Whether Cottle was justified in publishing the "opium letters" of Coleridge has always been a moot point. The fact is Cottle had determined on "pointing a moral and adorning a tale," as was the custom of writers of his day, and he enlisted the sympathy and support of Southey and John Foster to endorse his project of making moral capital out of the story of Coleridge's life. The long correspondence at the end of the _Reminiscences_ with these two friends regarding how much he should divulge and how much he should keep back, is a study in the art of compromise; but the "moralist's duty," as it was then called, prevailed in the end. They had determined, as is mentioned in the last letter of the correspondence (p. 482) by John Foster, that "an emphatic moral lesson" should be wrung out of the life of Coleridge; and Southey and Foster warned Cottle to be on his guard against collaborating with Gillman--as was his original intention--to write the _Life of Coleridge_, lest the "solemn warning and example should be lost" (Cottle's _Rem._, p. 482). The real cause of Coleridge's many and harassing ailments has now been made known. Writing to the _Times_ newspaper in reply to a criticism which had appeared in its columns on Coleridge's _Letters_, just published (in 1895), and which had asserted that the perpetual cry of ill health which echoes through the volume from end to end, meant little less than "opium and indolence," Mrs. Lucy E. Watson, granddaughter of James Gillman, quotes a letter by the latter narrating the circumstances attending the post mortem examination of Coleridge's body. The disease from which he had suffered was enlargement of the heart, by which the sides of that organ were so attenuated as not to be able to sustain it when raised. An article appeared in the _Lancet_ on 15th June 1895 on the matter, which closes by saying: "The record suffices to prove that this intellectual giant must have suffered more than the world was aware of, and it can be understood that his _indolence_ as well as his opium habit had a physical basis. It can only add to the marvel with which his achievements are justly regarded that one so physically disabled should have made such extensive and profound contributions to philosophy and literature. It is one more instance of the triumph of mind over body" (_The Gillmans of Highgate_, p. 35).