reprint of which as a book is completely
rewritten. In 1811-12 he delivered his second course of lectures, this
time on his own account. It was followed by two others, and in 1813
_Remorse_ was produced at Drury Lane, had a fair success, and brought
the author some money. _Christabel_, with _Kubla Khan_, appeared in
1816, and the _Biographia Literaria_ next year; _Zapolya_ and the
rewritten _Friend_ the year after, when also Coleridge gave a new course
of lectures, and yet another, the last. _Aids to Reflection_, in 1825,
was the latest important work he issued himself, though in 1828 he
superintended a collection of his poems. Such of the rest of his work as
is in existence in a collected form has been printed or reprinted since.

A more full account of the appearance of Coleridge's work than is
desirable or indeed possible in most cases here has been given, because
it is important to convey some idea of the astonishingly piecemeal
fashion in which it reached the world. To those who have studied the
author's life of opium-eating; of constant wandering from place to
place; of impecuniousness so utter that, after all the painstaking of
the modern biographer, and after full allowance for the ravens who seem
always to have been ready to feed him, it is a mystery how he escaped
the workhouse; of endless schemes and endless non-performance--it is
only a wonder that anything of Coleridge's ever reached the public
except in newspaper columns. As it was, while his most ambitiously
planned books were never written at all, most of those which did reach
the press were years in getting through it; and Southey, on one
occasion, after waiting fifteen months for the conclusion of a
contribution of Coleridge's to _Omniana_, had to cancel the sheet in
despair. The collection, after many years, by Mr. Ernest Coleridge of
his grandfather's letters has by no means completely removed the mystery
which hangs over Coleridge's life and character. We see a little more,
but we do not see the whole; and we are still unable to understand what
strange impediments there were to the junction of the two ends of power
and performance. A rigid judge might almost say, that if friends had not
been so kind, fate had been kinder, and that instead of helping they
hindered, just as a child who is never allowed to tumble will never
learn to walk.

The enormous tolerance of friends, however, which alone enabled him to
produce anything, was justified by the ast