William, my head and my heart, dear William and dear Dorothea!

You have all in each other; but I am lonely and want you!'

And when he ran away from them in Scotland, perhaps to escape their anxious care of his health, he was soon in distress and crying out:

'To be beloved is all I need,

And whom I love I love indeed.'

Prior to his return from Germany, in the summer of 1799, he had not become a slave to opium, though the habit of taking it had been formed. In the next three years the vice grew fixed, his will decayed, he produced less, and fell into depths of remorse. From Dorothy's Grasmere journal it appears unlikely that she or her brother understood the reason for the change which they undoubtedly perceived in him. Love blinded them to the cause, while making them quick to see and lament the effects. She kept a journal for her own eyes alone, and one feels like an intruder when one reads it in print, and sees in it sure signs that she loved with romantic tenderness the visitor who came from time to time over the hills from Keswick, and whose letters she placed in her bosom for safe keeping, and whose sufferings, as she detected them in his altered countenance, made her weep. The situation was not rendered less delicate by the fact that he was unhappy with his wife ; and Dorothy's extraordinary power of self-abnegation must have been strained almost unendurably when she found that the woman for whom Coleridge felt most affection was Sarah Hutchinson. There was something innocent and childlike in all his sympathies and likings and lovings. He never permanently alienated a friend; he never quite broke the tie between himself and his wife; he could, it seems, love without selfishness and be loved without jealousy. Ernest Hartley Coleridge once told me that he was quite sure the 'Asra' of Coleridge's poems was Sarah Hutchinson, and that the poet loved her. Mr Gordon Wordsworth has told me the same thing. 'Sara' in the poems before 1799 refers, of course, to Mrs Coleridge; after that date to Miss Hutchinson. She was his amanuensis and close companion when he

and lived, as he did for months at a time, with the Wordsworths at Grasmere. Their hospitality knew no bounds ty where he was concerned, and their patience with him as he bent more and more under the power of narcotics per and stimulants was almost inexhaustible.

In the winter of 1801-1802, the two causes of Coleridge's unhappiness, opium and domestic discord, worked havoc with him and brought him to despair. The wings of poesy were broken, as he realised full well. Meanwhile Wordsworth was in high poetic activity, healthy, forward-looking, and happy. On April 4, 1802, when William and Dorothy were on a visit to Keswick, and the could judge for themselves of his misery, he composed, in part at least, the poem 'Dejection,' which is a confession of his own failure, and one of the saddest of all human utterances. But it is a glorious thing, too, for as the stricken runner sinks in the race he lifts up his head and cheers the friend who strides onward, and this generosity is itself a triumph. On Oct. 4, Wordsworth's wedding day and the seventh anniversary of Coleridge's marriage, the poem was printed in the 'Morning Post.' It is an ode in form only; in contents it is a conversation. It is not an address to Dejection, but to William Wordsworth. As printed in the newspaper, it purports to be directed to some one named Edmund; in Coleridge's editions of his collected works this name is changed to Lady; but in the three extant early manuscripts the word is sometimes William and sometimes Wordsworth. In this sublime and heartrending poem Coleridge gives expression to an experience of double consciousness. His sense-perceptions are vivid and in part agreeable; his inner state is faint, blurred, and unhappy. He sees, but cannot feel. The power of feeling has been paralysed by chemically induced excitements of his brain. The seeing power, less dependent upon bodily health, stands aloof, individual, critical, and very mournful. By 'seeing' he means perceiving and judging; by 'feeling' he means that which impels to action. He suffers, but the pain is dull, and he wishes it were keen, for so he should awake from lethargy and recover unity at least. But nothing from outside can restore him. The sources of the soul's life are within. Even from the depth of his humiliation and self-loathing he ventures

to rebuke his friend for thinking it can be otherwise; William, with his belief in the divinity of Nature, his confidence that all knowledge comes from sensation, his semi-atheism, as Coleridge had called this philosophy:

'O William! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live.'

Coleridge never faltered in his conviction that spirit was independent of matter. His unhappy experience deepened his faith in the existence of God, and of his own soul as something detachable from his 'body that did him grievous wrong.' Yet he had once been a disciple of David Hartley and had, it seems, made a convert of Wordsworth, whose persistence in a semi-materialistic philosophy now alarmed him. In every other respect he venerates him and humbles himself before him. Wordsworth, pure in heart, that is to say, still a child of Nature, and free, has not lost his birthright of joy, which is the life-breath of poetry. But Oh! groans Coleridge, I have lost my gift of song, for each affliction

'Suspends what Nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.'

His own race prematurely ended, he passes the torch to the survivor:

'Dear William, friend devoutest of my choice,
Thus mayst thou ever, evermore rejoice.'

Another awful day of remorse and humiliating comparison was approaching. In April 1804, Coleridge left England for Sicily and Malta, where he sank very low in what had now become an incurable disease, though he subsequently at various times made heroic stands against it, through religious hope, the marvellous energy of an originally strong and joyous nature, and the devotion of one friend after another. While he was distant from his staunch supporters, Poole and Wordsworth, his creative powers, through the exercise of which he might have preserved some degree of self-respect, more nearly failed than at any period of his life. He came back to England in August 1806, so ashamed that for months he avoided his family and his friends. After many

anxious efforts the Wordsworths and good Sarah Hutchinson captured him and kept him with them for several days at an inn in Kendal. Following their advice, he agreed upon a more definite separation from Mrs Coleridge, to which she, however, would not consent. They had him now within reach, and in January 1807, he visited them at a farmhouse, on Sir George Beaumont's estate, in which they had been living for several months. Here, one long winter night, Wordsworth began reading to him from the manuscript of The Prelude,' that poem dedicated to him, in which the Growth of a Poet's Mind is narrated. What subject could have been more interesting or more painful to him? On the night when Wordsworth's deep voice ceased declaiming the firm pentameters, his brother poet, roused from lethargy, composed in response his lines To William Wordsworth.' Lingering in his ear was the graceful tribute which recalled the glory of his youth, so few years past and yet so completely gone:

"Thou in bewitching words, with happy heart,
Didst chaunt the vision of that Ancient Man,
The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes
Didst utter of the Lady Christabel.'

Coleridge's reply, touching for the gratitude, reverence, and humbleness which it expresses, is remarkable too for the lightning flashes in which it shows us the course of Wordsworth's life and of his own, and summarises 'The Prelude. There is even, in the phrase about a tranquil sea 'swelling to the moon,' a reminiscence of a remark made by Dorothy one night years before as they walked by the Bristol Channel. How her heart must have jumped when she recognised this touch! The childlike candour of a beautiful spirit shines in the following lines, in which unconquered goodness and imperishable art unite:

'Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn
The pulses of my being beat anew:

And even as Life returns upon the drowned,

Life's joys rekindling roused a throng of pains-
Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe,

Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;

And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of Hope;
And Hope that scarce would know itself from Fear;
Sense of past Youth, and Manhood come in vain,
And Genius given, and Knowledge won in vain.'

In the divine economy and equilibrium of the world all things have their uses and every disturbed balance is restored. Genius is not given in vain, goodness is never wasted, love comes at last into its own. The misfortunes, nay, even the faults of Coleridge, which were so grievous to him, can be seen now as a purifying discipline. I do not wish to preach a sermon in defence of weakness; but in all justice, not to say charity, let us ask ourselves whether the frailty of this great and essentially good man did not enhance his virtues and make him more lovable. He had no pride except in the achievements of his friends. He distrusted himself, and his dependence on the love and regard of his friends gave them the joy that women feel in caring for helpless babes. He lost at times the sense of his own personality, and found communion with others, with Nature, and with the Divine Spirit. He hated himself for his sins, and was innocent of envy, presumption, self-deception, pretence. He sank in his own opinion, and humility became his crown of glory. His power of feeling failed from excessive use, and he took keen pleasure in the happiness of others. He suffered burning remorse for wasted gifts and opportunities, but never whined about the futility of life. He trifled with his own sensations, but was no sentimentalist. He wandered, athirst and weak, in sandy places, but saw on the horizon a 'shady city of palm trees,' and pointed the way thither.

GEORGE MCLEAN HARPER.

AM