It was on the occasion of his publishing Thalaba, that his name was first coupled with that of Wordsworth.  His own words are, “I happened to be residing at Keswick when Mr. Wordsworth and I began to be acquainted.  Mr. Coleridge also had resided there; and this was reason enough for classing us together as a school of poets.”  There is not much external resemblance, it is true, between Thalaba and the Excursion; but the same poetical motives will cause both to remain unread by the multitude—­unnatural comparisons, recondite theology, and a great lack of common humanity.  That there was a mutual admiration is found in Southey’s declaration that Wordsworth’s sonnets contain the profoundest poetical wisdom, and that the Preface is the quintessence of the philosophy of poetry.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.—­More individual, more eccentric, less commonplace, in short, a far greater genius than either of his fellows, Coleridge accomplished less, had less system, was more visionary and fragmentary than they:  he had an amorphous mind of vast proportions.  The man, in his life and conversation, was great; the author has left little of value which will last when the memory of his person has disappeared.  He was born on the 21st of October, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary.  His father was a clergyman and vicar of the parish.  He received his education at Christ’s Hospital in London, where, among others, he had Charles Lamb as a comrade, and formed with him a friendship which lasted as long as they both lived.

EARLY LIFE.—­There he was an erratic student, but always a great reader; and while he was yet a lad, at the age of fourteen, he might have been called a learned man.

He had little self-respect, and from stress of poverty he intended to apprentice himself to a shoemaker; but friends who admired his learning interfered to prevent this, and he was sent with a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1791.  Like Wordsworth and Southey, he was an intense Radical at first; and on this account left college without his degree in 1793.  He then enlisted as a private in the 15th Light Dragoons; but, although he was a favorite with his comrades, whose letters he wrote, he made a very poor soldier.  Having written a Latin sentence under his saddle on the stable wall, his superior education was recognized; and he was discharged from the service after only four months’ duty.  Eager for adventure, he joined Southey and Lloyd in their scheme of pantisocracy, to which we have already referred; and when that failed for want of money, he married the sister-in-law of Southey—­Miss Fricker, of Bristol.  He was at this time a Unitarian as well as a Radical, and officiated frequently as a Unitarian minister.  His sermons were extremely eloquent.  He had already published some juvenile poems, and a drama on the fall of Robespierre, and had endeavored to establish a periodical called The Watchman.  He was always erratic, and dependent upon the patronage of his friends; in short, he always presented the sad spectacle of a man who could not take care of himself.