of Fine Minds. She
knew the splendid excellence of Coleridge, and could follow him in his
most abstract dissertations; and if his logic faltered she could lead him
back to the trail.

Dorothy Wordsworth admired and pitied Coleridge; and from pity to love is
but a step.

But Coleridge was not capable of a passionate love--the substance of his
being was all absorbed in abstract thought. And yet Dorothy Wordsworth
attracted him as no other woman ever did. He forgot his wife, Sara, up
there at Southey's. Sara was a better-looking woman than Dorothy, but she
lacked intellect. Her life was all bound up in housekeeping and going to
church, and the petty little round of daily happenings to neighbors and
friends. The world of thought and dreams to her was nothing. She loved
her husband, but his foolish foibles vexed her, and his lack of
application prompted her to chide him. And at such times he would turn to
his friends at Dove Cottage for sympathy and rest.

They used to tramp the hills, and discuss philosophy, and recite their
poems the livelong day. It was on one such jaunt that out of the ghost of
shoreless seas they sighted the "Ancient Mariner." Then Coleridge went
ahead, completed the plot and gave the poem to the world. And once he
said, half-boastfully, to Dorothy: "This old seafaring poem is valuable in
that it is a tale no one will understand, but which will excite universal
interest. Only the perfectly sane and sensible is dull."

Wordsworth had read somewhat of the works of the German philosophers, and
as he and his sister had a little money saved up they decided to go over
and attend the lectures at the University of Goettingen for awhile.
Coleridge had nothing in the way to prevent his going, too, save that he
didn't have the money. However, he wanted to go and so decided to lay the
case before the sons of Josiah Wedgwood. These young men had been
schoolfellows of Coleridge at Cambridge, and once he had gone home with
them and so had met their father.

And right here comes a very strong temptation to say not another word
about Coleridge, but merge this essay off into a sketch of that most
excellent, strong and noble man, Josiah Wedgwood. Here is a man who left
his impress indelibly on the times, and whose influence outweighed that of
a dozen prime ministers. The potter is gone, but he lives in his art, so
we still have the best and purest and noblest of the soul of Josiah
Wedgwood.

This man had assisted