ABSTRACT
Thomas de Quincey did meet Coleridge until 1807 and saw little of him after 1810 when Coleridge left the Lake District. The subsequent numbers are less preoccupied with creating a stir and shrewdly describe Coleridge’s time in Malta, his departure from the Lake District in 1810 and the terms on which he settled with the Gillmans. Coleridge’s family spent a great deal of effort rebutting De Quincey’s accusations of plagiarism and bemoaning his descent into gossip and scandal – what Coleridge’s daughter Sara referred to as ‘personalities’. The two men also shared an addiction to opium, though their different attitudes to their ‘enslavement’ drove them further and further apart.
