How much Mary's companionship meant to him may be gathered from an
open-hearted letter which he had written in 1805 to Dorothy
Wordsworth--and it meant no less in the years that followed:

I have every reason to suppose that this illness, like all
her former ones, will be but temporary; but I cannot always
feel so. Meantime she is dead to me and I miss a prop. All
my strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her
co-operation. I dare not think, lest I should think wrong;
so used am I to look up to her in the least and the biggest
perplexity. To say all that I know of her would be more than
I think anybody could believe, or even understand; and when
I hope to have her well again with me, it would be sinning
against her feelings to go about to praise her; for I can
conceal nothing that I do from her. She is older and wiser
and better than I, and all my wretched imperfections I cover
to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would
share life and death, heaven and hell, with me. She lives
but for me.

On 25th July, 1834, Coleridge died, and the blow was a terrible one to
Charles Lamb; "we die many deaths before we die," he had said of the
departure of friends; and the passing of Coleridge may be said to have
come as a fatal shock, for he survived him but five months, and during
that time was heard to say again and again, as though the fact were
too stupendous to believe, not to be realized, "Coleridge is dead!"
Taking his usual morning walk in the fourth week of December, Lamb
stumbled and fell, bruising his face; the bruise did not seem serious,
but erysipelas supervened, and on 27th December, 1834, the beloved
friend, the noble man, passed into the great silence. He was buried in