But resource did not fail them—­Southey thought of the Fricker family, a mile out on the Bristol road.  There were three fine, strong, intelligent girls—­what better than to marry ’em?  The world should be peopled from the best.  The girls were consulted and found willing to reorganize society on the communal basis, and so the three poets married the three sisters—­more properly, each of the three poets married a sister.  “Thank God,” said Lamb, “that there were not four of those Fricker girls, or I, too, would have been bagged, and the world peopled from the best!”

Southey got the only prize out of the hazard; Lovell’s wife was so-so, and Coleridge drew a blank, or thought he did, which was the same thing; for as a man thinketh so is she.  The thought of a lifetime on the banks of the Susquehanna with a woman who was simply pink and good, and who was never roused into animation even by his wildest poetic bursts, took all ambition out of him.

Funds were low and the emigration scheme was temporarily pigeonholed.  After a short time Coleridge declared his mind was getting mildewed and packed off to London for mental oxygen and a little visit, leaving his wife in Southey’s charge.

He was gone two years.

Lovell soon followed suit, and Southey had three sisters in his household, all with babies.

In the meantime we find Southey installed at “Greta,” just outside of the interesting town of Keswick, where the water comes down at Lodore.  Southey was a general:  he knew that knowledge consists in having a clerk who can find the thing.  He laid out research work and literary schemes enough for several lifetimes, and the three sisters were hard at it.  It was a little community of their own—­all working for Southey, and glad of it.  Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy lived at Grasmere, thirteen miles away, and they used to visit back and forth.  When you go to Keswick you should tramp that thirteen miles—­the man who hasn’t tramped from Keswick to Grasmere has dropped something out of his life.  In merry jest, tipped with acid, some one called them “The Lake Poets,” as if there were poets and lake poets.  And Lamb was spoken of as “a Lake Poet by grace.”  Literary London grinned, as we do when some one speaks of the Sweet Singer of Michigan or the Chicago Muse.  But the term of contempt stuck and, like the words Methodist, Quaker and Philistine, soon ceased to be a term of reproach and became something of which to be proud.

There is a lead-pencil factory at Keswick, established in the year Eighteen Hundred.  Pencils are made there today exactly as they were made then, and when you see the factory you are willing to believe it.  All visitors at Keswick go to the pencil-factory and buy pencils, such as Southey used, and get their names stamped on each pencil while they wait, without extra charge.  On the wall is a silhouette picture of Southey, showing a needlessly large nose, and the gentlemanly old proprietor will tell you that Dorothy Wordsworth made the picture; and then he will show you a letter written by Charles Lamb, framed under glass, wherein C.L. says all pencils are fairish good, but no pencils are so good as Keswick pencils.