COLERIDGE - PANTISOCRACY


About the    first of September Coleridge went up to
London; Southey remained in Bath.' The Fall of Robes-
pierre went up to London too, and was submitted to the
publishers there. The trade in Bristol had been too wise
to accept the performance, and their brethren in London
were not less prudent. It remained unprinted until Cole-
ridge's return to Cambridge, where it appeared (1794)2 with
his name alone on the title page and with a new dedication,
both of which changes were probably made to assist the
sale.
From London Coleridge sent encouraging news of panti-
socracy to Bristol. He met Lamb's simple-hearted George
.Dyer, who pronounced the system impregnable and assured
him that Dr. Priestley, with whom Dyer professed to be
intimate, would certainly join them. Three years earlier
Priestley had settled at Northumberland in Pennsylvania
near the Susquehanna River,3 and that most liquidly-named
1 Coleridge, Letters, I, 85.
2 A Bibliography . . . of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, by Thomas J.
Wise, 1913, 5.
3 Cottle is the only authority for the statement that Coleridge had
no specific information about the Susquehanna region and was at-
tracted to it solely because of the beautiful sound of the word. Cottle,
Reminiscences, 16.
Professor Harper, in his William Wordsworth, I, 268-270, notes that
in The Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1795, appeared a notice con-
cerning the establishment of a colony of wealthy Frenchmen, former
members of the Constituent Assembly, at French Town near the
Susquehanna River. By February, 1795, the idea of attempting
pantisocracy on the Susquehanna had given way, in Southey's mind
at least, to the vague hope of attempting it on a Welsh farm. By
June, when the above notice appeared, the whole project was ready
to be abandoned as in any sense a workable proposition. Professor
Harper states that there can be scarcely any doubt that Coleridge
and Southey had their thoughts turned toward America by hearing
or reading some account of this French colony. This is not impossible,
but there can be no doubt that their thoughts were turned toward
America whether they came upon any such account or not.


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