generosity of friends; later, in part, by public pensions. It was
apparently about 1800, to alleviate mental distress and great physical
suffering from neuralgia, that he began the excessive use of opium
(laudanum) which for many years had a large share in paralyzing his will.
For a year, in 1804-5, he displayed decided diplomatic talent as secretary
to the Governor of Malta. At several different times, also, he gave
courses, of lectures on Shakspere and Milton; as a speaker he was always
eloquent; and the fragmentary notes of the lectures which have been
preserved rank very high in Shaksperean criticism. His main interest,
however, was now in philosophy; perhaps no Englishman has ever had a more
profoundly philosophical mind; and through scattered writings and through
his stimulating though prolix talks to friends and disciples he performed a
very great service to English thought by introducing the viewpoint and
ideas of the German transcendentalists, such as Kant, Schelling, and
Fichte. During his last eighteen years he lived mostly in sad acceptance of
defeat, though still much honored, in the house of a London physician. He
died in 1834.

As a poet Coleridge's first great distinction is that which we have already
pointed out, namely that he gives wonderfully subtile and appealing
expression to the Romantic sense for the strange and the supernatural, and
indeed for all that the word 'Romance' connotes at the present day. He
accomplishes this result partly through his power of suggesting the real
unity of the inner and outer worlds, partly through his skill, resting in a
large degree on vivid impressionistic description, in making strange scenes
appear actual, in securing from the reader what he himself called 'that
willing suspension of disbelief which constitutes poetic faith.' Almost
every one has felt the weird charm of 'The Ancient Mariner,' where all the
unearthly story centers about a moral and religious idea, and where we are
dazzled by a constant succession of such pictures as these: