But, again, I would avoid moralising. I only ask what is the true inference as to Coleridge's character. And that consideration may bring us back to less painful reflections. It is preposterous to maintain the thesis that Coleridge was the kind of person to be held up as a pattern to young men about to marry. Opium had ruined the power of will, never very strong, and any capacity he may have had—and his versatility was perhaps incompatible with any great capacity—for concentration on a great task. The consequences of such indulgence had ruined his home life, and all but ruined his intellectual career. But there is also this to be said, that at his worst Coleridge was both loved and eminently lovable. His failings excited far more compassion than indignation. The 'pity of it' expresses the sentiment of all eye-witnesses. He was always full of kindly feelings, never soured into cynicism. The strange power of fascination which he had shown in his poetic youth never deserted him. As De Quincey has said: 'Beyond all men who ever perhaps have lived, he found means to engage a constant succession of most faithful friends. He received the services of sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, from the hands of strangers attracted to him by no possible impulses but those of reverence for his intellect and love for his gracious nature. Perpetual relays were laid along his path in life of zealous and judicious supporters.' Whenever Coleridge was at his lowest, some one was ready to help him. Poole, and Lloyd, and Wedgwood, and De Quincey, had come forward in their turn. Through the dismal years of degradation which preceded his final refuge at Gillman's, the faithful Morgans had made him a home, tried to break off his bad habits, and enabled him to carry on the almost hopeless struggle. When Morgan himself became bankrupt, it is pleasant to know that Coleridge, among whose faults pecuniary meanness had no place, gave what he could—and far more than he could really spare—to help his old friend. When he delivered his lectures or poured out an amazing monologue at Lamb's suppers, or in Godwin's shop, young men, at the age of hero-worship, were already prepared not only to wonder at the intellectual display, but to feel their hearts warmed by the real goodness shining through the shattered and imperfectly transparent vessel. Coleridge's letters may reveal some part of this charm, though some part, too, of the drawback. His long involved sentences; compared by himself to a Surinam toad with a brood of little toads escaping from his back, wind about in something between a spoken reverie and a sympathetic effusion of confidential confessions. When they touch the practical, _e.g._ publishers' accounts, they are apt to become hopelessly unintelligible. When they expound a vast scheme for a _magnum opus_, or one of the various _magna opera_ which at any time for thirty years were just ready to issue from the press, as soon as a few pages were transcribed, we perceive,