At this time Coleridge was twenty-three; he would be twenty-four on
October 21. His military experiences over, he had married Sara Fricker
on October 4, 1795 (a month before Southey married her sister Edith),
and was living at Bristol, on Redcliffe Hill. The first number of _The
Watchman_ was dated on March 1, 1796; on May 13, 1796, it came to an
end. On April 16, 1796, Cottle had issued Coleridge's _Poems on Various
Subjects_, containing also four "effusions" by Charles Lamb (Nos. VII.,
XI., XII. and XIII.), and the "Religious Musings." Southey, on bad terms
with Coleridge, partly on account of Southey's abandonment of
Pantisocracy, was in Lisbon. His _Joan of Arc_ had just been published
by Cottle in quarto at a guinea. Previously he had collaborated in _The
Fall of Robespierre_, 1794, with Coleridge and Robert Lovell. Each, one
evening, had set forth to write an act by the next. Southey and Lovell
did so, but Coleridge brought only a part of his. Lovell's being
useless, Southey rewrote his act, Coleridge finished his at leisure, and
the result was published. Robert Lovell (1770?-1796) had also been
associated with Coleridge and Southey in Pantisocracy and was their
brother-in-law, having married Mary Fricker, another of the sisters.
When, in 1795, Southey and Lovell had published a joint volume of
_Poems_, Southey took the pseudonym of Bion and Lovell of Moschus.

May was probably the landlord of the Salutation and Cat. The London
Directory for 1808 has "William May, Salutation Coffee House, 17 Newgate
Street." We must suppose that when Coleridge quitted the Salutation and
Cat in January, 1795, he was unable to pay his bill, and therefore had
to leave his luggage behind. Cottle's story of Coleridge being offered
free lodging by a London inn-keeper, if he would only talk and talk,
must then either be a pretty invention or apply to another landlord,
possibly the host of the Angel in Butcher Hall Street.