At the same time, however, such
was the restlessness of his intellect, and such his instability of
purpose, that he could no more remain constant to what he deemed his
true vocation than he could to any other. This was now to be signally
illustrated. Soon after the _Ancient Mariner_ was written, and
some time before the volume which was to contain it appeared, Coleridge
quitted Stowey for Shrewsbury to undertake the duties of a Unitarian
preacher in that town. This was in the month of January 1798, [6] and
it seems pretty certain, though exact dates are not to be ascertained,
that he was back again at Stowey early in the month of February. In the
pages of the _Liberal_ (1822) William Hazlitt has given a most
graphic and picturesque description of Coleridge's appearance and
performance in his Shrewsbury pulpit; and, judging from this, one can
well believe, what indeed was to have been antecedently expected, that
had he chosen to remain faithful to his new employment he might have
rivalled the reputation of the greatest preacher of the time. But his
friends the Wedgwoods, the two sons of the great potter, whose
acquaintance he had made a few years earlier, were apparently much
dismayed at the prospect of his deserting the library for the chapel,
and they offered him an annuity of ??150 a year on condition of his
retiring from the ministry and devoting himself entirely to the study
of poetry and philosophy.
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