covers them springs from another cause." A few weeks after this
interchange of correspondence Coleridge was once again to prove how far
he was from possessing Southey's "tolerable state of health."
Throughout the whole of this year he had been more restless than ever.
In January 1803 we find him staying with Southey at Bristol, "suffering
terribly from the climate, and talking of going abroad." A week later
he is at Stowey, planning schemes, not destined to be realised, of
foreign travel with Wedgwood. Returning again to Keswick, he started,
after a few months' quiescence, on 15th August, in company with
Wordsworth and his sister, for a tour in Scotland, but after a
fortnight he found himself too ill to proceed. The autumn rains set in,
and "poor Coleridge," writes Miss Wordsworth, "being very unwell,
determined to send his clothes to Edinburgh, and make the best of his
way thither, being afraid to face much wet weather in an open
carriage." It is possible, however, that his return to Keswick may have
been hastened by the circumstance that Southey, who had paid a brief
visit to the Lake country two years before, was expected in a few days
at the house which was destined to be his abode for the longest portion
of his life. He arrived at Greta Hall on 7th September 1803, and from
time to time during the next six months his correspondence gives us
occasional glimpses of Coleridge's melancholy state. At the end of
December, his health growing steadily worse, he conceived the project
of a voyage to Madeira, and quitted Keswick with the intention, after
paying a short visit to the Wordsworths, of betaking himself to London
to make preparations. His stay at Grasmere, however, was longer than he
had counted on. "He was detained for a month by a severe attack of
illness, induced, if his description is to be relied on, by the use of
narcotics. [2] Unsuspicious of the cause, Mrs. and Miss Wordsworth
nursed him with the tenderest affection, while the poet himself,
usually a parsimonious man, forced upon him, to use Coleridge's own