Chapter VI: Part 6

"Though my right hand is so much swollen that I can scarcely keep my pen steady between my thumb and finger, yet my stomach is easy and my breathing comfortable, and I am eager to hope all good things of my health. That gained, I have a cheering and I trust prideless confidence that I shall make an active and perseverant use of the faculties and requirements that have been entrusted to my keeping, and a fair trial of their height, depth, and width."

A few days later he writes to a friend who was suffering like himself: "Have you ever thought of trying large doses of opium, a hot climate, keeping your body open by grapes, and the fruits of the climate? Is it possible that by drinking freely you might at last produce the gout, and that a violent pain and inflammation in the extremities might produce new trains of motion and feeling in your stomach, and the organs connected with the stomach, known and unknown? I know by a little what your sufferings are, and that to shut the eyes and stop up the ears is to give one's self up to storm and darkness, and the lurid forms and horrors of a dream."

In reference to these statements regarding Coleridge's physical condition, Cottle remarks: "I can testify that, during the four or five years in which Mr. C. resided in or near Bristol, no young man could enjoy more robust health. Dr. Carlyon also verbally stated that Mr. C., both at Cambridge and at Gottingen, 'possessed sound health.' From these premises the conclusion is fair that Mr. Coleridge's unhappy use of narcotics, which commenced thus early, was the true cause of all his maladies, his languor, his acute and chronic pains, his indigestion, his swellings, the disturbances of his general corporeal system, his sleepless nights, and his terrific dreams."

Scattered through Dr. Gilman's "Life of Coleridge" are indications of this kind:

"In 1804, his rheumatic sufferings increasing, he determined on a change of climate, and went in May to Malta. He seemed at this time, in addition to his rheumatism, to have been oppressed in his breathing, which oppression crept on him, imperceptibly to himself, without suspicion of its cause. Yet so obvious was it that it was noticed by others 'as laborious;' and continuing to increase, though with little apparent advancement, at length terminated in death.

"At first he remarked that he was relieved by the climate of Malta, but afterward speaks of his limbs 'as lifeless tools,' and of the violent pain in his bowels, which neither opium, ether, nor peppermint, separately or combined, could relieve.

"Coleridge _began_ the use of opium from bodily pain (rheumatism), and for the same reason _continued_ it, till he had acquired a habit too difficult uder his own management to control. To him it was the thorn in the flesh, which will be seen in the following note found in his pocket-book: 'I have never loved evil for its own sake; no! nor ever sought pleasure for its own sake, but only as the means of escaping from pains that coiled around my mental powers as a serpent around the body and wings of an eagle! My sole sensuality was _not_ to be in pain.'"

Little is known of Coleridge's opium habits during his residence at Malta. On his return to England in 1807, he wrote to Mr. Cottle: "On my return to Bristol, whenever that may be, I will certainly give you the right hand of old fellowship; but, alas! you will find me the wretched wreck of what you knew me, rolling, rudderless. My health is extremely bad. Pain I have enough of, but that is indeed to me a mere trifle, but the almost unceasing, overpowering sensations of wretchedness--achings in my limbs, with an indescribable restlessness that makes action to any available purpose almost impossible--and worst of all the sense of blighted utility, regrets, not remorseless. But enough; yea, more than enough, if these things produce or deepen the conviction of the utter powerlessness of ourselves, and that we either perish or find aid from something that passes understanding."

A period of seven years here intervenes, during which no light is thrown upon the opium life of Coleridge. The following extract from a letter written by him during this period, sufficiently indicates, however, both his consciousness of his great powers and his remorse for their imperfect use:

"As to the letter you propose to write to a man who is unworthy even of a rebuke from you, I might most unfeignedly object to some parts of it from a pang of conscience forbidding me to allow, even from a dear friend, words of admiration which are inapplicable in exact proportion to the power given to me of having deserved them if I had done my duty.

"It is not of comparative utility I speak; for as to what has been actually done, and in relation to useful effects produced--whether on the minds of individuals or of the public--I dare boldly stand forward, and (let every man have his own, and that be counted mine which but for and through me would not have existed) will challenge the proudest of my literary contemporaries to compare proofs with me of usefulness in the excitement of reflection, and the diffusion of original or forgotten yet necessary and important truths and knowledge; and this is not the less true because I have suffered others to reap all the advantages. But, O dear friend, this consciousness, raised by insult of enemies and alienated friends, stands me in little stead to my own soul--in how little, then, before the all-righteous Judge! who, requiring back the talents he had entrusted, will, if the mercies of Christ do not intervene, not demand of me what I have done, but why I did not do more; why, with powers above so many, I had sunk in many things below most!"

In 1814 he returned to Bristol, and here the painful narrative of Mr. Cottle comes in: "Is it expedient, is it lawful, to give publicity to Mr. Coleridge's practice of inordinately taking opium; which to a certain extent, at one part of his life, inflicted on a heart naturally cheerful the stings of conscience, and sometimes almost the horrors of despair?

"In the year 1814, all this, I am afflicted to say, applied to Mr. Coleridge. Once Mr. Coleridge expressed to me, with indescribable emotion, the joy he should feel if he could collect around him all who were 'beginning to tamper with the lulling but fatal draught,' so that he might proclaim as with a trumpet, 'the worse than death that opium entailed.'

"When it is considered, also, how many men of high mental endowments have shrouded their lustre by a passion for this stimulus, would it not be a criminal concession to unauthorized feelings to allow so impressive an exhibition of this subtle species of intemperance to escape from public notice? In the exhibition here made, the inexperienced in future may learn a memorable lesson, and be taught to shrink from opium as they would from a scorpion, which, before it destroys, invariably expels peace from the mind, and excites the worst species of conflict--that of setting a man at war with himself.

"I had often spoken to Hannah More of S. T. Coleridge, and proceeded with him one morning to Barley Wood, her residence, eleven miles from Bristol. The interview was mutually agreeable, nor was there any lack of conversation; but I was struck with something singular in Mr. Coleridge's eye. I expressed to a friend, the next day, my concern at having beheld him during his visit to Hannah More so extremely paralytic, his hands shaking to an alarming degree, so that he could not take a glass of wine without spilling it, though one hand supported the other! 'That,' said he, 'arises from the immoderate quantity of OPIUM he takes.'

"It is remarkable that this was the first time the melancholy fact of Mr. Coleridge's excessive indulgence in opium had come to my knowledge. It astonished and afflicted me. Now the cause of his ailments became manifest. On this subject Mr. C. may have been communicative to others, but to me he was silent.

"I ruminated long upon this subject with indescribable sorrow; and having ascertained from others not only the existence of the evil but its extent, I determined to write to Mr. Coleridge. I addressed him the following letter, under the full impression that it was a case of 'life and death,' and that if some strong effort were not made to arouse him from his insensibility, speedy destruction must inevitably follow.

"'BRISTOL, April 25,1814.

"'DEAR COLERIDGE:--I am conscious of being influenced by the purest motives in addressing to you the following letter. Permit me to remind you that I am the oldest friend you have in Bristol, that I was such when my friendship was of more consequence to you than it is at present, and that at that time you were neither insensible of my kindnesses nor backward to acknowledge them. I bring these things to your remembrance to impress on your mind that it is still a _friend_ who is writing to you; one who ever has been such, and who is now going to give you the most decisive evidence of his sincerity.

"'When I think of Coleridge I wish to recall the image of him such as he appeared in past years; now, how has the baneful use of opium thrown a dark cloud over you and your prospects! I would not say any thing needlessly harsh or unkind, but I must be _faithful_. It is the irresistible voice of conscience. Others may still flatter you, and hang upon your words, but I have another, though a less gracious duty to perform. I see a brother sinning a sin unto death, and shall I not warn him? I see him perhaps on the borders of eternity; in effect, despising his Maker's law, and yet indifferent to his perilous state!

"'In recalling what the expectations concerning you once were, and the excellency with which seven years ago you wrote and spoke on religious truth, my heart bleeds to see how you are now fallen, and thus to notice how many exhilarating hopes are almost blasted by your present habits. This is said, not to wound, but to arouse you to reflection.

"'I know full well the evidences of the pernicious drug! You can not be unconscious of the effects, though you may wish to forget the cause. All around you behold the wild eye, the sallow countenance, the tottering step, the trembling hand, the disordered frame! and yet will you not be awakened to a sense of your danger, and I must add, your guilt? Is it a small thing, that one of the finest of human understandings should be lost? That your talents should be buried? That most of the influences to be derived from your present example should be in direct opposition to right and virtue? It is true you still talk of religion, and profess the warmest admiration of the Church and her doctrines, in which it would not be lawful to doubt your sincerity; but can you be unaware that by your unguarded and inconsistent conduct you are furnishing arguments to the infidel; giving occasion for the enemy to blaspheme; and (among those who imperfectly know you) throwing suspicion over your religious profession? Is not the great test in some measure against you, "By their fruits ye shall know them?" Are there never any calm moments, when you impartially judge of your own actions by their consequences?

"'Not to reflect on you-not to give you a moment's _needless_ pain, but in the spirit of friendship, suffer me to bring to your recollection some of the sad effects of your undeniable intemperance.

"'I know you have a correct love of honest independence, without which there can be no true nobility of mind; and yet for opium you will sell this treasure, and expose yourself to the liability of arrest by some "dirty fellow" to whom you choose to be indebted for "ten pounds!" You had, and still have, an acute sense of moral right and wrong, but is not the feeling sometimes overpowered by self-indulgence? Permit me to remind you that you are not more suffering in your mind than you are in your body, while you are squandering largely your money in the purchase of opium, which, in the strictest equity, should receive a _different direction_.

"I will not again refer to the mournful effects produced on your own health from this indulgence in opium, by which you have undermined your strong constitution; but I must notice the injurious consequences which this passion for the narcotic drug has on your literary efforts. What you have already done, excellent as it is, is considered by your friends and the world as the bloom, the mere promise of the harvest. Will you suffer the fatal draught, which is ever accompanied by sloth, to rob you of your fame, and, what to you is a higher motive, of your power of doing good; of giving fragrance to your memory, among the worthies of future years, when you are numbered with the dead?

"'And now let me conjure you, alike by the voice of friendship and the duty you owe yourself and family; above all, by the reverence you feel for the cause of Christianity; by the fear of God and the awfulness of eternity, to renounce from this moment opium and spirits as your bane! Frustrate not the great end of your existence. Exert the ample abilities which God has given you, as a faithful steward. So will you secure your rightful pre-eminence among the sons of genius; recover your cheerfulness, your health--I trust it is not too late--become reconciled to yourself; and, through the merits of that Saviour in whom you profess to trust, obtain at last the approbation of your Maker, My dear Coleridge, be wise before it be too late. I do hope to see you a renovated man; and that you will still burst your inglorious fetters and justify the best hopes of your friends.

"'Excuse the freedom with which I write. If at the first moment it should offend, on reflection you will approve at least of the motive, and perhaps, in a better state of mind, thank and bless me. If all the good which I have prayed for should not be effected by this letter, I have at least dis charged an imperious sense of duty. I wish my manner were less exceptionable, as I do that the advice through the blessing of the Almighty might prove effectual. The tear which bedims my eye is an evidence of the sincerity with which I subscribe myself your affectionate friend,

"'JOSEPH CUTTLE.'

"The following is Mr. Coleridge's reply:

"'April 26,1814.

"'You have poured oil in the raw and festering wound of an old friend's conscience Cottle, but it is _oil of vitriol!_ I but barely glanced at the middle of the first page of your letter, and have seen no more of it-not from resentment, God forbid! but from the state of my bodily and mental sufferings, that scarcely permitted human fortitude to let in a new visitor of affliction.

"'The object of my present reply is to state the case just as it is--first, that for ten years the anguish of my spirit has been indescribable, the sense of my danger staring, but the consciousness of my GUILT worse--far worse than all! I have prayed, with drops of agony on my brow; trembling not only before the justice of my Maker, but even before the mercy of my Redeemer. "I gave thee so many talents, what hast thou done with them?" Secondly, overwhelmed as I am with a sense of my direful infirmity, I have never attempted to disguise or conceal the cause. On the contrary, not only to friends have I stated the whole case with tears and the very bitterness of shame, but in two instances I have warned young men--mere acquaintances, who had spoken of having taken laudanum--of the direful consequences, by an awful exposition of its tremendous effects on myself.

"'Thirdly, though before God I can not lift up my eyelids, and only do not despair of his mercy because to despair would be adding crime to crime, yet to my fellow-men I may say that I was seduced into the ACCURSED habit ignorantly. I had been almost bedridden for many months with swellings in my knees. In a medical journal I unhappily met with an account of a cure performed in a similar case, or what appeared to me so, by rubbing in of laudanum, at the same time taking a given dose internally. It acted like a charm, like a miracle! I recovered the use of my limbs, of my appetite, of my spirits, and this continued for near a fortnight. At length the unusual stimulus subsided, the complaint returned--the supposed remedy was recurred to--but I can not go through the dreary history.

"'Suffice it to say that effects were produced which acted on me by terror and cowardice of pain and sudden death, not (so help me God!) by any temptation of pleasure, or expectation or desire of exciting pleasurable senstations. On the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her sister will bear witness so far as to say that the longer I abstained the higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyments, till the moment, the direful moment arrived when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such falling abroad as it were of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness and incipient bewilderment, that in the last of my several attempts to abandon the dire poison I exclaimed in agony, which I now repeat in seriousness and solemnity, "I am too poor to hazard this!" Had I but a few hundred pounds--but £200--half to send to Mrs. Coleridge, and half to place myself in a private mad-house, where I could procure nothing but what a physician thought proper, and where a medical attendant could be constantly with me for two or three months (in less than that time life or death would be determined), then there might be hope. Now there is none!! O God! how willingly would I place myself under Dr. Fox in his establishment; for my case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement, an utter impotence of the volition and not of the intellectual faculties. You bid me rouse myself. Go bid a man paralytic in both arms to rub them briskly together and that will cure him. "Alas!" he would reply, "that I can not move my arms is my complaint and my mysery." May God bless you, and your affectionate but most afflicted

S. T. COLERIDGE.'

"On receiving this full and mournful disclosure I felt the deepest compassion for Mr. C.'s state, and sent him a letter to which I received the following reply:

"'O, dear friend! I have too much to be forgiven to feel any difficulty in forgiving the cruellest enemy that ever trampled on me: and you I have only to _thank!_ You have no conception of the dreadful hell of my mind, and conscience, and body. You bid me pray. Oh, I do pray inwardly to be able to pray; but indeed to pray, to pray with a faith to which a blessing is promised, this is the reward of faith, this is the gift of God to the elect. Oh! if to feel how infinitely worthless I am, how poor a wretch, with just free-will enough to be deserving of wrath and of my own contempt, and of none to merit a moment's peace, can make a part of a Christian's creed--so far I am a Christian,

S. T. C.'

"'April 26, 1814.

"At this time Mr. Coleridge was indeed in a pitiable condition. His passion for opium had so completely subdued his _will_ that he seemed carried away, without resistance, by an overwhelming flood. The impression was fixed on his mind that he should inevitably die unless he were placed under _constraint_, and that constraint he thought could be alone effected in an asylum. Dr. Fox, who presided over an establishment of this description in the neighborhood of Bristol, appeared to Mr. C. the individual to whose subjection he would most like to submit. This idea still impressing his imagination, he addressed to me the following letter:

"'DEAR COTTLE:--I have resolved to place myself in any situation in which I can remain for a month or two as a child, wholly in the power of others. But, alas! I have no money. Will you invite Mr. Hood, a most dear and affectionate friend to worthless me, and Mr. Le Breton, my old school-fellow and likewise a most affectionate friend, and Mr. Wade, who will return in a few days; desire them to call on you, any evening after seven o'clock that they can make convenient, and consult with them whether any thing of this kind can be done. Do you know Dr. Fox? Affectionately,

"'S. T. C.'

"I _did_ know the late Dr. Fox, who was an opulent and liberal-minded man, and if I had applied to him, or any friend had so done, I can not doubt but that he would instantly have received Mr. Coleridge gratuitously; but nothing could have induced me to make the application but that extreme case which did not then appear fully to exist.

"The years 1814 and 1815 were the darkest periods in Mr. Coleridge's life. However painful the detail, it is presumed that the reader would desire a knowledge of the undisguised truth. This can not be obtained without introducing the following letters of Mr. Southey, received from him after having sent him copies of the letters which passed between Mr. Coleridge and myself.

"'KESWICK, April, 1814.

"'MY DEAR COTTLE:--You may imagine with what feelings I have read your correspondence with Coleridge. Shocking as his letters are, perhaps the most mournful thing they discover is, that while acknowledging the guilt of the habit he imputes it still to morbid bodily causes, whereas after every possible allowance is made for these, every person who has witnessed his habits knows that for the greater, infinitely the greater part, inclination and indulgence are its motives.

"'It seems dreadful to say this, with his expressions before me, but it is so, and I know it to be so from my own observation, and that of all with whom he has lived. The Morgans, with great difficulty and perseverance, _did_ break him of the habit at a time when his ordinary consumption of laudanum was from _two quarts a week to a pint a day!_ He suffered dreadfully during the first abstinence, so much so as to say it was better for him to die than to endure his present feelings. Mrs. Morgan resolutely replied, it was indeed better that he should die than that he should continue to live as he had been living. It angered him at the time, but the effort was persevered in.

"'To what, then, was the relapse owing? I believe to this cause--that no use was made of renewed health and spirits; that time passed on in idleness, till the lapse of time brought with it a sense of neglected duties, and then relief was again sought for _a self-accusing mind_ in bodily feelings, which, when the stimulus ceased to act, added only to the load of self-accusation. This, Cottle, is an insanity which none but the soul's Physician can cure. Unquestionably, restraint would do as much for him as it did when the Morgans tried it, but I do not see the slightest reason for believing it would be more permanent. This, too, I ought to say, that all the medical men to whom Coleridge has made his confession have uniformly ascribed the evil not to bodily disease but indulgence. The restraint which alone could effectually cure is that which no person can impose upon him. Could he be compelled to a certain quantity of labor every day for his family, the pleasure of having done it would make his heart glad, and the sane mind would make the body whole.

"'His great object should be to get out a play, and appropriate the whole produce to the support of his son Hartley at college. Three months' pleasurable exertion would effect this. Of some such fit of industry I by no means despair; of any thing more than fits I am afraid I do. But this of course I shall never say to him. From me he shall never hear aught but cheerful encouragement and the language of hope.'

"After anxious consideration I thought the only effectual way of benefiting Mr. Coleridge would be to renew the project of an annuity, by raising for him among his friends one hundred, or, if possible, one hundred and fifty pounds a year, purposing through a committee of three to pay for his comfortable board and all necessaries, but not of giving him the disposition of any part till it was hoped the correction of his bad habits and the establishment of his better principles might qualify him for receiving it for his own distribution. It was difficult to believe that his subjection to _opium_ could much longer resist the stings of his own conscience and the solicitations of his friends, as well as the pecuniary destitution to which his _opium habits_ had reduced him. The proposed object was named to Mr. C., who reluctantly gave his consent.

"I now drew up a letter, intending to send a copy to all Mr. Coleridge's old and steady friends (several of whom approved of the design), but before any commencement was made I transmitted a copy of my proposed letter to Mr. Southey to obtain his sanction. The following is his reply:

"'April 17th, 1814.

"'DEAR COTTLE:--I have seldom in the course of my life felt it so difficult to answer a letter as on the present occasion. There is, however, no alternative. I must sincerely express what I think, and be thankful I am writing to one who knows me thoroughly.

"'Of sorrow and humiliation I will say nothing. No part of Coleridge's embarrassment arises from his wife and children, except that he has insured his life for a thousand pounds, and pays the annual premium. He never writes to them, and never opens a letter from them.

"'In truth, Cottle, his embarrassments and his miseries of body and mind all arise from one accursed cause--excess in _opium_, of which he habitually takes more than was ever known to be taken by any person before him. The Morgans, with great effort, succeeded in making him leave it off for a time, and he recovered in consequence _health_ and _spirits_. He has now taken to it again. Of this indeed I was too sure before I heard from you--that his looks bore testimony to it. Perhaps you are not aware of the costliness of this drug. In the quantity which C. takes, it would consume _more_ than the whole which you propose to raise. A frightful consumption of _spirits_ is added. In this way bodily ailments are produced, and the wonder is that he is still alive.

"'Nothing is wanting to make him easy in circumstances and happy in himself but to leave off opium, and to direct a certain portion of his time to the discharge of _his duties.'_

"During my illness at this time, Mr. Coleridge sent my sister the following letter, and the succeeding one to myself:

"'13th May, 1814.

"'DEAR MADAM:--I am uneasy to know how my friend, J. Cottle, goes on. The walk I took last Monday to inquire in person proved too much for my strength, and shortly after my return I was in such a swooning way that I was directed to go to bed, and orders were given that no one should interrupt me. Indeed I can not be sufficiently grateful for the skill with which _the surgeon treats me._ But it must be a slow, and occasionally an interrupted progress, after a sad retrogress of nearly twelve years.'

"'Friday, 27th May, 1814.

"'MY DEAR COTTLE:--I feel, with an intensity unfathomable by words, my utter nothingness, impotence, and worthlessness, in and for myself. I have learned what a sin is against an infinite, imperishable being, such as is the soul of man.

"'I have had more than a glimpse of what is meant by death and outer darkness, and the worm that dieth not--and that all the _hell_ of the reprobate, is no more inconsistent with the love of God, than the blindness of one who has occasioned loathsome and guilty diseases to eat out his eyes is inconsistent with the light of the sun. But the consolations, at least the sensible sweetness of hope, I do not possess. On the contrary, the temptation which I have constantly to fight up against, is a fear that if _annihilation_ and the _possibility_ of _heaven_ were offered to my choice, I should choose the former. "'Mr. Eden gave you a too flattering account of me. It is true I am restored, as much beyond my expectations almost as my deserts; but I am exceedingly weak. I need for myself solace and refocillation of animal spirits, instead of being in a condition of offering it to others.'

"The serious expenditure of money resulting from Mr. C.'s consumption of opium was the least evil, though very great, and must have absorbed all the produce of Mr. C.'s lectures and all the liberalities of his friends. It is painful to record such circumstances as the following, but the picture would be incomplete without it.

"Mr. Coleridge, in a late letter, with something it is feared, if not of duplicity, of self-deception, extols the skill of his surgeon in having gradually lessened his consumption of laudanum, it was understood, to twenty drops a day. With this diminution the habit was considered as subdued, at which result no one appeared to rejoice more than Mr. Coleridge himself. The reader will be surprised to learn that, notwithstanding this flattering exterior, Mr. C., while apparently submitting to the directions of his medical adviser, was secretly indulging in his usual overwhelming quanties of opium! Heedless of his health and every honorable consideration, he contrived to obtain surreptitiously the fatal drug, and thus to baffle the hopes of his warmest friends.

"Mr. Coleridge had resided at this time for several months with his kind friend Mr. Josiah Wade, of Bristol, who in his solicitude for his benefit had procured for him, so long as it was deemed necessary, the professional assistance stated above. The surgeon on taking leave, after the cure had been _effected_, well knowing the expedients to which opium patients would often recur to obtain their proscribed draughts--at least till the habit of temperance was fully established--cautioned Mr. W. to prevent Mr. Coleridge by all possible means from obtaining that by stealth from which he was openly debarred. It reflects great credit on Mr. Wade's humanity that, to prevent all access to opium, and thus if possible to rescue his friend from destruction, he engaged a respectable old decayed tradesman constantly to attend Mr. C, and, to make that which was sure, doubly certain, placed him even in his bedroom; and this man always accompanied him whenever he went out. To such surveillance Mr. Coleridge cheerfully acceded, in order to show the promptitude with which he seconded the efforts of his friends. It has been stated that every precaution was unavailing. By some unknown means and dexterous contrivances Mr. C. afterward confessed that he still obtained his usual lulling potions.

"As an example, among others of a similar nature, one ingenious expedient to which he resorted to cheat the doctor he thus disclosed to Mr. Wade, from whom I received it. He said, in passing along the quay where the ships were moored, he noticed by a side glance a druggist's shop, probably an old resort, and standing near the door he looked toward the ships, and pointing to one at some distance he said to his attendant, 'I think that's an American.' 'Oh, no, that I am sure it is not,' said the man. 'I think it is,' replied Mr. C.' I wish you would step over and ask, and bring me the particulars.' The man accordingly went; when as soon as his back was turned Mr. C. stepped into the shop, had his portly bottle filled with laudanum, which he always carried in his pocket, and then expeditiously placed himself in the spot where he was left. The man now returned with the particulars, beginning, 'I told you, Sir, it was not an American, but I have learned all about her.' 'As I am mistaken, never mind the rest,' said Mr. C, and walked on.

"A common impression prevailed on the minds of his friends that it was a desperate case that paralyzed all their efforts; that to assist Mr. C. with money, which under favorable circumstances would have been most promptly advanced, would now only enlarge his capacity to obtain the opium which was consuming him. We at length learned that Mr. Coleridge was gone to reside with his friend Mr. John Morgan, in a small house, at Calne, in Wiltshire. So gloomy were our apprehensions, that even the death of Mr. C. was mournfully expected at no distant period, for his actions at this time were, we feared, all indirectly of a suicidal description.

"In a letter dated October 27, 1814, Mr. Southey thus writes:

"'Can you tell me any thing of Coleridge? We know that he is with the Morgans at Calne. What is to become of him? He may find men who will give him board and lodging for the sake of his conversation, but who will pay his other expenses? He leaves his family to chance and charity. With good feelings, good principles, as far as the understanding is concerned, and an intellect as clear and as powerful as was ever vouchsafed to man, he is the slave of degrading sensuality, and sacrifices every thing to it. The case is equally deplorable and monstrous.'"

The intimacy between Coleridge and Cottle seems about this period to have entirely ceased. After the death of Coleridge, Mr. Cottle prepared his "Recollections" of his friend, but was restrained from its publication by considerations of propriety, until the following letter was placed in his hands by the gentleman to whom it was addressed, with permission to use it:

"BRISTOL, June 26, 1814.

"DEAR SIR:--For I am unworthy to call any good man friend--much less you, whose hospitality and love I have abused; accept, however, my entreaties for your forgiveness and your prayers.

"Conceive a poor miserable wretch, who for many years has been attempting to beat off pain by a constant recurrence to the vice that reproduces it. Conceive a spirit in hell employed in tracing out for others the road to that heaven from which his crimes exclude him! In short, conceive whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hopeless, and you will form as tolerable a notion of my state as it is possible for a good man to have.

"I used to think the text in St. James, that 'he who offended in one point, offends in all,' very harsh, but I now feel the awful, the tremendous truth of it. In the one crime of OPIUM, what crime have I not made myself guilty of? Ingratitude to my Maker! and to my benefactors, injustice! _and unnatural cruelty to my poor children!_--self-contempt for my repeated promise--breach, nay, too often, actual falsehood.

"After my death, I earnestly entreat that a full and unqualified narration of my wretchedness and of its guilty cause may be made public, that at least some little good may be effected by the direful example.

"May God Almighty bless you, and have mercy on your still affectionate, and in his heart grateful,

"S. T. COLERIDGE.

"JOSIAH WADE, ESQ."

"It appears that in the spring of 1816 Mr. Coleridge left Mr. Morgan's house at Calne, and in a desolate state of mind repaired to London; when the belief remaining strong on his mind that his opium habits would never be effectually subdued till he had subjected himself to medical restraint, he called on Dr. Adams, an eminent physician, and disclosed to him the whole of his painful circumstances, stating what he conceived to be his only remedy. The doctor, being a humane man, sympathized with his patient, and knowing a medical gentleman who resided three or four miles from town, who would be likely to undertake the charge, he addressed the following letter to Mr. Gilman:

"'HATTON GARDEN, April 9,1816.

"'DEAR SIR:--A very learned, but in one respect an unfortunate gentleman, has applied to me on a singular occasion. He has for several years been in the habit of taking large quantities of opium. For some time past he has been in vain endeavoring to break himself off it. It is apprehended his friends are not firm enough, from a dread lest he should suffer by suddenly leaving it off, though he is conscious of the contrary, and has proposed to me to submit himself to any regimen, however severe. With this view he wishes to fix himself in the house of some medical gentleman, who will have courage to refuse him any laudanum, and under whose assistance, should he be the worse for it, he may be relieved. As he is desirous of retirement and a garden, I could think of none so readily as yourself. Be so good as to inform me whether such a proposal is absolutely inconsistent with your family arrangements. I should not have proposed it, but on account of the great importance of the character as a literary man. His communicative temper will make his society very interesting as well as useful. Have the goodness to favor me with an immediate answer; and believe me, dear Sir, your faithful humble servant,

"'JOSEPH ADAMS.'"

Mr. Gilman, in his "Life of Coleridge," says: "I had seen the writer of this letter but twice in my life, and had no intention of receiving an inmate into my house. I however determined on seeing Dr. Adams, for whether the person referred to had taken opium from choice or necessity, to me Dr. Adams informed me that the patient had been warned of the danger of discontinuing opium by several eminent medical men, who at the same time represented the frightful consequences that would most probably ensue. I had heard of the failure of Mr. Wilberforce's case under an eminent physician at Bath, in addition to which the doctor gave me an account of several others within his own knowledge. After some further conversation it was agreed that Dr. Adams should drive Coleridge to Highgate the following evening. On the following evening came Coleridge _himself_, and alone. Coleridge proposed to come the following evening, but he first informed me of the painful opinion which he had received concerning his case, especially from one medical man of celebrity. The tale was sad, and the opinion given unprofessional and cruel, sufficient to have deterred most men so afflicted from making the attempt Coleridge was contemplating, and in which his whole soul was so deeply and so earnestly engaged. My situation was new, and there was something affecting in the thought that one of such amiable manners, and at the same time so highly gifted, should seek comfort and medical aid in our quiet home. Deeply interested, I began to reflect seriously on the duties imposed upon me, and with anxiety to expect the approaching day. It brought me the following letter:

"'MY DEAR SIR:.... And now of myself. My ever-wakeful reason and the keenness of my moral feelings will secure you from all unpleasant circumstances Connected with me save only one, viz., the evasion of a specific madness. You will never _hear_ any thing but truth from me. Prior habits render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but unless carefully observed, I dare not promise that I should not, with regard to this detested poison, be capable of acting one. No sixty hours have yet passed without my having taken laudanum, though for the last week comparatively trifling doses. I have full belief that your anxiety need not be extended beyond the first week, and for the first week I shall not, I must not, be permitted to leave your house unless with you. Delicately or indelicately, this must be done, and both the servants and the assistant must receive absolute commands from you. The stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my mind; but when I am alone the horrors I have suffered from laudanum, the degradation, the blighted utility, almost overwhelm me. If (as I feel for the _first time_ a soothing confidence it will prove) I should leave you restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not myself only that will love and honor you; every friend I have (and, thank God! in spite of this wretched vice I have many and warm ones, who were friends of my youth and have never deserted me) will thank you with reverence.'"

Dr. Gilman's admiration of Coleridge's talents and respect for his character soon became so enthusiastic that the remainder of the poet's life was made comfortable by his care and under his roof. After the death of Coleridge the first volume of a biography was published by Dr. G., but has never been completed. We are therefore left in ignorance of the process by which his addiction to opium was reduced to the small daily allowance which he used during the later years of his life. It seems from the following letter addressed to Dr. Gilman more than six years after he was received as a member of his household, that the conflict with the habit was still going on. "I am still too much under the cloud of past misgivings--too much of the stun and stupor from the recent peals and thunder-crash still remain--to permit me to anticipate others than by wishes and prayers."

Coleridge wrote but little respecting his own infirmity. Ten years after his domestication in the family of Dr. Gilman he made the following memorandum:

"I wrote a few stanzas twenty years ago--soon after my eyes had been opened to the true nature of the habit into which I had been ignorantly deluded by the seeming magic effects of opium in the sudden removal of a supposed rheumatic affection, attended with swellings in my knees and palpitations of the heart, and pains all over me, by which I had been bedridden for nearly six months. Unhappily, among my neighbor's and landlord's books was a large parcel of medical reviews and magazines. I had always a fondness (a common case, but most mischievous turn with reading men who are at all dyspeptic) for dabbling in medical writings; and in one of these reviews I met a case which I fancied very like my own, in which a cure had been affected by the Kendal Black Drop. In an evil hour I procured it. It worked miracles. The swellings disappeared, the pains vanished; I was all alive; and all around me being as ignorant as myself, nothing could exceed my triumph. I talked of nothing else, prescribed the newly-discovered panacea for all complaints, and carried a bottle about with me, not to lose any opportunity of administering 'instant relief and speedy cure' to all complainers, stranger or friend, gentle or simple. Need I say that my own apparent convalescence was of no long continuance? But what then? the remedy was at hand and infallible. Alas! it is with a bitter smile, a laugh of gall and bitterness, that I recall this period of unsuspecting delusion, and how I first became aware of the Maelstrom, the fatal whirlpool to which I was drawing just when the current was already beyond my strength to stem. God knows that from that moment I was the victim of pain and terror, nor had I at any time taken the flattering poison as a stimulus, or for any craving after pleasurable sensation. I needed none--and oh! with what unutterable sorrow did I read the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater,' in which the writer with morbid vanity makes a boast of what was my misfortune, for he had been faithfully and with an agony of zeal warned of the gulf, and yet willfully struck into the current! Heaven be merciful to him!

"Even under the direful yoke of the necessity of daily poisoning by narcotics, it is somewhat less horrible through the knowledge that it was not from any craving for pleasurable animal excitement, but from pain, delusion, error, of the worst ignorance, medical sciolism, and (alas! too late the plea of error was removed from my eyes) from terror and utter perplexity and infirmity--sinful infirmity, indeed, but yet not a willful sinfulness--that I brought my neck under it. Oh, may the God to whom I look for mercy through Christ, show mercy on the author of the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater,' if, as I have too strong reason to believe, his book has been the occasion of seducing others into this withering vice through wantonness. From this aggravation I have, I humbly trust, been free as far as acts of my freewill and intention are concerned; even to the author of that work I pleaded with flowing tears, and with an agony of forewarning. He utterly denied it, but I fear that I had even then to _deter_, perhaps not to forewarn."

Referring to the character of Coleridge's disorder, Dr. Gilman says: "He had much bodily suffering. The _cause_ of this was the organic change slowly and gradually taking place in the structure of the heart itself. But it was so masked by other sufferings, though at times creating despondency, and was so generally overpowered by the excitement of animated conversation, as to leave its real cause undiscovered." [Footnote: "_My heart, or some part_ about it, seems breaking, as if a weight were suspended from it that stretches it. Such is the _bodily feeling_ as far as I can express it by words."--_Coleridge's letter to Morgan_.]

In a volume entitled "Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. C.," written by an intimate friend, we find the following declaration from Coleridge himself:

"My conscience indeed bears me witness, that from the time I quitted Cambridge no human being was more indifferent to the pleasures of the table than myself, or less needed any stimulation to my spirits; and that, by a most unhappy quackery, after having been almost bedrid for near six months with swollen knees, and other distressing symptoms of disordered digestive functions, and through that most pernicious form of ignorance, medical half-knowledge, I was _seduced_ into the use of narcotics, not secretly, but (such was my ignorance) openly and exultingly, as one who had discovered, and was never weary of recommending, a grand panacea, and saw not the truth till my _body_ had contracted a habit and a necessity; and that, even to the latest, my responsibility is for cowardice and defect of fortitude, not for the least craving after gratification or pleasurable sensation of any sort, but for yielding to pain, terror, and haunting bewilderment. But this I say to _man_ only, who knows only what has been yielded, not what has been resisted; before God I have but one voice--Mercy! mercy! woe is me.

"Pray for me, my dear friend, that I may not pass such another night as the last. While I am awake and retain my reasoning powers the pang is gnawing, but I am, except for a fitful moment or two, tranquil; it is the howling wilderness of sleep that I dread." (July 31, 1820.)

From this _bodily_ slavery (for it was _bodily_) to a baneful drug he was never _entirely_ free, though the quantity was so greatly reduced as not materially to affect his health or spirits.

A good deal that is known respecting Coleridge's opium habits is derived from the published papers of De Quincey, whose opportunities for becoming fully informed on the subject are beyond question:

"I now gathered that procrastination in excess was, or had become, a marked feature in Coleridge's daily life. Nobody who knew him ever thought of depending on any appointment he might make. Spite of his uniformly honorable intentions, nobody attached any weight to his assurances _in re futura_. Those who asked him to dinner, or any other party, as a matter of course sent a carriage for him, and went personally or by proxy to fetch him; and as to letters, unless the address was in some female hand that commanded his affectionate esteem, he tossed them all into one general _dead-letter bureau_, and rarely, I believe, opened them at all. But all this, which I heard now for the first time and with much concern, was fully explained, for already he was under the full dominion of opium, as he himself revealed to me--with a deep expression of horror at the hideous bondage--in a private walk of some length which I took with him about sunset.

"At night he entered into a spontaneous explanation of this unhappy overclouding of his life, on occasion of my saying accidentally that a toothache had obliged me to take a few drops of laudanum. At what time or on what motive he had commenced the use of opium he did not say, but the peculiar emphasis of horror with which he warned me against forming a habit of the same kind, impressed upon my mind a feeling that he never hoped to liberate himself from the bondage.

"For some succeeding years he did certainly appear to me released from that load of despondency which oppressed him on my first introduction. Grave, indeed, he continued to be, and at times absorbed in gloom; nor did I ever see him in a state of perfectly natural cheerfulness. But as he strove in vain for many years to wean himself from his captivity to opium, a healthy state of spirits could not be much expected. Perhaps, indeed, where the liver and other organs had for so long a period in life been subject to a continual morbid stimulation, it may be impossible for the system ever to recover a natural action. Torpor, I suppose, must result from continued artificial excitement, and perhaps upon a scale of corresponding duration. Life, in such a case, may not offer a field of sufficient extent for unthreading the fatal links that have been wound about the machinery of health and have crippled its natural play.

"One or two words on Coleridge as an opium-eater. We have not often read a sentence falling from a wise man with astonishment so profound as that particular one in a letter of Coleridge to Mr. Gilman, which speaks of the effort to wean one's self from opium as a trivial task. There are, we believe, several such passages, but we refer to that one in particular which assumes that a single 'week' will suffice for the whole process of so mighty a revolution. Is indeed Leviathan so tamed? In that case the quarantine of the opium-eater might be finished within Coleridge's time and with Coleridge's romantic ease. But mark the contradictions of this extraordinary man. He speaks of opium excess, his own excess, we mean--the excess of twenty-five years--as a thing to be laid aside easily and forever within seven days; and yet, on the other hand, he describes it pathetically, sometimes with a frantic pathos, as the scourge, the curse, the one almighty blight which had desolated his life.

"This shocking contradiction we need not press. All will see _that_. But some will ask, was Mr. Coleridge right in either view? Being so atrociously wrong in the first notion (viz., that the opium of twenty-five years was a thing easily to be forsworn), when a child could know that he was wrong, was he even altogether right, secondly, in believing that his own life, root and branch, had been withered by opium? For it will not follow, because, with a relation to happiness and tranquillity, a man may have found opium his curse, that therefore, as a creature of energies and great purposes, he must have been the wreck which he seems to suppose. Opium gives and takes away. It defeats the _steady_ habit of exertion, but it creates spasms of irregular exertion; it ruins the natural power of life, but it develops preternatural paroxysms of intermitting power.