GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



Wordsworth suggesting the shooting of the albatross as the central 

 thought and turning-point of the wonderful story. They emulated, 

 criticized, and inspired each other, taking each his individual line, 

 his own view of the powers and province of poetry. From this 

 time forth Coleridge was to concern himself with the supernatural 

 and the mystical, Wordsworth to be the exponent of the wonder 

 and the beauty underlying even common things in life and nature. 

 The subsequent events of Coleridge's life are well known. 

 Having to support a growing family, he began to lecture on religion 

 and politics at Bristol, and there he published his first volume of 

 poems in 1796. To start a periodical called The Watchman, that 

 only survived two months, he toured the country, canvassing for 

 subscribers. He preached in several Unitarian pulpits, and was 

 about, half-heartedly, to enter the Unitarian ministry, when the 

 brothers Wedgwood (foreseeing the loss to the world of a poetical 

 genius), by a beneficent arrangement, stepped in and rendered 

 the sacrifice unnecessary. In 1798 he travelled in Germany with 

 the Wordsworths ; there, in the Hartz Mountains, though ill- 

 dressed and slovenly, he was the very life of the party, rhyming 

 and poetizing, singing and joking, and " discoursing in eloquent 

 monologue, as was his wont, on every subject from the captivity 

 of nations to the Millennium."- He then left his friends, and spent 

 eight or nine months in Germany, making himself master of the 

 language, attending lectures, and, in a period of great intellectual 

 activity and excitement, accepting for the time being many of 

 the dogmas and theories held by German philosophers and thinkers. 

 In 1800 he left London and settled in the Lake district, sharing 

 Greta Hall with Southey. A cold that he caught on the occasion 

 of a tour in Scotland with the Wordsworths, resulted, on his return, 

 in a long and severe illness, during which, to assuage pain, he first 

 fell into the terrible opium habit that wrecked his after life. 

 Cursing his weakness, and fleeing, as it were, from himself, he now 

 again -went abroad. For nearly a year he acted as secretary to 

 the Governor of Malta ; he stayed seven or eight months in Italy, 

 and during the whole of that period he never communicated with 

 his family at the Lakes. Back in England again, he was offered 

 shares in two newspapers, and could have made two thousand a 

 year ; but he refused, declaring that he wouldn't give up the 

 country and the leisurely reading of old folios for " two thousand 



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