THE GROVE, HIGHGATE 
of his biographers, “and wherever he appeared, whether in the 
flowery fields, or woods of Highgate, old and young took off their 
hats.” 
Once a year he visited Ramsgate; and on one occasion during 
his sojourn with the Gillmans, he went abroad with the Words- 
worths—with Dorothy, and her brother William, his almost life- 
long friend, who said of him: ‘ The only truly wonderful man 
I ever met was Coleridge.” 
His friends learnt to identify him with the Grove, and Lamb 
wrote mournfully after his death: ‘‘ Never saw his likeness, nor 
probably the world can see it again. I seem to love the house he 
lived in more passionately than when he lived.” 
The house was originally panelled throughout, and though it 
was modernized sixty years ago, it has still a powder-closet, and a 
fine carved staircase. It is, therefore, interesting, apart from its 
association with the author of ‘“Christabel’? and “ Kubla 
Khan.” And Coleridge loved it, for he went to it intending to 
stay a few months, he remained over twenty years! And having 
in his youth sung of mystic Southern seas where 
“* The Sun’s rim dipped, the stars rushed out, 
With one stride came the dark,” 
throughout his middle-age and premature decline, he must have 
watched from his window at Highgate, the sun’s slow sinking, 
the afterglow, and stealthy oncoming of night in our Northern 
land. He was happy at the Grove, and he loved the garden well. 
Writing from Malden to Mrs. Gillman in July, 1818, he com- 
pares the fine gardens of a house at which he was a guest, with that 
at the Grove. 
“To the right, a flower and fruit garden not without kitchenry. 
To the left a kitchen garden, not without fruit and flowers; and 
both a perfect blaze of roses. Yet so capricious is our, at least, my 
nature, that I feel I do not derive the fifth part of the delights 
from this miscellany of Flora, flowers at every step, as from the 
economized glasses and flower-pots at Highgate—so tended and 
worshipped by me, and each the gift of some kind friend or courteous 
neighbour. I actually make up a flower-pot every night, in order 
to imitate my Highgate pleasures.” 
When at the cost of untold pain and humiliation, Coleridge 
made his high resolve, at the eleventh hour, to seek to reinstate 
258 
