Few of his contemporaries spoke or wrote harshly of Coleridge. Lamb and Wordsworth loved him, despite occasional and regrettable misunderstandings. He collaborated with Wordsworth in the _Lyrical Ballads_ and with Southey in _The Fall of Robespierre_, a three-act drama of which the last-named poet wrote the second act. There were few who were not happy in his brief fortunes or without sympathy in the long-drawn period of his trouble and pain, while all who came within the charmed circle of his personality delighted in his company and sought it eagerly. Judged by ordinary standards, his life-work would provide a monument for any man whose attainments fall short of absolute genius, and perhaps they have been most severe who realise how nothing more than order and self-control kept Coleridge from the very highest rank. They are jealous for his gifts, they feel that he hid his light under a bushel. For the most of us it will suffice that the poet's utterances are melodious, inspiring, and finely wrought, that he himself was a greatly suffering man who fought desperately and at last successfully against his own worst failings. Even as he arrests our imagination he claims our sympathy, which we give the more gladly because he would have welcomed it. Not only did he ask for merciful judgment while he was alive, but appealed for it when life should have passed. Few who have read even a tithe of what he wrote will grudge a little tribute to his memory, while those who study Coleridge become his debtors, and realise that he played no insignificant part in moulding some aspects of nineteenth-century thought and faith. CHAPTER I EARLY YEARS