My little hearts, so fond, so true, I searched the world all far and wide, And never found the like of you: God grant we meet the other side The darkness 'twixt us now that stands, In that new house not made with hands!
A SERIES OF PORTRAITS FROM PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE.
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."