the history of English thought, he influenced his own and the following
generation on so many sides, that his romanticism shows like a mere
incident in his intellectual history. His blossoming time was short at
the best, and ended practically with the century. After his return from
Germany in 1799 and his settlement at Keswick in 1800, he produced little
verse of any importance beyond the second part of "Christabel" (written
in 1800, published in 1816). His creative impulse failed him, and he
became more and more involved in theology, metaphysics, political
philosophy, and literary criticism.

It appears, therefore, at first sight, a little odd that Coleridge's
German biographer, Professor Brandl, should have treated his subject
under this special aspect,[3] and attributed to him so leading a place in
the romantic movement. Walter Scott, if we consider his life-long and
wellnigh exclusive dedication of himself to the work of historic
restoration--Scott, certainly, and not Coleridge was the "high priest of
Romanticism." [4] Brandl is dissatisfied with the term Lake School, or
Lakers, commonly given to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, and
proposes instead to call them the Romantic School, Romanticists
(_Romantiker_), surely something of a misnomer when used of an eclectic
versifier like Southey, or a poet of nature, moral reflection, and humble
life like Wordsworth. Southey, in casting about him for a theme,
sometimes became for the nonce and so far as subject goes, a romancer; as
in "Joan of Arc" (1799), "Madoc" (1805), and "Roderick the Goth" (1814);
not to speak of translations like "Amadis of Gaul," "Palmerin of
England," and "The Chronicle of the Cid." But these were not due to the
compelling bent of his genius, as in Scott. They were miscellaneous
jobs, undertaken in the regular course of his business as a manufacturer
of big, irregular epics, Oriental, legendary, mythological, and what not;
and as an untiring biographer, editor, and hack writer of all