HOW OPIUM STOLE A GREAT POET'S MUSE

Coleridge's most famous works were the product of one brief period of
inspiration

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who died 166 years ago this week, was a great
poet, philosopher and conversationalist. He had an omniscient mind, on the
order of Goethe and Da Vinci.

Unfortunately, Coleridge was addicted to opium, a constipating drug, which
was available over the counter in 18th-century England. Some days, all he
thought about was having a good bowel movement.

Born in 1772, the youngest of 10 children, Coleridge was a temperamental,
lonely and dreamy child. He was said to resemble his schoolmaster father,
who died suddenly when the poet was 9.

As a bright young student at Cambridge, Coleridge got involved with French
revolutionary politics, drank heavily and had an unrequited love affair. In
1793, to escape his debts, he fled the university and joined the army,
enlisting as Silas Tomkyn Comberbache. His imposture was discovered after
an officer noticed that a recruit had been scribbling graffiti on the wall
in Latin.

His family bought him out of the army. Coleridge returned to Cambridge but
didn't finish his degree.

In 1794, he met the poet Robert Southey. They talked about setting up a
utopian farm commune in the United States. Because they would need some
women for breeding, they married the Fricker sisters. Southey soon dropped
out of the scheme, leaving Coleridge and Sara Fricker stuck with each other.

Soon after, Coleridge met William and Dorothy Wordsworth. They became great
friends. In 1797-8, the poet wrote the three works for which he is best
remembered today: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan and Christabel.

Coleridge and Wordsworth collaborated on Lyrical Ballads (it contains
Ancient Mariner) which heralded the English Romantic movement.

Kubla Khan, a strange work that breaks off suddenly,came with Coleridge's
explanation that he had conceived it in an opium dream and, while he was
copying it down, a businessman knocked on the door, stayed for an hour, and
vaporized the unwritten lines from his mind. Modern scholars point out,
however, that the manuscript shows signs of revision and think Coleridge
just couldn't finish the work.

After 1804, it was almost all downhill. Although Coleridge's collected
writings would eventually run to 13 volumes, he was seen by various
contemporaries as a failed talent, a garrulous wastrel, "an archangel
somewhat damaged" or a great child who never grew up. (Coleridge saw
himself as an orphan because his father had died early and his mother
thought less of him than she did her other children.)

The poet wrestled with opium for the rest of his life. The drug and its
derivatives were the ubiquitous medicine of the time, yet addicts were
considered to be moral weaklings. Coleridge himself held this view. In his
journals, he lacerated himself mercilessly, prompted by such things as
having to ask perfect strangers to administer enemas.

However, throughout his life, the self-described "literary cormorant"
attracted admirers (such as Thomas Wedgewood and Lord Byron) who were
delighted by his encyclopedic intellect and wide-ranging imagination. They
paid his bills and helped him support his family.

The great scientist Sir Humphrey Davy invited the poet to give a lecture.
Coleridge showed up stoned, lost his notes and rambled on and on.

For almost a year, Coleridge published a periodical, which contained his
essays on topics such as: "Why is true love like a tree?" He once pondered
how to turn the story of Adam and Eve into a musical.

For the last 18 years of his life, he was a paying guest of Dr. James
Gillman of London, who ran a pioneering program for the control of drug
addiction.

The poet lived long enough for younger writers to visit and revere
him. Lewis Carroll was among them; he later wrote, in Alice in Wonderland,
about a proud, eccentric old hookah-smoking caterpillar.

Coleridge died on July 25, 1834, aged 61. Almost to the end, he was talking.