"relinquished it because it did not contain sufficient original
composition, and a still larger part because it contained too much;"
and he then proceeds with that half-humorous simplicity of his to
explain what excellent reasons there were why the first of these
classes should transfer their patronage to Flower's _Cambridge
Intelligencer_, and the second theirs to the _New Monthly
Magazine_.

It is not, however, for the biographer or the world to regret the short
career of the _Watchman_, since its decease left Coleridge's mind
in undivided allegiance to the poetic impulse at what was destined to
be the period of its greatest power. In the meantime one result of the
episode had been to make a not unimportant addition to his friendships.
Mention has already been made of his somewhat earlier acquaintance with
Mr. Thomas Poole of Nether Stowey, a man of high intelligence and mark
in his time; and it was in the course of his northern peregrinations in
search of subscribers that he met with Charles Lloyd. This young man,
the son of an eminent Birmingham banker, was so struck with Coleridge's
genius and eloquence as to conceive an "ardent desire to domesticate
himself permanently with a man whose conversation was to him as a
revelation from heaven;" and shortly after the decease of the
_Watchman_ he obtained his parents' consent to the arrangement.

Early, therefore, in the year 1797 Coleridge, accompanied by Charles
Lloyd, removed to Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, where he occupied a
cottage placed at his disposal by Mr. Poole. His first employment in
his new abode appears to have been the preparation of the second
edition of his poems. In the new issue nineteen pieces of the former
publication were discarded and twelve new ones added, the most
important of which was the _Ode to the Departing Year_, which had