Next followed six years of struggle to live as journalist and
lecturer in London and elsewhere, while the habit of taking opium
grew year by year, and at last advanced from two quarts of laudanum a
week to a pint a day. Coleridge put himself under voluntary
restraint for a time with a Mr. Morgan at Calne. Finally he placed
himself, in April, 1816--the year of the publication of "Christabel"-
-with a surgeon at Highgate, Mr. Gillman, under whose friendly care
he was restored to himself, and in whose house he died on the 25th of
July, 1834. It was during this calm autumn of his life that
Coleridge, turning wholly to the higher speculations on philosophy
and religion upon which his mind was chiefly fixed, a revert to the
Church, and often actively antagonist to the opinions he had held for
a few years, wrote, his "Lay Sermons," and his "Biographia
Literaria," and arranged also a volume of Essays of the Friend. He
lectured on Shakespeare, wrote "Aids to Reflection," and showed how
his doubts were set at rest in these "Confessions of an Inquiring
Spirit," which were first published in 1840, after their writer's
death.
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