the rain-bow's colours. A moment's reflection, however, dissolved the
unsubstantial vision, when I asked him a few plain questions.

"How do you go?" said I. My young and ardent friend instantly replied,
"We freight a ship, carrying out with us ploughs, and other implements of
husbandry." The thought occurred to me, that it might be more economical
to purchase such articles in America; but not too much to discourage the
enthusiastic aspirant after happiness, I forebore all reference to the
accumulation of difficulties to be surmounted, and merely inquired who
were to compose his company? He said that only four had as yet absolutely
engaged in the enterprise; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from Cambridge; (in
whom I understood the plan to have originated;) Robert Southey and George
Burnet, from Oxford, and himself. "Well," I replied, "when do you set
sail?" He answered, "Very shortly. I soon expect my friends from the
Universities, when all the preliminaries will be adjusted, and we shall
joyfully cross the blue waves of the Atlantic." "But," said I "to freight
a ship, and sail out in the high style of gentlemen agriculturists, will
require funds. How do you manage this?" "We all contribute what we can,"
said he, "and I shall introduce all my dear friends to you, immediately
on their arrival in Bristol."

Robert Lovell (though inexperienced, and constitutionally sanguine) was a
good specimen of the open frankness which characterizes the well-informed
members of the Society of Friends; and he excited in me an additional
interest, from a warmth of feeling, and an extent of reading, above even
the ordinary standard of the estimable class to which he belonged. He now
read me some of the MS. poems of his two unknown friends, which at once
established their genius in my estimation.[2]

My leisure having been devoted for many years to reading and composition,