that
such mistakes sometimes arose with others, but sometimes also with
himself from imperfect recollection; and _that_, owing chiefly to his
carelessness about the property at issue, so that it seemed not worth
the requisite effort to vindicate the claim if it happened to be _his_,
or formally to renounce it if it were not. But, however this might be,
his daughter's remark remains true, and is tolerably significant, that
the people whom (through anybody's mistake) he seems to have robbed were
all pretty much in the sunshine of the world's regard; there was no
attempt to benefit by darkness or twilight, and an intentional robber
must have known that the detection was inevitable.

A second thing to be said in palliation of such plagiarisms, real or
fancied, intentional or not intentional, is this--that at least
Coleridge never insulted or derided those upon whose rights he is
supposed to have meditated an aggression.

Coleridge has now been dead for more than fifteen years,[9] and he lived
through a painful life of sixty-three years; seventy-eight years it is
since he first drew that troubled air of earth, from which with such
bitter loathing he rose as a phoenix might be supposed to rise, that,
in retribution of some treason to his immortal race, had been compelled
for a secular period to banquet on carrion with ghouls, or on the spoils
of _vivisection_ with vampires. Not with less horror of retrospect than
such a phoenix did Coleridge, when ready to wing his flight from
earth, survey the chambers of suffering through which he had trod his
way from childhood to gray hairs. Perhaps amongst all the populous
nations of the grave not one was ever laid there, through whose bones so
mighty a thrill of shuddering anguish would creep, if by an audible
whisper the sound of earth and the memories of earth could reach his
coffin. Yet why? Was he not himself a child of earth? Yes, and by too
strong a link: _that_ it was which shattered him. For also he was a
child of Paradise, and in the struggle between two natures he could not
support himself erect. That dreadful conflict it was which supplanted
his footing. Had he been gross, fleshly, sensual, being so framed for
voluptuous enjoyment, he would have sunk away silently (as millions
sink) through carnal wrecks into carnal ruin. He would have been
mentioned oftentimes with a sigh of regret as that youthful author who
had enriched the literature of his country with two exquisite poe