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just received a letter from his friend, T. Wedgwood, making him an offer of 150l. a-year if he chose to waive his present pursuit, and devote himself entirely to the study of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge seemed to make up his mind to close with this proposal, in the act of tying on one of his shoes. It threw an additional damp on his departure. It took the wayward enthusiast quite from us to cast him into Deva's winding vales, or by the shores of old romance. Instead of living at ten miles distance, of being the pastor of a dissenting congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the hill of Parnassus, to be a shepherd on the delectable mountains. Alas! I knew not the way thither, and felt very little gratitude for Mr. Wedgwood's bounty. I was presently relieved from this dilemma; for Mr. Coleridge, asking for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write something on a bit of card, advanced towards me with undulated step, and giving me the precious document, said, it was his address, Mr. Coleridge, Nether Stowey, Somersetshire; and that he should be glad to see me there in a few weeks time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to meet me. I stammered out my acknowledgments, and acceptance of this offer as well as I could; and this mighty business being settled, the poet-preacher took leave, and I accompanied him six miles on the road. It was a fine morning in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole way. I observed that he continually crossed me on the way by shifting from one side of the foot-path to the other. This struck me as an odd movement; but I did not at that time connect it with any instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle, as I have done since. He seemed unable to keep on in a straight line. He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose Essay on Miracles, he said, was stolen from an objection started

in one of South's sermons-(Credat Judæus Apella). Coleridge even denied the excellence of Hume's general style, which, I think, betrayed a want of taste or candour. He, however, made me amends by the manner in which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on his Essay on Vision as a master-piece of analytical reasoning. So it undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for striking the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's theory of matter and spirit; and saying, 'Thus I confute him, Sir.' Coleridge drew a parallel between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said, the one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no two things could be more distinct. The one was a shop-boy's quality, the other the characteristic of a philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler as a true philosopher, a profound and conscientious thinker, a genuine reader of nature and of his own mind. He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said, that the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book in our universities, was a disgrace to the national character.' We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward, pensive but much pleased. He was the first poet I had known, and he certainly answered to that inspired name. I had heard a great deal of his powers of conversation, and was not disappointed."

According to appointment, in the following spring, Hazlitt set out to visit Coleridge. "I arrived, and was well received. The country about Nether Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. the afternoon, Coleridge took me over to All-Foxden, a romantic old family-mansion of the St. Aubins, where

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Wordsworth lived. Wordsworth himself was from home, but his sister kept house, and set before us a frugal repast; and we had free access to her brother's poems. The Lyrical Ballads were still in manuscript, or in the form of Sybilline leaves. I dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with the faith of a novice.

"The next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out into the park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an old ash-tree that stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud, with a sonorous and musical voice, the ballad of Betty Foy. I was not critically or sceptically inclined, I saw touches of truth and nature, and took the rest for granted. But in the Thorn, the Mad Mother, and the Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman, I felt that deeper power and pathos which have been since acknowledged

'In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite.'

as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening. The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in some degree to his friend's description of him, but he was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He was quaintly dressed in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons. There was something of a roll, a lounge in his gait, not unlike his own Peter Bell. There was a severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire in his eye, (as if he saw something in objects more than the outward appearance) an intense high, narrow forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and feeling, and a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a great deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression

of the rest of his face. He sat down and talked very naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear gushing accents in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the northern burr, like the crust on wine. We went over to All-Foxden again the day following, and Wordsworth read us the story of Peter Bell in the open air; and the comment made upon it by his face and voice was very different from that of some later critics. Whatever might be thought of the poem, his face was as a book where men might read strange matters,' and he announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. Returning the same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the nightingale to his sister, in which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm trees, and listening to the bees humming round us, while we quaffed our flip.

"It was agreed, among other things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol channel, as far as Linton. We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester was a native of Nether Stowey, one of those who were attracted to Coleridge's discourse, as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time are to the sound of a brass pan. He followed in the chase, like a dog who hunts, not like one that made up the cry.' He had on a brown cloth coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk like a drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the side of Coleridge, like a running footman by the side of a stage coach, that he

might not lose a syllable or sound, that fell from Coleridge's lips. He told me in his private opinion Coleridge was a wonderful man.

"In the morning of the second day, we breakfasted luxuriously in an old-fashioned parlour, on tea, toast, eggs, and honey, in the very sight of the bee-hives from which it was taken, and a garden full of thyme and wild flowers that had produced it. It was in this room that we found a little worn-out copy of the Seasons, lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed, 'That is true fame.' He said Thompson was a great poet, rather than a good one; his style was as meretricious as his thoughts were natural. He spoke of Cowper as the best modern poet. Some comparison was introduced between Shakspeare and Milton. He said he hardly knew which to prefer. Shakspeare seemed to him a mere stripling in the art; he was as tall and as strong, with infinitely more activity than Milton, but he seemed never to have come to man's estate; or if he had, he would not have been a man, but a monster.' He spoke with contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope. He thought little of Junius as a writer; he had a dislike of Dr. Johnson; and a much higher opinion of Burke, as an orator and politician, than of Fox or Pitt. He, however, thought him very inferior in richness of style and imagery to some of our elder prose writers, particularly Jeremy Taylor. We loiterered on the ribbed sea sand,' in such talk as this, a whole morning. We returned on the third morning, and Coleridge remarked the silent cottage-smoke curling up the valley where, a few evenings before, we had seen the lights gleaming through the dark. In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on my return home, and he for Germany."

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The annuity granted to Coleridge, by his friends Josiah

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