Note 27 — Time. (continued 2)

Coleridge, however, was a better preacher than practitioner of what he so urgently recommends. When in his younger days he was offered a share in the London Journal, by which he could have made two thousand pounds a year, provided he would devote his time seriously to the interest of the work, he declined,—making the reply, so often praised for its disinterestedness, “I will not give up the country, and the lazy reading of old folios, for two thousand times two thousand pounds; in short, beyond three hundred and fifty pounds a year, I consider money a real evil.” The “lazy reading of old folios” led to laziness, the indolent gratification of mind and sense. Degenerating into an opium-eater, and a mere purposeless theoriser, Coleridge wasted time, talents, and health; came to depend, in old age, on the charity of others; and died at last, with every one regretting, even his friends, that he had done nothing worthy of his genius. The world is full of men having Coleridge’s faults, without Coleridge’s abilities; men who cannot, or will not, see beyond the present; who are too lazy to work for more than a temporary subsistence, and who squander, in pleasure or idleness, energy and health, which ought to lay up a capital for old age.