In September 1814 he joined the Morgans in a cottage at Ashley, on the
Bath Road, and planned the creation of some literary monuments, that
when they came to be completed were of comparatively small account. He
wrote some papers for the _Courier_, and towards the end of the year
went with the Morgans to Calne in Wiltshire. There he wrote
begging-letters, visited the leading representatives of the county and
enjoyed the entertainment he received, ignored letters from his family,
and wasted his great gifts by devoting them to consideration of local
questions of small importance. By the kindness of friends, Hartley had
been sent to Oxford, so doubtless his father thought he had done well
for one of his family.
The year 1815 passed, finding him more concerned with promises than with
the performance of work, but in March 1816 he returned to town with the
MS. of a new play--_Zapolya_. He stayed for a while with his faithful
friends, Charles and Mary Lamb, and then took the strongest and wisest
decision of his life by putting himself in the hands of Mr. Gillman of
Highgate, with whom his life was so closely associated down to the end.
He took this step, after much self-searching, and on the advice of a
physician, Dr. Adams of Hatton Garden, to whom he told frankly and fully
the story of his case. A few days after his arrival at Highgate the
"Christabel," "Kubla Khan," and "Pains of Sleep" were published by John
Murray, to whom Coleridge appears to have been introduced by Lord Byron.
Murray also accepted _Zapolya_, but parted with it to another publisher.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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