And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were.

William Hazlitt a Unitarian minister's son was in the congregation having walked from Wem in order to hear him. These events cut cruelly into the hearts of old men: but the good Dr. To Coleridge the "cinque spotted spider" making its way upstream "by fits and starts" [Biographia Literaria] is not merely a comment on the intermittent nature of creativity imagination or spiritual progress but the journey and destination of his life.

Throughout his adult life Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated by some that he suffered from bipolar disorder a condition not identified during his lifetime. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. He was treated for these concerns with laudanum which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.