newly-discovered panacea for all complaints, and carried a little
about with me not to lose any opportunity of administering 'instant
relief and speedy cure' to all complainers, stranger or friend, gentle
or simple. Alas! it is with a bitter smile, a laugh of gall and
bitterness, that I recall this period of unsuspecting delusion, and
how I first became aware of the Maelstrom, the fatal whirlpool to
which I was drawing, just when the current was beyond my strength to
stem. The state of my mind is truly portrayed in the following
effusion, for God knows! that from that time I was the victim of pain
and terror, nor had I at any time taken the flattering poison as a
stimulus or for any craving after pleasurable sensation."

The "effusion" in question has parted company with the autobiographical
note, and the author of the prefatory memoir above quoted conjectures
it to have been a little poem entitled the _Visionary Hope_; but I am
myself of opinion, after a careful study of both pieces, that it is
more probably the _Pains of Sleep_, which moreover is known to
have been written in 1803. But whichever it be, its date is fixed in
that year by the statement in the autobiographical note of 1826 that
the stanzas referred to in it were written "twenty-three years ago."
Thus, then, we have the two facts established, that the opium-taking
habit had its origin in a bodily ailment, and that at some time in
1803 that habit had become confirmed. The disastrous experiment in
amateur therapeutics, which was the means of implanting it, could not
have taken place, according to the autobiographical note, until at
least six months after Coleridge's arrival at Keswick, and perhaps not
for some months later yet. At any rate, it seems tolerably certain
that it was not till the spring of 1801, when the climate of the
Lake country first began to tell unfavourably on his health, that
the "Kendal Black Drop" was taken. Possibly it may have been about