Then followed a weakening of health. Coleridge earned fitfully as journalist; settled at Keswick; found his tendency to rheumatism increased by the damp of the Lake Country; took a remedy containing opium, and began to acquire that taste for the excitement of opium which ruined the next years of his life. He was invited to Malta, for the benefit of the climate, by his friend, John Stoddart, who was there. At Malta he made the acquaintance of the governor, Sir Alexander Ball, whose worth he celebrates in essays of the _Friend_, which are included under the title of “A Sailor’s Fortune” in this little volume. For a short time he acted as secretary to Sir Alexander, then returned to the Lakes and planned his journal, the _Friend_, published at Penrith, of which the first number appeared on the 1st of August, 1809, the twenty-eighth and last towards the end of March, 1810. Next followed six years of struggle to live as journalist and lecturer in London and elsewhere, while the habit of taking opium grew year by year, and at last advanced from two quarts of laudanum a week to a pint a day. Coleridge put himself under voluntary restraint for a time with a Mr. Morgan at Calne. Finally he placed himself, in April, 1816—the year of the publication of “Christabel”—with a surgeon at Highgate, Mr. Gillman, under whose friendly care he was restored to himself, and in whose house he died on the 25th of July, 1834. It was during this calm autumn of his life that Coleridge, turning wholly to the higher speculations on philosophy and religion upon which his mind was chiefly fixed, a revert to the Church, and often actively antagonist to the opinions he had held for a few years, wrote, his “Lay Sermons,” and his “Biographia Literaria,” and arranged also a volume of Essays of the _Friend_. He lectured on Shakespeare, wrote “Aids to Reflection,” and showed how his doubts were set at rest in these “Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit,” which were first published in 1840, after their writer’s death. H. M. CONFESSIONS OF AN INQUIRING SPIRIT. _LETTERS ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES_. LETTER I. MY DEAR FRIEND,