SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, aged sixty-one. From a pencil-sketch by J. Kayser, of Kaserworth, now in the possession of the editor _Frontispiece_
MRS. WILSON. From a pencil-sketch by Edward Nash, 1816, now in the possession of the editor 460
HARTLEY COLERIDGE, aged ten. After a painting by Sir David Wilkie, R. A., now in the possession of Sir George Beaumont, Bart. 510
THE ROOM IN MR. GILLMAN'S HOUSE, THE GROVE, HIGHGATE, which served as study and bedroom for the poet, and in which he died. From a water-colour drawing now in the possession of Miss Christabel Coleridge, of Cheyne, Torquay 616
DERWENT COLERIDGE, aged nineteen. From a pencil-sketch by Edward Nash, now in the possession of the editor 704
THE REVEREND GEORGE COLERIDGE. From an oil painting now in the possession of the Right Honourable Lord Coleridge 746
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, aged (about) fifty-six. From an oil painting (taken at the Argyll Baths), now in the possession of the editor 758
KING'S ARMS, KENDAL, Sunday morning, January 15, 1804.
MY DEAR SIR,--I give you thanks--and, that I may make the best of so poor and unsubstantial a return, permit me to say, that they are such thanks as can only come from a nature unworldly by constitution and by habit, and now rendered more than ever impressible by sudden restoration--resurrection I might say--from a long, long sick-bed. I had gone to Grasmere to take my farewell of William Wordsworth, his wife, and his sister, and thither your letters followed me. I was at Grasmere a whole month, so ill, as that till the last week I was unable to read your letters. Not that my inner being was disturbed; on the contrary, it seemed more than usually serene and self-sufficing; but the exceeding pain, of which I suffered every now and then, and the fearful distresses of my sleep, had taken away from me the connecting link of voluntary power, which continually combines that part of us by which we know ourselves to be, with that outward picture or hieroglyphic, by which we hold communion with our like--between the vital and the organic--or what Berkeley, I suppose, would call mind and its sensuous language. I had only just strength enough to smile gratefully on my kind nurses, who tended me with sister's and mother's love, and often, I well know, wept for me in their sleep, and watched for me even in their dreams. Oh, dear sir! it does a man's heart good, I will not say, to know such a family, but even to know that there _is_ such a family. In spite of Wordsworth's occasional fits of hypochondriacal uncomfortableness,--from which, more or less, and at longer or shorter intervals, he has never been wholly free from his very childhood,--in spite of this hypochondriacal graft in his nature, as dear Wedgwood calls it, his is the happiest family I ever saw, and were it not in too great sympathy with my ill health--were I in good health, and their neighbour--I verily believe that the cottage in Grasmere Vale would be a proud sight for Philosophy. It is with no idle feeling of vanity that I speak of my importance to them; that it is _I_, rather than another, is almost an accident; but being so very happy within themselves they are too good, not the more, for that very reason, to want a friend and common object of love out of their household. I have met with several genuine Philologists, Philonoists, Physiophilists, keen hunters after knowledge and science; but truth and wisdom are higher names than these--and _revering_ Davy, I am half angry with him for doing that which would make me laugh in another man--I mean, for prostituting and profaning the name of "Philosopher," "great Philosopher," "eminent Philosopher," etc., etc., etc., to every fellow who has made a lucky experiment, though the man should be Frenchified to the heart, and though the whole Seine, with all its filth and poison, flows in his veins and arteries.