COLERIDGE.

In 1816 the wandering and unsettled ways of the poet were calmed and
harmonized in the home of the Gillmans at Highgate, where the remainder
of his days, nearly twenty years, were passed in entire quiet and
comparative happiness. Mr. Gillman was a surgeon; and it is understood
that Coleridge went to reside with him chiefly to be under his
surveillance, to break himself of the fearful habit he had contracted of
opium-eating,--a habit that grievously impaired his mind, engendered
self-reproach, and embittered the best years of his life.[D] He was the
guest and the beloved friend as well as the patient of Mr. Gillman; and
the devoted attachment of that excellent man and his estimable wife
supplied the calm contentment and seraphic peace, such as might have
been the dream of the poet and the hope of the man. Honored be the name
and reverenced the memory of this true friend! He died on the 1st of
June, 1837, having arranged to publish a life of Coleridge, of which he
produced but the first volume.[E]

Coleridge's habit of taking opium was no secret. In 1816 it must have
reached a fearful pitch. It had produced "during many years an
accumulation of bodily suffering that wasted the frame, poisoned the
sources of enjoyment, and entailed an intolerable mental load that
scarcely knew cessation"; the poet himself called it "the accursed
drug." In 1814 Cottle wrote him a strong protest against this terrible
and ruinous habit, entreating him to renounce it. Coleridge said in
reply, "You have poured oil into the raw and festering wound of an old
friend, Cottle, but it is oil of vitriol!" He accounts for the "accursed
habit" by stating that he had taken to it first to obtain relief from
intense bodily suffering; and he seriously contemplated entering a
private insane asylum as the surest means of its removal. His remorse
was terrible and perpetual; he was "rolling rudderless," "the wreck of
what he once was," "wretched, helpless, and hopeless."

He revealed this "dominion" to De Quincey "with a deep expression of
horror at the hideous bondage." It was this "conspiracy of himself
against himself" that was the poison of his life. He describes it with
frantic pathos as "the scourge, the curse, the one almighty blight,
which had desolated his life," the thief

"to steal
From my own nature all the natural man."

The habit was, it would seem, commenced in 1802; and if Mr. Cottle is to
be