Among the acquaintances made by Coleridge after his retirement to Mr.
Gillman's was one destined to be of some importance to the history of
his philosophical work. It was that of a gentleman whose name has
already been mentioned in this chapter, Mr. Joseph Henry Green,
afterwards a distinguished surgeon and Fellow of the Royal Society, who
in his early years had developed a strong taste for metaphysical
speculation, going even so far as to devote one of his hard-earned
periods of professional holiday to a visit to Germany for the sake of
studying philosophy in that home of abstract thought. To him Coleridge
was introduced by his old Roman acquaintance, Ludwig Tieck, on one of
the latter's visits to England, and he became, as the extract above
quoted from Coleridge's correspondence shows, his enthusiastic disciple
and indefatigable fellow-worker. In the pursuit of their common studies
and in those weekly reunions of admiring friends which Coleridge, while
his health permitted it, was in the habit of holding, we may believe
that a considerable portion of these closing years of his life was
passed under happier conditions than he had been long accustomed to.
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