom to set going at any moment was to unlock a perpetually 

 flowing fountain of abounding eloquence ? A few newspaper articles 

 and some courses of lectures, he said in 1817, constituted his whole 

 publicity. It may be added that he had jotted down on the margins 

 of books enough detached thoughts to have made some volumes of 

 admirable reflections. But he had achieved nothing to suggest 

 concentrated thought or sustained labour. In a shorter period 

 Scott poured out the whole of the AVaverley novels, besides dis- 

 charging official duties, and writing a number of reviews and 

 miscellaneous works. I say nothing as to the quality. I am simply 

 thinking of the amount of work ; and Coleridge's work cost little 

 labour, for his power of improvisation was among his most mar- 

 vellous faculties. Why, then, was the work so limited in quantity ? 

 The internal facts are sufiiciently significant. After his return from 

 Germany in the autumn of 1799, he wrote some articles which 



