Abstract: This chapter explores a related economy to that discussed in the previous chapter. In this case, not that of the relationships between bullion and paper money, but between the discourses of praise and dispraise, the great subjects of Jonson's Epigrams and other writings. This discourse is brought to bear for Coleridge by the figure of Robert Southey, his brother-in-law, and also the Poet Laureate. By arguing that Southey in his laureate writings was more influenced by Jonson's personal and poetic example than has been previously realised (and was, in turn, measured against them by those who thought him a marked falling off from such standards), the chapter argues that Southey forced Coleridge to think, again through the example of Jonson's writing, about the relationships of praise and dispraise, patronage and independence in his own writing life and in Southey's. Central to this debate for Coleridge is Jonson's play, Catiline. The chapter then returns to take up again the model of the poet as heir in its discussion of Hartley Coleridge, Coleridge's eldest child, who, the chapter suggests, came keenly to understand his own relationship with his father through Jonson's poems of paternity. This chapter tries to suggest that contrary to T. S. Eliot's claim — that for too long Jonson had failed to provide a ‘creative stimulus’ to later writers, none of whom since Dryden had offered a ‘living criticism of Jonson's works’ — we can see here writers whose work has been given life by, and has returned it to, Jonson's.

Keywords: poet laureate, politics, Catiline, paternity, allusion, T. S. Eliot, inheritance,