of it was entirely alone of its kind.

He had written and

published two volumes of poetry, and had a third volume in manuscript. He had produced as much journalistic work as would fill four good-sized volumes. He had lectured frequently, and preached times without number. He had spent a year in continental travel, had learned a new language, and translated a great play. He had written a noble tragedy. At thirty-one years of age he had attained to a distinct reputation. Who shall say that thus far he had shown any deficiency in moral force, or worldly wisdom, or common-sense? He had done the long day's work of a giant, and never lost a chance that any of his best friends would have valued. Let no one talk of him as if he were an inspired imbecile, on any evidence that these first thirty-one years supply! Down to this period he was a strong man, strongly equipped, working well against great odds, and moderately successful.

C

CHAPTER VIII.

OLERIDGE parted from the Wordsworths at Tarbet late in August, 1803, and returning by Edinburgh, he reached Keswick about the 1st of September. He seems to have taken to his bed immediately, and to have been confined to it, with intervals of convalescence, during the following six months. His complaint was rheumatism and gout, complicated by other disorders. He attributed his condition partly to the chronic effects of the boyish indiscretion from which he had suffered while at school - that of swimming the New River in his clothes-partly to the constant rains and his frequent drenchings in Scotland, and partly to the prevailing humidity of the climate in which he had made his permanent abode. While he lay in bed he formed various designs of going abroad, sometimes to the West Indies, sometimes to the Canary Islands, sometimes to Italy. Meantime he was his own doctor. In youth he had read numerous books on medicine, and now in the library of his neighbour and landlord at Greta Hall there were, unhappily, many medical reviews and magazines to which in his extremity he resorted. "I had always,” he says, "a fondness (a

common case, but most mischievous turn with reading men who are at all dyspeptic) for dabbling in medical writings; and in one of these reviews I met a case which I fancied very like my own, in which a cure had been effected by the 'Kendal Black Drop.' In an evil hour I procured it it worked miracles-the swellings disappeared, the pains vanished; I was all alive, and all around me being as ignorant as myself, nothing could exceed my triumph. I talked of nothing else, prescribed the newly-discovered panacea for all complaints, and carried a bottle about with me, not to lose any opportunity of administering 'instant relief and speedy cure' to all complainers, stranger or friend, gentle or simple." The illness had been a very real thing. In November, Southey, now resident at Greta Hall, wrote: "Coleridge is now in bed with the lumbago. Never was poor fellow tormented with such pantomimic complaints; his disorders are perpetually shifting, and he is never a week together without some one or other." Again, a month or two later, Southey wrote, "Coleridge is quacking himself for complaints that would tease anybody into quackery." The panacea was not so real. "Need I say," says Coleridge, that my own apparent convalescence was of no longer continuance; but what then? the remedy was at hand and infallible. Alas! it is with a bitter smile, a laugh of gall and bitterness, that I recall this period of unsuspecting delusion, and how I first became aware of the maelstrom, the fatal whirlpool, to which I was drawing just when the current was already beyond my strength to stem." The infallible "Kendal Black Drop" turned out to be little else than

the very fallible opium, and it was thus, as a relief from pain, in ignorance, and as a victim of medical solecism, that Coleridge first came under the dreadful yoke of opium-eating. At what period the "Kendal Black Drop' was superseded by laudanum does not appear. That date, if it could be ascertained, would at least possess the melancholy interest of fixing the time at which the plea of error was fully overthrown, and the withering vice became chargeable to infirmity of purpose. Before this, the daily indulgence in narcotics had probably ceased to be entirely an act of free will and intention, but the full moral responsibility only began when the veil of ignorance was removed.

Coleridge had recovered from physical prostration early in 1804, and in April of that year a friend, John Stoddart, invited him to Malta. It was the opportunity he had longed for, and he accepted the offer. He insured his life, and set out early in April, going by way of London, where he “dined and punched" with Lamb. He ar rived at Malta on April 18th, and on the 22nd he had a partial relapse. "I was reading when I was taken ill, and felt an oppression of my breathing, and convulsive snatching in my stomach and limbs." In this relapse there was, of course, but one resource-opium-and Coleridge resorted to it. He rallied, and found himself relieved by the climate and the stimulus of change; but the summer came quickly, and then the dead summer heat, and the monotonous blue sky acted as a sedative, and he began to realize that his health did not improve. His limbs were as lifeless tools," and the pains in his stomach became yet more violent and convulsive. To

opium again and again he turned for relief from suffering. He had travelled chiefly in the interests of health; but when the Governor of the island, Sir Alexander Ball, offered him a temporary post as public secretary, he accepted it. The duties were light and by no mean disagreeable, but the condition of his health often made them irksome. There appears to have been some pomp attaching to the office, and Coleridge prayed to be relieved from the unnecessary parade and dignity. The simplicity of his manners is said to have made him an object of curiosity in Malta, and to have given rise to whimsical stories. He did not find much to admire in the Maltese. "What can Sir Francis Head mean," he says, "by talking of the musical turn of the Maltese ? Why, when I was at Malta all nature was discordant. The very cats caterwauled more horribly and pertinaciously there than I ever heard elsewhere. The children will stand and scream inarticulately at each other for an hour together, out of pure love of dissonance.. The dogs. are deafening,—and so throughout. Musical, indeed! I have hardly gotten rid of the noise yet!" He describes the moral corruption of the Maltese when the island was surrendered. A marquis of an ancient family applied to the Governor to be appointed his valet. The marquis explained that he hoped that in the desired capacity he might have the honour of presenting petitions to his Excellency. "Oh, that is it, is it?" said the Governor. “My valet, sir, brushes my clothes and brings them to me. If he dared to meddle with matters of public business, I should kick him downstairs." Coleridge did not make the best of business men, but he is said to have