followed. Seven years afterwards his most
popular prose work--_The Aids to Reflection_--first appeared. His last
publication, in 1830, was the work on _Church and State_. It was not
till 1840 that his _Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit_, by far his most
seminal work, was posthumously published. In 1833 he appeared at the
meeting of the British Association at Cambridge, but he died in the
following year (25th of July 1834), and was buried in the churchyard
close to the house of Mr Gillman, where he had enjoyed every consolation
which friendship and love could render. Coleridge died in the communion
of the Church of England, of whose polity and teaching he had been for
many years a loving admirer. An interesting letter to his god-child,
written twelve days before his death, sums up his spiritual experience
in a most touching form.

Of the extraordinary influence which he exercised in conversation it is
impossible to speak fully here. Many of the most remarkable among the
younger men of that period resorted to Highgate as to the shrine of an
oracle, and although one or two disparaging judgments, such as that of
Carlyle, have been recorded, there can be no doubt that since Samuel
Johnson there had been no such power in England. His nephew, Henry
Nelson Coleridge, gathered together some specimens of the _Table Talk_
of the few last years. But remarkable as these are for the breadth of
sympathy and extent of reading disclosed, they will hardly convey the
impressions furnished in a dramatic form, as in Boswell's great work.
Four volumes of _Literary Remains_ were published after his death, and
these, along with the chapters on the poetry of Wordsworth in the
_Biographia Literaria_, may be said to exhibit the full range of
Coleridge's power as a critic of poetry. In this region he stands
supreme. With regard to the preface, which contains Wordsworth's theory,
Coleridge has honestly expressed his dissent:--"With many parts of this
preface, in the sense attributed to them, and which the words
undoubtedly seem to authorize, I never concurred; but, on the contrary,
objected to them as erroneous in principle, and contradictory (in
appearance at least) both to other parts of the same preface, and to the
author's own practice in the greater number of the poems themselves."
This disclaimer of perfect agreement renders the remaining portion of
what he says more valuable. Coleridge was in England the creator of that
higher criticism whi