Wordsworth, his contemporary and friend, had far better fortune; life offered his notable virtues every assistance. An early legacy, a small patrimony that arrived late, but not too late, appointment to one or two posts hardly to be regarded as anything other than sinecures, a government pension in his closing years, a splendid constitution, a fortunate marriage, colossal strength of purpose: all these gifts smoothed the rugged road of the greater man; to Coleridge the fates were adverse. He had at best a great but ill-balanced mind, to which philosophy made the first appeal. A shrewd practical man with half his attainments could have turned them to better advantage. His health was never really robust, and he suffered from the fatal sickness of self-pity. He accepted the charity of friends and asked for more; though he seems to have had few personal extravagances, the income that kept his friends, William, Mary, and Dorothy Wordsworth, free from financial strain, would not have been enough for his support. None of his biographers has discovered what he did with his money on the rare occasions when it was plentiful; there is ample reason to believe that he would have been equally puzzled to make out a balance-sheet. But, while his private life was beset by all manner of difficulties, while his private letters reveal too frequently an utter absence of personal dignity, his public utterances and the "table-talk" recorded by his nephew stand on a very high plane. Every class of cultivated man and woman was content to be silent when Coleridge was speaking; there was seemingly but one matter that the keen clear brain could neither grapple with nor control, and this was the conduct of his own life. Where he himself was not concerned, his wisdom and insight were remarkable, his natural gifts, splendidly cultivated in youth, had been reinforced by prolonged study as a man. His table-talk was fuller than most men's laboured essays, his lectures, even if delivered extempore, could charm an audience of scholars, and his published work, whether in prose or verse, is an enduring monument, not likely to be hard worn by the attentions of the multitude. Had his lines been cast in more pleasant places, had he married a woman strong enough to direct and guide him, had he been spared his pains and the unfortunate remedy by which he sought to lull them, there seems to be no height to which he might not have risen, no goal to which he might not have attained. We may not judge him save in all charity and kindness, for we know that his faults brought their own punishment in full measure and, apart from this, the lines he wrote a few years before he died seem to arrest the fault finder. "Frail creatures are we all! To be the best, Is but the fewest faults to have.-- Look Thou then to thyself, and leave the rest To God, thy conscience, and the grave."