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22 CAMBRIDGE [1791very
different picture. Christopher Wordsworth, the poet's
brother, then at Trinity, kept a diary, in which he recorded
that on 5 November 1793 Le Grice invited him to join a
literary society, of which Coleridge was to be a member.
Later in the day he met Coleridge, who spouted Bowles and
spoke of the esteem in which William Wordsworth's poetry
was held at Exeter. On the 7th he was at breakfast with
William Rough of Trinity, when Coleridge came in, and a
discussion of his poems followed. Next day he saw Coleridge's
lines To Fortune in the Morning Chronicle. On the 13 th
the first meeting of the literary society took place in Wordsworth's
rooms. Coleridge was to have read a paper, but had
neglected to prepare it, and recited poems instead. There
the diary breaks off. But it has covered just that miserable
week of Coleridge's return to Cambridge. 1 The lines To
Fortune, written on a walk between Gray's Inn Lane and
Cornhill, must have been sent to the newspaper during the
hectic three days in London, and belong to an attempt to
restore financial equilibrium by buying a ticket for an Irish
lottery. 2
Coleridge now went once more to London, still with grim
thoughts of putting an end to it all in his bosom. 3 One thing
that he did not tell his brothers afterwards, although it seems
to have come to their knowledge, was that his pecuniary
troubles were complicated by a 'love-fit'. Evidently his
sentimental affair with Mary Evans had at last flamed into
something like a passion. Probably he had seen her in London
during October and had come to fear the existence of a
rival. His own fortunes did not permit him to make a declaration,
he wrote a year afterwards. 'I never durst even in
a whisper avow my passion, though I knew she loved me.'
A still later letter makes it clear that he means 'could have
dared' and 'even had I known'. 4 His brothers seem to have
believed that this last week in London was again one of
debauchery. 5 It was in fact one of dull misery, until on 2
December he stumbled upon a recruiting officer in Chancery
1
C. Wordsworth, Social Life at the English Universities in the 18th Century, 587-92.
2 3
P.W. 54; 2 Gent. Mag. x. 124.
G. 8.
4
C. 33, 85; Rem, 279; De Q. ii. 167; M.P. xxviii. 471; Hamilton, i. 576;
cf. p. 34.
5 Gillman, 64.