On the occasion of this visit Coleridge heard read The Ruined Cottage, which ultimately formed the first book of The Excursion, and The Borderers, now approaching completion (though it was not published till 1842), and recited, in return, some acts of his Osorio. The bond between the poets was sealed. From this time, as Wordsworth sings,'—

"Sooth, these two were to each other dear."

On his return to Stowey, Coleridge was visited by Lamb and his sister. It was now he wrote the poem, This Lime-tree Bower my Prison. Shortly after their departure came 2 Cottle, to whom Coleridge delightedly exhibited "his house, his garden,

3

Coleridge at twenty-six, in the Poems, of 1852, resembles Cottle's two of him, at twenty-three and twenty-four, in no single particular. The one by Phillips, of Coleridge in mature life (to be found in the Table Talk), must be good. The caricature-sketch in the South Kensington Museum, by Maclise, made for Frazer's Magazine, is hardly less painful than it is full of humour.

We do not attempt more than to touch cursorily on this subject. The three Bristol portraits we have mentioned are all to be seen in the National Portrait Gallery-except the first, which, in very truth, to see is impossible, from the position in which it is hung.

1 Sings.] In his Stanzas written in my Pocket-Copy of Thomson's Castle of Indolence.

2 Came.] Cottle, Recollections, &c., i. 275-7. A little later on, Cottle spends a day or two with the Wordsworths at Alfoxden.

3 House.] We may let Coleridge describe the house, and its surroundings:-" Our house is better than we expected there is a comfortable bedroom and sitting-room for C. Lloyd, and another for us, a room for Nanny, a kitchen, and outhouse. Before our door a clear brook runs of very soft water; and in the back yard there is a nice well of fine spring water. We have a very pretty garden, and large enough to find us vegetables and employment, and I am already an expert gardener, and both my hands can exhibit a callum, as testimonials of their industry. We have likewise a sweet orchard, and at the end

vance

his orchard, laden with fruit; and also the contri1 he had made to unite his two neighbours' domains with his own." Cottle grows rhapsodical over the "jasmine arbour "—the "lime-tree bower," we suppose,-in which Poole, Lloyd, Coleridge, and himself, discussed "delicious bread and cheese," and "a brown mug of the true Taunton ale," as well as over Mrs. Coleridge and "her fine Hartley," who presently joined them.

Shortly after Cottle's visit, as it would seem,or a little before it, for the dates 3 are perplexing,

of it T. Poole has made a gate, which leads into his garden -and from thence either through the tan yard into his house, or else through his orchard over a fine meadow into the garden of a Mrs. Cruikshanks, an old acquaintance, who married on the same day as I, and has got a little girl a little younger than David Hartley. Mrs. Cruikshanks is a sweet little woman, of the same size as my Sara, and they are extremely cordial. T. Poole's mother behaves to us as a kind and tender mother. She is very fond indeed of my wife, so that, you see, I ought to be happy, and, thank God, I am so."-Estlin Letters.

'He had.] See last note.

2 Ale.] A third giant. See an earlier note.

3 Dates.] Coleridge was at Racedown in June. On June 29 he writes to Cottle, from Stowey, that the Lambs will arrive in about a fortnight, and invites Cottle to meet them. The Lambs stay some little time, but when Cottle arrives, they are gone. The Wordsworths do not appear to be there. The Wordsworths, in July, visit Stowey, and stay a fortnight after that they settle at Alfoxden. Miss Wordsworth writes from Alfoxden, in August, that they have been there a month. Did the Lambs come earlier than was expected? Did the Wordsworths come between them and Cottle? We leave Coleridge's future biographer to unravel the coil. Our own conviction is that they arrived before Cottle's departure, that Cottle had not met Wordsworth before, and that he alludes to this visit, when he says," A visit to Mr. Coleridge at Stowey, in the year 1797, had been the means of my introduction to Mr. Wordsworth." But Cottle's memory was a will-o'the-wisp.

came Wordsworth and his sister, and they stayed a fortnight. They were delighted with the neighbourhood. Then they made the discovery that Alfoxden1 House, three miles from Stowey, and not two miles from the sea," was to let, and took it for a year, it must have been, at a nominal rent. They removed into it at once, bringing with them Wordsworth's little pupil, son of Basil Montagu. We are now at the end of July.

2

date the two poets must

They had, on the whole,

For a year from this have spent a happy time. -if precarious, competent means, good friends, poetic sympathies, poetic surroundings.

3

There was Coleridge, with Poole, and Poole's mother, whom Mrs. Coleridge "loved," on the one hand, and their friends the Cruikshanks on the other. There was Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth and Alfoxden;-"Sea, woods wild as fancy ever painted, brooks clear and pebbly as in Cumberland, villages so romantic,"-sequestered waterfalls. In Alfoxden Park roamed "seventy head of red deer;" around rose hills ravishingly fair with fern and trees and sheep; there were coombs, glens, smooth downs,

1 Alfoxden.] Alfoxden Manor and House, there was no village of Alfoxden,—were in the village and parish of Skingston. They came to the St. Aubins, by marriage, some time before 1493, and still belong to them. The owner, during Wordsworth's tenure, was a minor.

2 Rent.] "Let, I believe," says De Quincey, "on the terms of keeping the house in repair."-Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets.

3 Dorothy.] Who, however, angered Mrs. Coleridge, according to De Quincey, by making free with her shawls, and taking long walks with her husband. We wonder if Mrs. Coleridge admired The Nightingale: a Conversation Poem.

Sea.] Miss Wordsworth in Memoirs, &c. of W. Words worth, i. 99.

and fragrant meadows, and the famous holly grove, where Wordsworth loved1 to compose his verses.

Then there were the Quantock hills, stretching greenly away, and looking down on the sea. These hills must have been in themselves an inspiration, a nursing cradle, for the poets:

"Before the lingering gazer drawn, Still in a long unbroken line,

Knoll after knoll, lawn after lawn,”

as a true and tender lover of nature has sung,

"With orchards on their flanks and lea,

They rise above the pleasant land,
They sink upon the glimmering sea.
One scarce could deem that hope could fail,
Or love its sweetness ever lose,

Or wild winds rend the flying sail,

In sight of heaven's own hues,
Serenely colouring,-while the rills

Sing songs of Summer,-Quantock's hills." 2

Coleridge himself sings, in Recollections of Love, of "Seaward Quantock's heathy hills,

Where quiet sounds from hidden rills,
Float here and there, like things astray,
And high o'erhead the skylark shrills;"

and Wordsworth dwells fondly, in The Prelude, b. xiv., on

"That summer, under whose indulgent skies, Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved, Uncheck'd, or loiter'd 'mid her sylvan coombs." Much of Coleridge's best, and not a little of Wordsworth's most characteristic work, was produced in

Loved.] No wonder he came back, in 1841, when his daughter was wed, to look again at the spot.

2 Hills.] From The Golden Lute and Other Poems, by R. W. Baddeley, 1876 :-a posthumous volume, Baddeley died in 1875, at the age of thirty-four.

the Alfoxden period. The volume, Lyrical Ballads, was conceived and planned, in great part written, and duly published. The Borderers and Osorio were completed. The poets not only spurred each other on to production, but each greatly influenced and modified the other. The Coleridge and Wordsworth we know are far from being the men we should have known, had they never met. Their natures, their views, their tastes, became largely fused together. It would be hard to decide which of the two most benefited by this friendship, which only deepened with years. The restless, versatile genius of Coleridge was to Wordsworth's calm and lofty brooding, as stormless summer lightning to the hills; Wordsworth's angularity, and-may we say -hardness of nature, advantageously mated with Coleridge's super-supple, sensitive organization.1 Their very differences, we mean, divergences of character, seemed to make more complete their union. It is touching and elevating to see how no two so unlike were ever so loving, or so completely understood one another. If Coleridge liked Lamb, and respected Southey, he reverenced Wordsworth. If Wordsworth was content to call Lamb and Southey his friends, he loved Coleridge. If he ever alludes to his failings, it is to condone them. The expressions Coleridge uses, in his hexameters written to Goslar, and never intended to be printed (see our note, vol. ii., p. 306),—his "William, my teacher,

1 Organization.] "He has suffered greatly," says Sir Humphry Davy of Coleridge, in 1808," from excessive sensibility, the disease of genius."

On the other hand, Wordsworth was uniformly cheerful and uniformly sane. Rogers, in his Table Talk, 1856, p. 205, speaking of Southey, has the following passage:"How cold he is!', was the exclamation of Wordsworth, -himself so joyous and communicative."