' 'There is death in that hand,'
I said to Green when Keats was gone; yet this was, I believe, before
the consumption showed itself distinctly."
His own health, however, had been steadily declining in these latter
years, and the German tour with the Wordsworths must, I should imagine,
have been the last expedition involving any considerable exercise of
the physical powers which he was able to take. Within a year or so
afterwards his condition seems to have grown sensibly worse. In
November 1831 he writes that for eighteen months past his life had been
"one chain of severe sicknesses, brief and imperfect convalescences,
and capricious relapses." Henceforth he was almost entirely confined to
the sick-room. His faculties, however, still remained clear and
unclouded. The entries in the _Table Talk_ do not materially
dimmish in frequency. Their tone of colloquy undergoes no perceptible
variation; they continue to be as stimulating and delightful reading as
ever. Not till 11th July 1834 do we find any change; but here at last
we meet the shadow, deemed longer than it was in reality, of the
approaching end. "I am dying," said Coleridge, "but without expectation
of a speedy release.
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