His remains lie in a vault in the graveyard of the old church at Highgate. He was a stranger in the parish where he died, notwithstanding his long residence there, and was therefore interred alone; not long afterwards, however, the vault was built to receive the body of his wife: there they rest together. It is inclosed by a thick iron grating, and the interior is lined with white marble. When I visited the tomb in 1864, one of the marble slabs had accidentally given way, and the coffin was partially exposed. I laid my hand upon it in solemn reverence, and gratefully recalled to memory him who, in his own emphatic words, had
"Here found life in death."
FOOTNOTES:
[D] De Quincey more than insinuates that, instead of Gillman persuading Coleridge to relinquish opium, Coleridge seduced Gillman into taking it.
[E] Gillman published but one volume of a Life of Coleridge. The volume he gave me contains his corrections for another edition. De Quincey says of it that "it is a thing deader than a door-nail,—which is waiting vainly, and for thousands of years is doomed to wait, for its sister volume, namely, Volume Second." It must be ever regretted, that of the poet's later life, of which he knew so much, he wrote nothing; but the world was justified in expecting in the details of his earlier pilgrimage something which it did not get.
[F] Mrs. Gillman gave me also the following sonnet. I believe it never to have been published; but although she requested I "would not have copies of it made to give away," I presume the prohibition cannot now be binding, after a lapse of thirty years since I received it. The poet, he who wrote the sonnet, and the admirable woman to whom it was addressed, have long since met.
"SONNET ON THE LATE SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
"And thou art gone, most loved, most honored friend!
No, never more thy gentle voice shall blend
With air of Earth its pure, ideal tones,—
Binding in one, as with harmonious zones,
The heart and intellect. And I no more
Shall with thee gaze on that unfathomed deep,
The Human Soul: as when, pushed off the shore,
Thy mystic bark would through the darkness sweep,
Itself the while so bright! For oft we seemed
As on some starless sea,—all dark above,
All dark below,—yet, onward as we drove,
To plough up light that ever round us streamed
But he who mourns is not as one bereft
Of all he loved: thy living Truths are left.
"Washington Allston.
Cambridge Port, Massachusetts, America.
"For my still dear friend, Mrs. Gillman, of the Grove, Highgate."