definite direction to his irregular nature, and the range of his studies,
both in literature and in other fields, was very wide. Through the aid of
scholarships and of contributions from his brothers he entered Cambridge in
1791, just after Wordsworth had left the University; but here his most
striking exploit was a brief escapade of running away and enlisting in a
cavalry troop. Meeting Southey, then a student at Oxford, he drew him into
a plan for a 'Pantisocracy' (a society where all should be equal), a
community of twelve young couples to be founded in some 'delightful part of
the new back settlements' of America on the principles of communistic
cooperation in all lines, broad mental culture, and complete freedom of
opinion. Naturally, this plan never past beyond the dream stage.

Coleridge left the University in 1794 without a degree, tormented by a
disappointment in love. He had already begun to publish poetry and
newspaper prose, and he now attempted lecturing. He and Southey married two
sisters, whom Byron in a later attack on Southey somewhat inaccurately
described as 'milliners of Bath'; and Coleridge settled near Bristol. After
characteristically varied and unsuccessful efforts at conducting a
periodical, newspaper writing, and preaching as a Unitarian (a creed which
was then considered by most Englishmen disreputable and which Coleridge
later abandoned), he moved with his wife in 1797 to Nether Stowey in
Somersetshire. Expressly in order to be near him, Wordsworth and his sister
Dorothy soon leased the neighboring manor-house of Alfoxden, and there
followed the memorable year of intellectual and emotional stimulus when
Coleridge's genius suddenly expanded into short-lived but wonderful
activity and he wrote most of his few great poems, 'The Ancient Mariner,'
'Kubla Khan,' and the First Part of 'Christabel.' 'The Ancient Mariner' was
planned by Coleridge and Wordsworth on one of their frequent rambles, and
was to have been written in collaboration; but as it proceeded, Wordsworth
found his manner so different from that of Coleridge that he withdrew