res. A great intellectual movement had begun in Germany.
Coleridge was soon in the full whirl of excitement. He learnt much from
Blumenbach and Eichhorn, and took interest in all that was going on
around him. During his stay of nine months in Germany, he made himself
master of the language to such purpose that the translation of
_Wallenstein_--his first piece of literary work after his return to
England--was actually accomplished in six weeks. It was published in
1800, and, although it failed to make any impression on the general
public, it became at once prized by Scott and others as it deserved. It
is matter for regret that a request to Coleridge that he should
undertake to translate _Faust_ never received serious attention from
him. During these years Coleridge wrote many newspaper articles and some
poems, among them "Fire, Famine and Slaughter," for the _Morning Post_
(January 8, 1798). He had vehemently opposed Pitt's policy, but a change
came over his way of thought, and he found himself separated from Fox on
the question of a struggle with Napoleon. He had lost his admiration for
the Revolutionists, as his "Ode to France" shows (_Morning Post_, April
16, 1798). Like many other Whigs, he felt that all questions of domestic
policy must at a time of European peril be postponed. From this time,
however, his value for the ordered liberty of constitutional government
increased; and though never exactly to be found among the ranks of
old-fashioned Constitutionalists, during the remainder of his life he
kept steadily in view the principles which received their full
exposition in his well-known work on _Church and State_. In the year
1800 Coleridge left London for the Lakes. Here in that year he wrote the
second part of _Christabel_. In 1803 Southey became a joint lodger with
Coleridge at Greta Hall, Keswick, of which in 1812 Southey became sole
tenant and occupier.

In 1801 begins the period of Coleridge's life during which, in spite of
the evidence of work shown in his compositions, he sank more and more
under the dominion of opium, in which he may have first indulged at
Cambridge. Few things are so sad to read as the letters in which he
details the consequences of his transgression. He was occasionally seen
in London during the first years of the century, and wherever he
appeared he was the delight of admiring circles. He toured in Scotland
with the Wordsworths in 1803, visited Malta in 1804, when for ten months
he act