His own fair countenance, his kingly forehead, His tender smiles, love's day-dawn on his lips-- The sense, the spirit, and the light divine, At the same moment in his steadfast eye Were virtue's native crest, the innocent soul's Unconscious meek self-heraldry--to man Genial, and pleasant to his guardian angel! He suffered, nor complained; though oft with tears He mourned the oppression of his helpless brethren; Yea with a deeper and yet holier grief Mourned for th' oppressor; but this In sabbath hours--a solemn grief, Most like a cloud at sunset, Was but the veil of purest meditation, Pierced through and saturate with the intellectual rays It softened. 'Literary Remains', vol. i. 277. These were characteristic beauties, that shone forth in Coleridge, and were deeply felt by all who were attached to him. With regard to the charge made by Mr. De Quincey, of Coleridge's so borrowing the property of other writers as to be guilty of 'petty larceny'; with equal justice might we accuse the bee which flies from flower to flower in quest of food, and which, by means of the instinct bestowed upon it by the all-wise Creator, extracts its nourishment from the field and the garden, but 'digests' and 'elaborates' it by its own 'native' powers. Coleridge 'began' the use of opium from bodily pain (rheumatism), and for the same reason 'continued' it, till he had acquired a habit too difficult under his own management to control. To him it was the thorn in the flesh, which will be seen in the following notes "I have never loved evil for its own sake: no! nor ever sought pleasure for its own sake, but only as the means of escaping from pains that coiled around my mental powers, as a serpent around the body and wings of an eagle! My sole sensuality was 'not' to be in pain." 'Note from Pocket Book, "The History of my own mind for my own improvement," Dec. 23, 1804.'