HIS WRITINGS.—­After a residence at Stowey, in Somersetshire, where he wrote some of his finest poems, among which were the first part of Christabel, The Ancient Mariner, and Remorse, a tragedy, he was enabled, through the kindness of friends, to go, in 1798, to Germany, where he spent fourteen months in the study of literature and metaphysics.  In the year 1800 he returned to the Lake country, where he for some time resided with Southey at Keswick; Wordsworth being then at Grasmere.  Then was established as a fixed fact in English literature the Lake school of poetry.  These three poets acted and reacted upon each other.  From having been great Radicals they became Royalists, and Coleridge’s Unitarian belief was changed into orthodox churchmanship.  His translation of Schiller’s Wallenstein should rather be called an expansion of that drama, and is full of his own poetic fancies.  After writing for some time for the Morning Post, he went to Malta as the Secretary to the Governor in 1804, at a salary of L800 per annum.  But his restless spirit soon drove him back to Grasmere, and to desultory efforts to make a livelihood.

In 1816 he published the two parts of Christabel, an unfinished poem, which, for the wildness of the conceit, exquisite imagery, and charming poetic diction, stands quite alone in English literature.  In a periodical called The Friend, which he issued, are found many of his original ideas; but it was discontinued after twenty-seven numbers.  His Biographia Literaria, published in 1817, contains valuable sketches of literary men, living and dead, written with rare critical power.

In his Aids to Reflection, published in 1825, are found his metaphysical tenets; his Table-Talk is also of great literary value; but his lectures on Shakspeare show him to have been the most remarkable critic of the great dramatist whom the world has produced.

It has already been mentioned that when the first volume of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads was published, The Ancient Mariner was included in it, as a poem by an anonymous friend.  It had been the intention of Coleridge to publish another poem in the second volume; but it was considered incongruous, and excluded.  That poem was the exquisite ballad entitled Love, or Genevieve.

HIS HELPLESSNESS.—­With no home of his own, he lived by visiting his friends; left his wife and children to the support of others, and seemed incapable of any other than this shifting and shiftless existence.  This natural imbecility was greatly increased during a long period by his constant use of opium, which kept him, a greater portion of his life, in a world of dreams.  He was fortunate in having a sincere and appreciative friend in Mr. Gilman, surgeon, near London, to whose house he went in 1816; and where, with the exception of occasional visits elsewhere, he resided until his death in 1834.  If the Gilmans