The causes of the estrangement were cumulative. While Coleridge never looked upon his wife as his inferior, and never expected attainments in her which she did not have, Mrs. Coleridge, as she advanced in years, could not be slow to perceive that there were other women beside herself who deeply interested themselves in her husband with his conversational fascinations and gentlemanly bearing toward woman. She could not be oblivious to the fact that Dorothy Wordsworth, for instance, was intellectually better fitted than herself to comprehend the "large discourse" which characterized Coleridge; and into Dorothy's ear was poured many a transcendental disquisition not understandable by the wife. Very few wives, as we know from the Carlyle history, can allow their husbands to have a "Gloriana;" and it is not likely that Sarah Fricker was one of the exceptions. Later, Charlotte Brent became one of Coleridge's Platonic sisterhood, but of what intellectual capacity she was of we cannot tell. But she added to the wife's resentment. Opium, too, of course, had its share in irritating the discontented wife. There is little foundation, as far as I can see, for the charge made against Mrs. Coleridge in Flagg's _Life of Allston_, p. 356, that Mrs. Coleridge had a horrible and ungovernable temper. I think ill-temper was created by events and by the non-success of Coleridge, and by the unfavourable comparison Coleridge as a literary man made with Southey, who was luckily successful in his ventures while Coleridge was always unfortunate. She was doubtless sorely tried.