"through life
Chasing chance-started friendships,"
not long before his death he is described as "thankful for the deep,
calm peace of mind he then enjoyed,--a peace such as he had never before
experienced, nor scarcely hoped for." All things were then looked at by
him through an atmosphere by which all were reconciled and harmonized.
It is true, he did but little of the promised and purposed much. His
friend, Justice Talfourd, while testifying to the benignity of his
nature, describes his life as "one splendid and sad prospectus,"--and,
according to Wordsworth, "his mental power was frozen at its marvellous
source";[L] yet what a world of wealth he has bequeathed to us, although
the whole produce of his pen, in poetry, is compressed within one single
small volume!
Thus writes Talfourd, in his "Memorials of Charles Lamb":--"After a long
and painful illness, borne with heroic patience, which concealed the
intensity of his sufferings from the by-standers, Coleridge died,"--if
that can be called death which removes the soul from its impediment of
clay, extends immeasurably its sphere of usefulness, and perpetuates the
power to benefit mankind so long as earth endures.
Within a few months past I again drove to Highgate, and visited the
house in which the poet passed so many happy years of calm contentment
and seraphic peace,--again repeated those lines which, next to his
higher faith, were the faith by which his life was ruled and guided:--
"He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all!"
His remains lie in a vault in the graveyard of the old church at
Highgate. He was a stranger in the parish where he died, notwithstanding
his long residence there, and was therefore interred alone; not long
afterwards, however, the vault was built to receive the body of his
wife: there they rest together. It is inclosed by a thick iron grating,
and the interior is lined with white marble. When I visited the tomb in
1864, one of the marble slabs had accidentally given way, and the coffin
was partially exposed. I laid my hand upon it in solemn reverence, and
gratefully recalled to memory him who, in his own emphatic words, had
"Here found life in death."