Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit | Page 4

Cambridge. But soon afterwards he threw all
up in despair. He resolved to become lost to his friends, and find some
place where he could earn in obscurity bare daily bread. He came to
London, and then enlisted as a private in the 15th Light Dragoons.
After four months he was discovered, his discharge was obtained, and
he went back to Cambridge.
But he had no career before him there, for his religious opinions then
excluded belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, and the Universities were
not then open to Dissenters. A visit to Oxford brought him into relation

with Robert Southey and fellow-students of Southey's who were also
touched with revolutionary ardour. Coleridge joined with them in the
resolve to leave the Old World and create a better in the New, as
founders of a Pantisocracy--an all-equal government--on the banks of
the Susquehannah. They would need wives, and Southey knew of three
good liberal-minded sisters at Bristol, one of them designed for himself;
her two sisters he recommended for as far as they would go. The chief
promoters of the Pantisocracy removed to Bristol, and one of the three
sisters, Sarah Fricker, was married by Coleridge; Southey marrying
another, Edith; while another young Oxford enthusiast married the
remaining Miss Fricker; and so they made three pairs of future
patriarchs and matriarchs.
Nothing came of the Pantisocracy, for want of money to pay fares to
the New World. Coleridge supported himself by giving lectures, and in
1797 published Poems. They included his "Religious Musings," which
contain expression of his fervent revolutionary hopes. Then he planned
a weekly paper, the Watchman, that was to carry the lantern of
philosophic truth, and call the hour for those who cared about the
duties of the day. When only three or four hundred subscribers had
been got together in Bristol, Coleridge resolved to travel from town to
town in search of subscriptions. Wherever he went his eloquence
prevailed; and he came back with a very large subscription list. But the
power of close daily work, by which alone Coleridge could carry out
such a design, was not in him, and the Watchman only reached to its
tenth number.
Then Coleridge settled at Nether Stowey, by the Bristol Channel, partly
for convenience of neighbourhood to Thomas Poole, from whom he
could borrow at need. He had there also a yearly allowance from the
Wedgwoods of Etruria, who had a strong faith in his future. From
Nether Stowey, Coleridge walked over to make friends with
Wordsworth at Racedown, and the friendship there established caused
Wordsworth and his sister to remove to the neighbourhood of Nether
Stowey. Out of the relations with Wordsworth thus established came
Coleridge's best achievements as a poet, the "Ancient Mariner" and
"Christabel." The "Ancient Mariner" was finished, and was the chief

part of Coleridge's contribution to the "Lyrical Ballads," which the two
friends published in 1798. "Christabel," being unfinished, was left
unpublished until 1816.
With help from the Wedgwoods, Coleridge went abroad with
Wordsworth and his sister, left them at Hamburg, and during fourteen
months increased his familiarity with German. He came back in the
late summer of 1799, full of enthusiasm for Schiller's last great work,
his Wallenstein, which Coleridge had seen acted. The Camp had been
first acted at Weimar on the 18th of October, 1798; the Piccolomini on
the 30th of January, 1799; and Wallenstein's Death on the 10th of the
next following April. Coleridge, under the influence of fresh enthusiasm,
rapidly completed for Messrs. Longman his translation of Wallenstein's
Death into an English poem of the highest mark.
Then followed a weakening of health. Coleridge earned fitfully as
journalist; settled at Keswick; found his tendency to rheumatism
increased by the damp of the Lake Country; took a remedy containing
opium, and began to acquire that taste for the excitement of opium
which ruined the next years of his life. He was invited to Malta, for the
benefit of the climate, by his friend, John Stoddart, who was there. At
Malta he made the acquaintance of the governor, Sir Alexander Ball,
whose worth he celebrates in essays of the Friend, which are included
under the title of "A Sailor's Fortune" in this little volume. For a short
time he acted as secretary to Sir Alexander, then returned to the Lakes
and planned his journal, the Friend, published at Penrith, of which the
first number appeared on the 1st of August, 1809, the twenty-eighth
and last towards the end of March, 1810.
Next followed six years of struggle to live as journalist and lecturer in
London and elsewhere, while the habit of taking opium grew year by
year, and at last advanced from two quarts of laudanum a week to a
pint a day. Coleridge put himself under voluntary restraint for