So Wordsworth tells Coleridge of his feelings when he heard of the death of Robespierre in summer 1794, while crossing the Leven Sands. ‘Great was my glee of spirit, great my joy’, he recalls. Coleridge's reaction to the news was different. He immediately collaborated with Sou they on a tragedy, The Fall of Robespierre, and he continued to explore Robespierre's character and motives in his political lectures of 1795. Coleridge's interest in Robespierre was shared by the leading reformist John Thelwall, and both agreed that the British prime minister Pitt lacked Robespierre's political skill. Coleridge went further, though, and used Robespierre as a foil in his developing idea of the imagination. When he wrote about Robespierre's death in The Prelude Wordsworth knew that Coleridge had not shared his feelings at the time, and that his friend's complex response to Robespierre was ultimately of the greatest importance to himself. Why then did Wordsworth insist so emphatically upon his exultant feelings,

– recalling Robespierre's death as a moment of personal vindication?

The ‘golden times’ never came. France did not recover the revolutionary idealism of former years, and no longer provided a model for political and social change in Britain.