The Break with Coleridge

Abstract

A latent irritation with Lamb, Lloyd, and Southey lay behind Coleridge’s hastily sending the Higginbottom sonnets to the public press. The new association with the Wordsworths had overnight changed his view of poetry, dispelled his admiration of Bowles, and released powers hardly hinted at in his previous poetry. The shifting allegiances among the friends, fanned by Lloyd’s busybodying, affected Lamb as well. Small fissures began to form in the fabric of the Lamb-Coleridge friendship which Lamb’s general wretchedness left him ill able to withstand.

… As for C. Lloyd, it would be cruel to attribute his conduct to aught but a diseased mind. Thomas Poole to Robert Southey, 8 August 1799¹

That Charles Lloyd has a bad Heart, I do not even think; but I venture to say… that he has not a good one. He is not fit to be any man’s Friend, and to all but a very guarded man he is a perilous acquaintance. Coleridge to Southey, 15 October 1799 (Griggs i, 541)

He is a sad Tattler…. Twenty years ago he almost alienated you… from me, or me from you, I don’t know which. Lamb to Coleridge, 10 January 1820 (CL ii, 267–8)