them, and often moulding them into verse with the objects and imagery
immediately before my eyes." This does not sound much like "raising corn
with the spade."

On Sundays he would sometimes preach before such Unitarian
congregations, within walking distance, as cared to hear him. But as he
would take no pay for his services his preaching contributed nothing
toward the support of his family. Lloyd, who was epileptic and subject
to moody variation in his attachments, was but an irregular housemate
after the first few months, and his contribution to the household
expenses was correspondingly uncertain. The future looked so dark in
October, 1797, that in spite of misgivings and former scruples he had
concluded that he "must become a Unitarian minister, as a less evil than
starvation." Accordingly he was in Shrewsbury in January, 1798,
preaching in the Unitarian church and on the point of accepting the
pastorate at a salary of £150 a year, when the sky brightened in another
quarter. Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood, sons of the famous potter and
friends of Thomas Poole, offered him an equal sum annually as a free
gift. They were wealthy men, well able to afford it; they attached no
condition to the gift except that he should devote himself entirely to
the study of poetry and philosophy, which was precisely what he wanted
to do; and he was not long in determining to accept the offer. "I
accepted it," he wrote to Wordsworth while still at Shrewsbury, "on the
presumption that I had talents, honesty, and propensities to perseverant
effort." The propensities, alas, remained propensities, never acquiring
the force of habit. The pension, however, continued to be paid in full
until 1812, when Josiah Wedgwood withdrew his half of it. The other
half, upon the death of Thomas Wedgwood in 1805, had been secured to
Coleridge for life; and this annuity must have constituted the chief
reliance of Mrs. Coleridge for many years.