The Pantisocracy scheme could not in the nature of things be long-lived.
As a matter of fact it lasted little more than a year, ending in a
rupture between the two leading spirits just when they became
brothers-in-law. Coleridge spent the summer of 1795 in Bristol in
company with Southey, writing and lecturing. In October he was married
to Sarah Fricker in "St. Mary's Redcliff, poor Chatterton's church." In
November Southey married Edith Fricker and set sail for Lisbon, where
his uncle was the English chaplain; and Pantisocracy was dead.
The break with Southey was the natural result of attempting to force
through a scheme impracticable in itself and doubly impracticable for
the men who conceived it. Its collapse did not altogether sever their
literary relations. The collaboration begun in "The Fall of Robespierre"
(Cambridge, 1794) was continued in Southey's "Joan of Arc" (1796), to
which Coleridge contributed the part afterwards printed (with some
additions) as "The Destiny of Nations," and in Coleridge's first volume
of "Poems" (Bristol, 1796). A more important contributor to this volume,
however, was Charles Lamb, whose initials were appended to four of the
pieces. A second edition appeared in June, 1797, with eleven additions
from Coleridge besides verses by Lamb and Charles Lloyd, all under the
title: "Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second Edition. To which are added
Poems by Charles Lamb, and Charles Lloyd." The publisher of both
editions was Joseph Cottle, a bookseller of Bristol, who played the part
of provincial Murray to the young poets in these years.
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