Note 189 — Chapter V
Reading edition
No writer has ever dwelt more on this truth than Coleridge, and no writer ever had a stronger reason for dwelling upon it. Perhaps the ordinary public has seldom been more unjust than in its estimate of Coleridge's addiction to opium. The occasion of his first use of it was a venial error, his servitude was heavy, and the account of his sufferings and struggles most deeply affecting. Then, his final victory (respecting which so little is generally said) was a very noble moral achievement.