Coleridge, too, was nearing his end.
"He and my beloved sister," writes Wordsworth, in 1832, "are the two
beings to whom my intellect is most indebted, and they are now
proceeding, as it were, _pari passu_, along the path of sickness, I
will not say towards the grave, but I trust towards a blessed
immortality."
In July, 1834, "every mortal power of Coleridge was frozen at its
marvellous source," And although the early intimacy had scarcely
been maintained,--though the "comfortless and hidden well" had, for
a time at least, replaced the "living murmuring fount of love" which
used to spring beside Wordsworth's door,--yet the loss was one which
the surviving poet deeply felt. Coleridge was the only contemporary
man of letters with whom Wordsworth's connexion had been really close;
and when Wordsworth is spoken of as one of a group of poets
exemplifying in various ways the influence of the Revolution, it is
not always remembered how very little he had to do with the other
famous men of his time. Scott and Southey were valued friends, but
he thought little of Scott's poetry, and less of Southey's. Byron
and Shelley he seems scarcely to have read; and he failed altogether
to appreciate Keats.
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