constrained his intelligence to apply itself to one thing at a time.
He had come to Germany to acquire the language, and to learn what of
German theology and metaphysics he might find worth the study, and his
five months' steady pursuit of the former object had been followed by
another four months of resolute prosecution of the latter. He attended
the lectures of Professor Blumenbach, and obtained through a fellow-
student notes from those of Eichhorn. He suffered no interruption in
his studies, unless we are to except a short visit from Wordsworth
and his sister, who had spent most of their stay abroad in residence
at Gozlar; and he appears, in short, to have made in every way the best
use of his time. On 24th June 1799 he gave his leave-taking supper at
Gottingen, replying to the toast of his health in fluent German but
with an execrable accent; and the next day presumably he started on his
homeward journey.

His movements for the next few months are incorrectly stated in most of
the brief memoirs prefixed to the various editions of the poet's works,
--their writers having, it is to be imagined, accepted without
examination a misplaced date of Mr. Gillman's. It is not the fact that
Coleridge "returned to England after an absence of fourteen months, and
arrived in London the 27th of November." His absence could not have
lasted longer than a year, for we know from the evidence of Miss
Wordsworth's diary that he was exploring the Lake country (very likely
for the first time) in company with her brother and herself in the month
of September 1799. The probability is that he arrived in England early
in July, and immediately thereupon did the most natural and proper thing
to be done under the circumstances--namely, returned to his wife and
children at Nether Stowey, and remained there for the next two months,
after which he set off with the Wordsworths, then still at Alfoxden, to
visit the district to which the latter had either already resolved upon,