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