from the classical form--bundles of
notes--the original matter inseparably mixed up with that borrowed
from others--the whole, just that mere preparation for an artistic
effect which the finished artist would be careful one day to destroy.
Here, again, we have a trait profoundly characteristic of Coleridge.
He often attempts to reduce a phase of thought, subtle and exquisite,
to conditions too rough for it. He uses a purely speculative gift in
direct moral edification. Scientific truth is something fugitive,
relative, full of fine gradations; he tries to fix it in absolute
formulas. The _Aids to Reflection_, or _The Friend_, is an effort to
propagate the volatile spirit of conversation into the less ethereal
fabric of a written book; and it is only here and there that the
poorer matter becomes vibrant, is really lifted by the spirit.

At forty-two, we find Coleridge saying in a letter:

I feel with an intensity unfathomable by words my utter
nothingness, impotence, and worthlessness in and for myself.
I have learned what a sin is against an infinite,
imperishable being such as is the soul of man. The
consolations, at least the sensible sweetness of hope, I do
not possess. On the contrary, the temptation which I have
constantly to fight up against is a fear that, if
annihilation and the possibility of heaven were offered to
my choice, I should choose the former.

What was the cause of this change? That is precisely the point on
which, after all the gossip there has been, we are still ignorant. At
times Coleridge's opium excesses were great; but what led to those
excesses must not be left out of account. From boyhood he had a
tendency to low fever, betrayed by his constant appetite for bathing
and swimming, which he indulged even when a physician had opposed it.
In 1803, he went to Malta as secretary to the English Governor. His
daughter suspects that the source of the evil was there, that for one
of his constitution the climate of Malta was deadly. At all events,
when he returned, the charm of those five wonderful years had failed
at the source.

De Quincey said of him, 'he wanted better bread than can be made with
wheat.' Lamb said of him that from boyhood he had 'hungered for
eternity'. Henceforth those are the two notes of his life. From this
time we must look for no more true literary talent in him. His style
becomes greyer and greyer, his thoughts _outre_, exaggerat