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The time moved on so swiftly that Mr. Gillman found, on looking at his watch, that an hour and a half had passed away, and, therefore, he continues "waiting only a desirable moment to use his own playful words I prepared myself to punctuate his oration.
It was agreed that, should he appear to fail, Gillman was to "clasp his ancle; but that he was to continue for an hour if the countenances of his auditors indicated satisfaction." Coleridge then began his address in these words: "The lecture I am about to give this evening is purely extempore.
But he has no right, by Magna Charta or by Parva Charta, to slander decent men, like ourselves and our friend the author of the Opium Confessions. Here it is that our complaint arises against Mr. Gillman. If he has taken to opium-eating, can we help that? If his face shines, must our faces be blackened?
Gillman is this: `The incident indeed was singular. Going down the Strand, in one of his day-dreams, fancying himself swimming across the Hellespont, thrusting his hands before him as in the act of swimming, his hand came in contact with a gentleman's pocket.
Gillman records that Canning, calling on business at the editor's, inquired, as others had done, who was the reporter of the speech for the Morning Post, and, on being told, remarked drily that the report "did more credit to his head than to his memory." On the whole one can well understand Mr.
S. T. Coleridge visited Highgate by way of being converted from the heresy of opium; and the issue is that, in two months' time, various grave men, amongst whom our friend Gillman marches first in great pomp, are found to have faces shining and glorious as that of AEsculapius; a fact of which we have already explained the secret meaning.
From his twenty-ninth year we find Coleridge a wreck in mind and body; shuffling, sick, disheartened, erratic, uncertain, yet occasionally brilliant. He tramped the streets, feared and shunned. His money was gone, his power of concentration had vanished. In search of bread he met an old-time friend, Doctor Gillman. "Gillman," said Coleridge, "I am sick and helpless look at me!"
Here we design only to make a coasting voyage of survey round the headlands and most conspicuous seamarks of our subject, as they are brought forward by Mr. Gillman, or collaterally suggested by our own reflections; and especially we wish to say a word or two on Coleridge as an opium-eater.
He spent the last eighteen years of his life in Highgate with his kind friend, Dr. Gillman, who succeeded in regulating and decreasing the amount of opium which Coleridge took. He died there in 1834 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Westminster Abbey does not have the honor of the grave of a single one of the great poets of this romantic age. Poetry.
From these indiscretions and their consequences "may be dated," Mr. Gillman thinks, "all his bodily sufferings in future life." That he was a martyr to periodical attacks of rheumatism for some years before his migration to Keswick is a conclusion resting upon something more than conjecture.
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