tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realised. The soul hath not her generous aspirings implanted in her in vain."
Manning brought with him on his return much material for compiling a Chinese Dictionary; which purpose, however, remained unfulfilled. He left no other memorial of himself than his friendship with Lamb. "You see but his husk or shrine. He discloses not, save to select worshippers, and will leave the world without anyone hardly but me knowing how stupendous a creature he is," said Lamb of him. Henceforth their intercourse was chiefly personal.
Coleridge also, who of late had been almost as much lost to his friends as if he too were in Tartary or Thibet, though now and then "like a re-appearing star" standing up before them when least expected, was at the beginning of April 1816 once more in London, endeavouring to get his tragedy of Remorse accepted at Covent Garden. "Nature, who conducts every creature by instinct to its best end, has skilfully directed C. to take up his abode at a chemist's laboratory in Norfolk Street," writes Lamb to Wordsworth. "She might as well as have sent a Helluo Liborum for cure to the Vatican. He has done pretty well as yet. Tell Miss Hutchinson my sister is every day wishing to be quietly sitting down to answer her very kind letter, but while C. stays she can hardly find a quiet time; God bless him!"
But Coleridge was more in earnest than Lamb supposed in his determination to break through his thraldom to opium. Either way, he himself believed that death was imminent: to go on was deadly, and a physician of eminence had told him that to abstain
