hing, if I thought either true fame or profit could arise out of
them.'[40]

18. _Visit to Thelwall_.

'Mr. Coleridge, my sister, and I had been visiting the famous John
Thelwall, who had taken refuge from politics after a trial for high
treason, with a view to bring up his family by the profits of
agriculture, which proved as unfortunate a speculation as that he had
fled from. Coleridge and he had been public lecturers, Coleridge
mingling with his politics theology, from which the other elocutionist
abstained, unless it were for the sake of a sneer. This quondam
community of public employment induced Thelwall to visit Coleridge, at
Nether-Stowey, where he fell in my way. He really was a man of
extraordinary talent, an affectionate husband, and a good father. Though
brought up in the City, on a tailor's board, he was truly sensible of
the beauty of natural objects. I remember once, when Coleridge, he, and
I were seated upon the turf on the brink of the stream, in the most
beautiful part of the most beautiful glen of Alfoxden, Coleridge
exclaimed, "This is a place to reconcile one to all the jarrings and
conflicts of the wide world." "Nay," said Thelwall, "to make one forget
them altogether." The visit of this man to Coleridge was, as I believe
Coleridge has related, the occasion of a spy being sent by Government to
watch our proceedings, which were, I can say with truth, such as the
world at large would have thought ludicrously harmless.'[41]

[40] _Memoirs_, i. 95-6.

[41] Ibid. i. 104-5.

19. _Poetry added to: April 12th, 1798_.

'You will be pleased to hear that I have gone on very rapidly adding to
my stock of poetry. Do come and let me read it to you under the old
trees in the park [at Alfoxden]. We have little more than two months to
stay in this place.'[42]

20. _On the Wye_.

'We left Alfoxden on Monday morning, the 26th of June, stayed with
Coleridge till the Monday following, then set forth on foot towards
Bristol. We were at Cottle's for a week, and thence we went towards the
banks of the Wye. We crossed the Severn Ferry, and walked ten miles
further to Tintern Abbey, a very beautiful ruin on the Wye. The next
morning we walked along the river through Monmouth to Goderich Castle,
there slept, and returned the next day to Tintern, thence to Chepstow,
and from Chepstow back again in a boat to Tintern, where we slept, and
thence back in a small vessel to Bristol.

'The Wye is a stately and maje