A terrible shadow in Coleridge’s life was the apparent cause
of most of his dejection. In early life he suffered from
neuralgia, and to ease the pain began to use opiates. The
result on such a temperament was almost inevitable. He became a
slave to the drug habit; his naturally weak will lost all its
directing and sustaining force, until, after fifteen years of
pain and struggle and despair, he gave up and put himself in
charge of a physician, one Mr. Gillman, of Highgate. Carlyle,
who visited him at this time, calls him “a king of men,” but
records that “he gave you the idea of a life that had been
full of sufferings, a life heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still
swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other
bewilderment.”--WILLIAM J. LONG, “English Literature.”
(2926)
=Shadow of a Great Life=--See LIVING IN THE SHADOW.