Coleridge had turned night into day in his hot zeal to follow the winding, dancing mystery of existence to its inmost recess. At times he had forgotten to eat or sleep; and then to reinforce despairing nature he had resorted to stimulants.
Digestion had become impaired, circulation faulty through lack of exercise, so sleeplessness followed stimulation. Then to quiet pain came the use of the drug that brings oblivion. And lo! thought burned up brighter than ever and all the dreams of youth and twenty came trooping back.
Coleridge had made a discovery. He thought he was getting the start of God Almighty; but he wasn't, for men have tried that before, and are trying it today, and many know not yet that we are strong only as we cling close to the skirts of Mother Nature and follow lovingly in her ways.
From his twenty-ninth year we find Coleridge a wreck in mind and body; shuffling, sick, disheartened, erratic, uncertain, yet occasionally brilliant. He tramped the streets, feared and shunned. His money was gone, his power of concentration had vanished. In search of bread he met an old-time friend, Doctor Gillman.
"Gillman," said Coleridge, "I am sick and helpless—look at me!"
"Why don't you come to my house and live with me?" asked the kind friend.
"Gillman," said the poor man, "Gillman, I am on my way there!"
So Gillman brought him to his house up at Highgate and took care of him as a child. And there he remained, the pride and pet of a group of brave, thinking men and women.
He lived on for thirty years, under the kindly, skilful care of his friend, but all the real work of his life was done before he was thirty. Occasionally the old fire would flash forth, and the wit and insight of his youth would shine out. Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron, and others strong and great sought him out to hold converse with him. And so he existed, a sort of oracle, amiable, kind and generous—wreck of a man that was—protected and defended by loving friends; while up at Keswick, Southey cared for his wife and educated his children as though they were his own.
"I am dying," said Coleridge to Gillman in July, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four; "dying, but I should have died, like Keats, in youth and not have made myself a burden to you—do you forgive me?" We can guess the answer.