Coleridges Ancient Mariner and Select Poems | Page 5

Fricker.
The Pantisocracy scheme could not in the nature of things be long-lived. As a matter of
fact it lasted little more than a year, ending in a rupture between the two leading spirits
just when they became brothers-in-law. Coleridge spent the summer of 1795 in Bristol in
company with Southey, writing and lecturing. In October he was married to Sarah Fricker
in "St. Mary's Redcliff, poor Chatterton's church." In November Southey married Edith
Fricker and set sail for Lisbon, where his uncle was the English chaplain; and
Pantisocracy was dead.

The break with Southey was the natural result of attempting to force through a scheme
impracticable in itself and doubly impracticable for the men who conceived it. Its
collapse did not altogether sever their literary relations. The collaboration begun in "The
Fall of Robespierre" (Cambridge, 1794) was continued in Southey's "Joan of Arc" (1796),
to which Coleridge contributed the part afterwards printed (with some additions) as "The
Destiny of Nations," and in Coleridge's first volume of "Poems" (Bristol, 1796). A more
important contributor to this volume, however, was Charles Lamb, whose initials were
appended to four of the pieces. A second edition appeared in June, 1797, with eleven
additions from Coleridge besides verses by Lamb and Charles Lloyd, all under the title:
"Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second Edition. To which are added Poems by Charles Lamb,
and Charles Lloyd." The publisher of both editions was Joseph Cottle, a bookseller of
Bristol, who played the part of provincial Murray to the young poets in these years.
Meanwhile Coleridge, after a period of lecturing and projecting, had as we have seen
married Sarah Fricker, with whom he was now very much in love, and had begun
housekeeping in a cottage at Clevedon near the Bristol Channel. The beauty of the place
and his happiness there are celebrated in "The Aeolian Harp" and "Reflections on
Leaving a Place of Retirement" (better known by its opening words, "Low was our pretty
cot"). His next residence was in Bristol--rather a base of operations than a home, for
Coleridge was on the road much of the time, lecturing, preaching, soliciting subscriptions
for his political and philosophical paper "The Watchman" (which ran from March to May,
1796), and trying in various other ways to provide for his family, which was increased by
the birth of a son in September, 1796. At last in December he secured the little cottage at
Nether Stowey in the Quantock Hills (south of the Bristol Channel, in Somerset), close to
the house of his beloved friend, Thomas Poole, where he lived until his departure for
Germany in September, 1798.
II. AT NETHER STOWEY
The Stowey period was the blossoming time of Coleridge's genius. All the poems in this
volume except the last four, and besides these "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,"
"Frost at Midnight," and "Fears in Solitude"--the bulk of his achievement in poetry--were
either written or begun in 1797 and 1798. It will be proper, then, to dwell a little on his
circumstances, his friends, and his ideas during these two years.
The means of livelihood for himself and his family when he went to Stowey were a
subscription of about £40 that Poole and some friends got together for him, £20 that
Cottle paid for the second edition of the "Poems," the promise of £80 from the father of
Charles Lloyd, who was to live with him and study under his direction, and such money
as he could earn by reviews and magazine articles, which he estimated at £40 a year; not
a munificent provision for a household of three adults and a child. But the theories of the
simple life that had made Pantisocracy seem a feasible project still inspired him with
confidence. "Sixteen shillings," he wrote to Poole, "would cover all the weekly expenses
of my wife, infant, and myself. This I say from my wife's own
calculations." Further, he
will support himself by the labor of his hands. "If you can instruct me to manage an acre
and a half of land, and to raise in it, with my own hands, all kinds of vegetables and grain,
enough for myself and my wife and sufficient to feed a pig or two with the refuse, I hope

that you will have served me most effectually by placing me out of the necessity of being
served." This was in December, just before he moved to Stowey. In February he wrote
from his new home to another friend: "From seven till half past eight I work in my garden;
from breakfast till twelve I read and compose, then read again, feed the pigs, poultry, etc.,
till two o'clock; after dinner work again till tea; from tea till supper, review. So jogs the
day, and I am happy.... I raise potatoes and all