Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;
And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had reared, and all,
Commune with thee had opened out--but flowers
Strewn on my corse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!"

A dismal and despairing strain indeed, but the situation unhappily was
not less desperate. We are, in fact, entering upon that period of
Coleridge's life--a period, roughly speaking, of about ten years--which
no admirer of his genius, no lover of English letters, no one, it might
even be said, who wishes to think well of human nature, can ever
contemplate without pain. His history from the day of his landing in
England in August 1806 till the day when he entered Mr. Gillman's house
in 1816 is one long and miserable story of self-indulgence and self-
reproach, of lost opportunities, of neglected duties, of unfinished
undertakings. His movements and his occupation for the first year after
his return are not now traceable with exactitude, but his time was
apparently spent partly in London and partly at Grasmere and Keswick.
When in London, Mr. Stuart, who had now become proprietor of the
_Courier_, allowed him to occupy rooms at the office of that
newspaper to save him expense; and Coleridge, though his regular
connection with the _Courier_ did not begin till some years
afterwards, may possibly have repaid the accommodation by occasional
contributions or by assistance to its editor in some other form. It
seems certain, at any rate, that if he was earning no income in this
way he was earning none at all. His friend and patron, Mr. Thomas
Wedgwood, had died while he was in Malta; but the full pension of L150
per annum bestowed upon him by the two brothers jointly continued to be