If Coleridge did not prosper financially, he was at least fortunate in
his friends; and a man's friends are after all the best testimony to the
character of his mind and heart. When he went to Stowey in December,
1796, he was again on good terms with Southey, though the enthusiasm of
their first fellowship was gone. The friendship with Lamb, begun in
their school-days and renewed at the "Salutation and Cat" in 1794, was
maintained by an eager correspondence and by Lamb's visit to Stowey in
July, 1797; and although Lloyd's vagaries led to a coolness between the
old friends in the following year, the breach was soon healed, and the
friendship continued till death. Another with whom Coleridge maintained
a voluminous correspondence in 1796-7 was John Thelwall, theoretical
democrat, atheist, and admirer of Godwin, whose visit to Coleridge and
Wordsworth in the summer of 1797 so shocked the good conservatives of
the neighborhood that Wordsworth had to leave Alfoxden in consequence of
it. But without doubt the dearest and most influential friend Coleridge
had before the Wordsworths came into his life was Thomas Poole. It was
in order to be in daily intercourse with Poole that he moved to Stowey;
and Poole's hesitation about securing the cottage for him, arising,
Coleridge seemed to fear, from imperfect confidence and friendship, was
a source of agonized apprehension to the sensitive poet. When we
consider that Poole was a self-educated man, a Somersetshire tanner with
no claim to literary genius or philosophical acquirements, Coleridge's
devotion to him and dependence on him bring out in a strong light the
substantial, elemental character of the man. "O Poole!" Coleridge wrote
to him from Germany afterwards, "you are a noble heart as ever God
made!" Poole had indeed in a marked degree the genius for friendship.
Strength of character, sympathy, and self-effacing devotion, combined
with prudence and sincerity, made this man a tower of refuge for the
unstable spirit of the poet.