1888.] 071 S, T. Coleridge. 239 



certainly proved that liis intellect was in full vigour, translated 

 * Wallenstein,' and then, in 1800, retired with his family to 

 Keswick. Here at once ominous symptoms begin to show them- 

 selves. A strange disquiet is betrayed in his letters ; there are 

 painful complaints of ill-health ; his poetic inspiration breathes its 

 last in the ' Ode to Dejection.* He sought in vain to distract 

 painful thought by metaj^hysical abstractions; he rambled off in 

 1804 to spend two years and a half in Malta and Italy. Eeturning 

 to England, he tried lecturing at the Royal Institution, and then 

 settled at Grasmere — fifteen miles of mountain roads from his wife — 

 and repeated his ' Watchman ' experiment by writing the ' Friend.' 

 The youthful buoyancy, even flippancy, has departed, though it 

 shows far riper thought and richer intellectual stores. But weari- 

 ness of spirit marks every page ; the long sentences somehow suggest 

 a succession of stifled groans ; as the enterprise proceeds, it can 

 only be kept up by introducing any irrelevant matter that may 

 be on hand — such as old letters from Germany which happened to 

 be in his portfolio, and an extravagant panegyric upon his patron at 

 Malta, Sir Alexander Ball. 



The ' Friend ' soon falls dead, and Coleridge drifts back to 

 London. There he makes efforts, pathetic in their impotence, to 

 keep his bead above water. He tries journalism again, but without 

 the occasional triumphs which had formerly atoned for his irregu- 

 larity. He lectures, and is heard with an interest which shows that, 

 in spite of all impediments, his marvellous powers have at least 

 roused the curiosity of all who claim to have an intellectual taste. 

 He has a gleam of success, too, from the production of his old 

 tragedy, ' Eemorse,' written in the days of early vigour. But some 

 undertow seems to be sucking him back, so that he can never get 

 his feet planted on dry land. He retires to Bristol, and thence to 

 Calne, where he seems to be sinking into utter obscurity. He has 

 almost passed out of the knowledge of his friends, when a last 

 despairing effort lands him at Highgate, and there a rather singular 

 transformation, it may seem at first sight, enables him to become the 

 oracle of youthful aspiration, wisdom, and virtue. Painfully, and 

 imperfectly with their aid, he gathers together some fragments of 

 actual achievement — enough to justify a great, but a most tantalising 

 reputation. 



What was the secret of this painful history ? Briefly, it was 

 opium. Coleridge said so himself, and all his biographers have 

 stated the facts. Without this statement the whole story would be 

 unintelligible, and we could have done justice neither to Coleridge's 

 intellectual powers nor even to some of his virtues. To tell the 

 story of Coleridge without the opium is to tell the story of Hamlet 

 without mentioning the ghost. The tragedy of a life would become 

 a mere string of incoherent accidents. Nor are the facts doubtful. 

 Coleridge, I fear, composed, or invented, for the benefit of Gillman, 

 a certain picturesque " Kendal black drop " — a treacherous nostrum, 



