"O thou Queen!
Thou delegated Deity of Earth,
O dear, dear England!"
And what a wonderful change there is in the scene, when the pilgrim to this shrine at Highgate leaves the garden and walks a few steps beyond the elm avenue that still fronts the house!
Forty years have brought houses all about the heath, and shut in the prospect; but from any ascent you may see regal Windsor on one side and Gravesend on the other,—twenty miles of view, look which way you will. But when the poet dwelt there, all London was within ken, a few yards from his door.
The house has undergone some changes, but the garden is much as it was when I used to find the poet feeding his birds there: it has the same wall—moss-covered now—that overhangs the dell; a shady tree-walk shelters it from sun and rain,—it was the poet's walk at midday; a venerable climber, the Glycenas, was no doubt planted by the poet's hand: it was new to England when the poet was old, and what more likely than that his friends would have bidden him plant it where it has since flourished forty years or more?
I was fortunate in sharing some of the regard of Mr. and Mrs. Gillman; after the poet's death, they gave me his inkstand, (a plain inkstand of wood,) which is before me as I write, and a myrtle on which his eyes were fixed as he died. It is now an aged and gnarled tree in our conservatory.[F]
One of the very few letters of Coleridge I have preserved I transcribe, as it illustrates his goodness of heart and willingness to put himself to inconvenience for others.
"Dear Sir,"—it runs,—"I received some five days ago a letter depicting the distress and urgent want of a widow and a sister, with whom, during the husband's lifetime, I was for two or three years a housemate; and yesterday the poor lady came up herself, almost clamorously soliciting me, not, indeed, to assist her from my own purse,—for she was previously assured that there was nothing therein,—but to exert myself to collect the sum of twenty pounds, which would save her from God knows what. On this hopeless task,—for perhaps never man whose name had been so often in print for praise or reprobation had so few intimates as myself,—when I recollected that before I left Highgate for the seaside you had been so kind as to intimate that you considered some trifle due to me,—whatever it be, it will go some way to eke out the sum which I have with a sick heart been all this day trotting about to make up, guinea by guinea. You will do me a real service, (for my health perceptibly sinks under this unaccustomed flurry of my spirits,) if you could make it convenient to inclose to me, however small the sum may be, if it amount to a bank-note of any denomination, directed 'Grove, Highgate,' where I am, and expect to be any time for the next eight months. In the mean time, believe me
"Yours obliged,
"S. T. Coleridge.
"4th December, 1828."