On the incorporation of the Royal Society of Literature by George IV. in 1825, Coleridge was selected as one of the ton Royal Associates, and as such received from that time 100 guineas a year out of the king's private purse. The annuity was withdrawn at the commencement of the reign of William IV.
In his latter years Coleridge was in the habit of holding weekly 'converiazioni ' at Mr. Oiliman's house in Highgate. Those who knew little else of Coleridge are familiar by report with his extra ordinary conversational powers. Of these the volumes of ' Table Talk,' which have been published give no adequate notion. His con versation was not in fragments, but was wont to continue without aid from other., in the way either of suggestion or of contradiction, for hours at a time. All things human and divine, joined with one another by subtlest links, entered into his discourse; which, though employed upon abetrusest subjects, was a spell whose fascination even the most dull or ignorant could not resist.
In June 1833 Coleridge was present at the meeting of the British Association of Science held that year in Cambridge. He died on the 25th of July 1834 in his sixty-second year.
Though not a man of strong character, Coleridge possessed many amiable qualities. He had all the social affections strongly developed. Though not always successful in attaining it, he had an earnest desire of truth. Thus he was by nature tolerant.. But in his later years disease seems to have engendered an asperity in judging of the motives of others which was by no means consonant with the tenor of his earlier publication& To the same cause must be assigned a querulousness of disposition, which is exhibited in almost all his prose writings.
As a writer, Coleridge is to bo viewed principally under two aspects: as a poet, and as the author of certain prose writings which, though miscellaneous in character, are chiefly employed upon metaphysical subjects.
As a poet, he was for a long time coupled, owing to the joint publi cation of the ' Lyrical Ballads' and other accidental circumstances, with Wordsworth. The silly outcry against the Lake-school has long died away, and the force of reaction has perhaps supplied a tendency as far as Coleridge is concerned, to run into th6 opposite extreme of admiration. But while we are ready to admit that Coleridge's poetry will not rank in the highest class, we regard it as in the very foremost rank of its own class. As specimens of finished poetic style. some of
his odes and later poems are almost perfect. In his translation of Schiller's ' Wallensteue he has displayed taste and judgment of a high order. His own tragedies, the 'Remorse' and 'Zapolya,' contain many passeaees excellent for the apt expression of just thoughts and tender feelings, but Coleridge never grappled closely enough with the stern realities of life to enable bins to Lecome a great dramatic writer. The Ancient Mariner' is a highly successful effort of fancy, in a region which had not before been tried; and the 'Christabel' contains passages which those who have once read cannot forget. In some of his smaller rooms again a happy thought, or it may be a happy conceit, is as happily developed. Still he is a poet of art rather than of nature. It many be added that his earlier poems are wanting in the freahuess and individuality which have always marked the earliest efforts of the greatest poets, which (to confine ourselves to modern instances) are seen in the poems of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Tennyson. His imagination seems to have been overlaid with reading and reflection. Bad he been a leas profound metaphysician ho might have been a greater poet. Had ho been aroused in early life from his morbid subjectiveness (as he would have termed it), and been driven to look with a keener interest on the world around him, to have regarded man rather than mankind, had his passions been fairly called into play and his senses stirred into activity, we might have had in Coleridge one of the most imaginative of what in the true sense of the term might be called our ' metaphysical poets,' and the grander flights as well as the subtleties of thought might have been developed in poetry of matchless melody and exquisite refinement. As it is, while wo have detached passages and short poems of the purest poetry, full of the moat delicate shades of refined thought, vivid gleams of fancy, and even occasional soarings into the highest regions of imagination, we have no great completed poem, and only some few short stanzas which at once delight and satisfy the mind.