In 1791, Coleridge went to Jesus College, Cambridge. His classical knowledge gained him some distinction, but his mind, as was the case with other poets such as Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley, was not one to bear academical fruit. While at Cambridge he studied and became an ardent disciple of the philosopher Hartley, who had been a member of the same college, and whose name afterwards Coleridge bestowed on his firstborn son, Hartley Coleridge. Hartley's philosophy was somewhat of the same character as that of Locke. He founded all knowledge on "association;" that is, on the conception of things under certain conditions, such as those of space, time, and form. That is to say, he denied that we can know anything by itself-as a true existence in itself. We shall see how in later days Coleridge utterly rejected this doctrine. At Cambridge, also, he adopted the form of Unitarian belief.

The ill repute of his opinions and certain money difficulties now induced him to take a reckless step. With characteristic impulsiveness, in a fit of despondency, he left the university, and wandered as a penniless vagabond about the streets of London - having distributed the last of his money to his fellow "misérables" in the region of Chancery Lane. Then came a step still more regardless of consequences. He enlisted as a private in the Light Dragoons, taking the name of Comberbach, which he caught sight of over a shop door

when the recruiting sergeant asked him his name -an appellation which he says his horse fully appreciated.

This military episode was, however, of short duration. After about four months' service, during which he became the favourite of the tap-room (where, amidst the clink of pewter pots and the coarse jokes of his fellow-dragoons, he composed on Christmas Eve one of his most philosophic poems, "Religious Musings ")—he betrayed himself by writing a sentence in Latin on the wall of the stable. The words were "Eheu quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem,"-" Alas how much the worst part of misfortune it is to have once been happy:" a sentiment first expressed by Boethius, I think, and put into the mouth of Francesca da Rimini by Dante. The poetical dragoon was bought out by his friends and sent back to the university-which, however, he soon left again, without a degree.

This was followed by what is called his "Bristol period," a space of about three years, from 1794 to 1797, during which, among other attempts to realize his dreams of liberty, he, together with the poet Southey, whose acquaintance he had made on a visit to Oxford, set on foot a wild scheme for organizing an ideal republic on the banks of the Susquehanna in America. In theory it was most charming. The men were to attend to the agriculture and cattle, which were to supply all the needs of the settlement,

and the women to perform the household duties; and there was to be plenty of leisure for recreation and intellectual edification. Unfortunately, when the time came, the enthusiastic emigrants could not scrape together enough money to pay their passage, and the scheme that was to begin the new era of Pantisocracy fell to the ground.

As a reaction, I suppose, from this dream of liberty, came Coleridge's marriage with Sara Fricker, whose sister Edith became the wife of Southey.

Reduced as a family man to the necessity of gaining a livelihood, Coleridge gave political lectures and started a newspaper, the Watchman. Flaming hand-bills, stating that "Knowledge is power," and the eloquent rhapsodies of the poet-editor, who canvassed the country for subscribers, floated the speculation. But soon Coleridge's unpractical nature wrought its ruin. The publication was irregular; the politics were too violent; the religious sentiments too intolerant. After a life of ten numbers, the Watchman died a natural death.

In his paper, and also in his lectures, he vehemently attacked the policy then being pursued by Pitt. His opinions on this subject may be seen in a piece called "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter," wherein he represents three fiendish shapes recounting their ravages, and attributing all to the orders of one man, whose name contains four letters. This was written in 1796. Though very inferior to his later productions, it

certainly shows some of Coleridge's characteristic power in weird and supernatural descriptions.

During this "Bristol period" the poet used to preach a good deal to Unitarian congregations. His violent language and hyperbolical line of thought seem to have been very often little appreciated; and I have no doubt that when speaking on subjects that require form and definition Coleridge was a most unsatisfactory preacher. But, if we are to believe Hazlitt, when he was engaged on a subject in which daring flights of imagination and rhetoric were admissible, the impression that he made was extraordinary. Indeed that is the word which best describes the man-extraordinary. If I remember right, Wordsworth describes him as the "only wonderful man" he had ever met. Hazlitt too, says, "He is the only person I ever knew who answered to the idea of a man of genius. He is the only person from whom I ever learned anything." His extraordinary conversational, or rather declamatory, powers have been already mentioned. "He talked on for ever," says Hazlitt, "and you wished him to talk on for ever. His thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort, but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of imagination lifted him off his feet." He himself more than once confesses that directly he took a pen to write down his thoughts, his expression became laboured and a thing of difficulty, whereas in speaking he followed up with

natural ease the most subtle analogies and the profoundest lines of reasoning.

During his sojourn at Bristol he published a few poems. "Religious Musings" I have already mentioned as having been composed in the tap-room at Reading, on Christmas Eve, 1794. In the same year we have an historical and political drama, "The Fall of Robespierre." Also two political odes to "The Departing Year" (1796) and to "France" (1797, February).

"One little entry," says Professor Shairp, “in a letter of November, 1796-his last year at Bristol,— is sadly memorable as the first appearance of

'The little rift within the lute

That soon will make the music mute.""

The entry is to the effect that, having suffered much from neuralgic pains, he “took sixty or seventy drops of laudanum, and stopped the Cerberus."

The next year he removed to the village of Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, near the Quantock Hills. Here he was joined by Wordsworth and his sister, and we see the political polemical element in his life and poems henceforth fading away before a new-born love. Within the space of this one year of 1798, or nearly so, Coleridge wrote all the poems that have made him famous—the "Ancient Mariner," the first part of "Christabel," "Genevieve," "Kubla Khan," and the lines to Wordsworth on hearing him