MEMORIES OF AUTHORS.
A SERIES OF PORTRAITS FROM PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE.
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 credited, in 1814 he had been long accustomed to take "from two quarts of laudanum in a week to a pint a day." He did, however, ultimately conquer it.
It was during his residence with Mr. Gillman that I knew Coleridge. He had arranged to write for "The Amulet"; and circumstances warranted my often seeing him,—a privilege of which I gladly availed myself. In this home at Highgate, where all even of his whims were studied with affectionate and attentive care, he preferred the quiet of home influences to the excitements of society; and although I more than once met there his friend Charles Lamb, and other noteworthy men, I usually found him, to my delight, alone. There he cultivated flowers, fed his pensioners, the birds, and wooed the little children who gambolled on the heath, where he took his daily walks.
It is a beautiful view,—such as can be rarely seen out of England,—that which the poet had from the window of his bed-chamber. Underneath, a valley, rich in "Patrician trees," divides the hill of Highgate from that of Hampstead; the tower of the old church at Hampstead rises above a thick wood,—a dense forest it seems, although here and there a graceful villa stands out from among the dark green drapery that infolds it. It was easy to imagine the poet often contrasting this scene with that of "Brockan's sov'ran height," where no "finer influence of friend or child" had greeted him, and exclaiming,—