strong constitution; but I must notice the injurious consequences of this passion for the narcotic drug, 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, (amongst 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 amongst 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 discharged an imperious sense of duty. The tear which bedims my eye, is an evidence of the sincerity with which I subscribe myself, Your affectionate friend, Joseph Cottle." The following is Mr. Coleridge's reply. "April 26th, 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 1 cannot 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 bed-ridden 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. length the unusual stimulus subsided, the complaint returned,—the supposed remedy was recurred to-but I cannot go through the dreary history. At 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 sensations. 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 a dreadful falling abroad, as it were, of my whole VOL. II P 6 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 cannot move my arms, is my complaint and my misery.' May God bless you, and Your affectionate, but most afflicted, |