[Coleridge had now become a recognized public lecturer on Poetry, and it was his last resource to keep out of political writing, which he saw was a rather barren business on which to waste his powers. Two courses of lectures were given between the spring of 1812 and that of 1813. His third course was delivered at Willis’s Rooms from 12th May to 5th June. Henry Crabb Robinson attended the second, third and fourth of the course on 23rd, 26th, and 29th May, and has left some short accounts. His fourth course began on 3rd November 1812 and closed on 29th January 1813. H. C. R. attended the closing lecture. “He was received,” says H. C. R., “with three rounds of applause on entering the lecture room, and very loudly applauded during the lecture and at its close.” (H. C. R. Diary.)

The letter to Poole of 13th February 1813 quoted in the last chapter is only a fragment; the full text is given by Mr. E. H. Coleridge in Letters, 609–612. It ends as follows: “You perhaps may likewise have heard (in the Whispering Gallery of the World) of the year-long difference between me and Wordsworth (compared with the sufferings of which all the former afflictions of my life were less than flea-bites), occasioned (in great part) by the wicked folly of the arch-fool Montagu.

“A reconciliation has taken place, but the feeling, which I had previous to that moment, when the (three-fourth) calamity burst, like a thunderstorm from a blue sky, on my soul, after fifteen years of such religious, almost superstitious idolatry and self-sacrifice. Oh no! that, I fear, can never return. All outward actions, all inward wishes, all thoughts and admirations will be the same—are the same, but—aye, there remains an immedicable But.”

Not much is known regarding Coleridge’s whereabouts in the summer of 1813. In September Southey came to London and took him to see Madame De StaËl (Letters of Southey, ii, 332), who as we know was drowned by his monologue. In the end of October Coleridge left for Bristol, and reached the then second city of England to deliver a fifth course of lectures on poetry which had been arranged for by his friends there (Cottle’s Rem., 353). The course lasted from 28th October to 16th November (Bohn Library, Shakespeare Lectures, p. 456). Cottle says the first lecture was on Hamlet; but the report from the Bristol papers (Ashe, Bohn Library, 458) contradicts this, the lecture on Hamlet being the third. A sixth course of lectures was arranged for, which Cottle says were well attended (Rem., 354). Another course of four lectures on Milton, between 5th and 14th April (Ashe, Bohn Library, 457), was indifferently attended. His eighth course of lectures, this time on Homer, scarcely paid expenses (Cottle, 355). Although Coleridge must have repeated himself frequently in these lectures, they were new to Bristol. C. R. Leslie, a painter of some note in his day, speaks favourably of them (Leslie’s Autobiography, etc., vol. 1, chap. 3). The following letters belong to the visit to Bristol.

Letter 153. To Wade

8 Dec. 1813.

* * * Since my arrival at the Greyhound, Bath, I have been confined to my bed-room, almost to my bed. Pray for my recovery, and request Mr. Roberts’s[74] prayers, for my infirm, wicked heart; that Christ may mediate to the Father, to lead me to Christ, and give me a living instead of a reasoning faith! and for my health, so far only as it may be the condition of my improvement, and final redemption.

My dear affectionate friend, I am your obliged, and grateful, and affectionate, friend,

My dear Cottle,

An erysipelatous complaint, of an alarming nature, has rendered me barely able to attend and go through with my lectures, the receipts of which, have almost paid the expenses of the room, advertisements, etc.[75] Whether this be to my discredit, or that of the good citizens of Bristol, it is not for me to judge. I have been persuaded to make another trial, by advertising three lectures, on the rise, and progress, and conclusion of the French Revolution, with a critique on the proposed constitution, but unless fifty names are procured, not a lecture give I.

Even so the two far, far more important lectures, for which I have long been preparing myself, and have given more thought to, than to any other subject, viz.: those on female education, from infancy to womanhood practically systematized, I shall be (God permitting) ready to give the latter end of the week after next, but upon condition that I am assured of sixty names. Why as these are lectures that I must write down, I could sell them as a recipe for twice the sum at least.

If I can walk out, I will be with you on Sunday. Has Mr. Wade called on you? Mr. Le Breton, a near neighbour of yours, in Portland Square, would, if you sent a note to him, converse with you on any subject relative to my interest, with congenial sympathy; but indeed I think your idea one of those Chimeras, which kindness begets upon an unacquaintance with mankind.[76]

Letter 155. To Cottle.

* * * Mr. ——[77] I find is raising the city against me, as far as he and his friends can, for having stated a mere matter of fact; viz. that Milton had represented Satan as a sceptical Socinian; which is the case; and I could not have explained the excellence of the sublimest single passage in all his writings, had I not previously informed the audience, that Milton had represented Satan, as knowing the Prophetic and Messianic character of Christ, but was sceptical as to any higher claims. And what other definition could Mr. —— himself give of a sceptical Socinian? (with this difference indeed, that Satan’s faith somewhat exceeded that of Socinians.) Now that Satan has done so, will you consult Paradise Regained, Book IV, from line 196, and the same Book, from line 500.

Letter 156. To Cottle.

My dear Cottle,

I have been engaged three days past, to dine with the sheriff, at Merchant’s Hall to-morrow. As they will not wield knife and fork till near six, I cannot of course attend the meeting (for the establishment of an Infant School) but should it be put off, and you will give me a little longer notice, I will do my best to make my humble talents serviceable in their proportion to a cause in which I take no common interest, which has always my best wishes, and not seldom my prayers. God bless you, and your affectionate friend,

P.S. To you who know I prefer a roast potatoe and salt to the most splendid public dinner, the very sight of which always offends my infant appetite, I need not say that I am actuated solely by my pre-engagement, and by the impropriety of disappointing the friend whom I am to accompany, and to whom probably I owe the unexpected compliment of the sheriff’s invitation.

I have read two-thirds of Dr. Pole’s[78] pamphlet on Infant Schools, with great interest. Thoughts on thoughts, feelings on feelings, crowded upon my mind and heart during the perusal, and which I would fain, God willing, give vent to! I truly honor and love the orthodox dissenters, and appreciate with heart-esteem their works of love. I have read, with much pleasure, the second preface to the second edition of your Alfred. It is well written.

Letter 157. To Cottle.

My dear Cottle,

On my return home yesterday, I continued unwell, so as to be obliged to lie down for the greater part of the evening, and my indisposition keeping me awake during the whole night, I found it necessary to take some magnesia and calomel, and I am at present very sick. I have little chance of being able to stir out this morning, but if I am better I will see you in the evening. God bless you,

Mr. Wade’s, Queen Square.

While Coleridge was in Bristol in 1814 Cottle for the first time learnt of Coleridge’s addiction to opium, which is rather surprising in one who had known him so intimately during 1795–98 and in 1807. It is remarkable, too, that in the early years of opium taking Coleridge never hid the fact from his friends, but freely corresponded with Tom Wedgwood and others about the effects of opium and kindred drugs, as if it were no secret that he was in the habit of resorting to them. But Cottle now saw that opium had been, in his estimation, the cause of all Coleridge’s failures to apply his great powers to do something of the first order, and deemed it his duty to rate Coleridge for his folly, and wrote him the following letter:

Cottle to Coleridge.[79]

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 anything 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,[80] 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 cannot 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 (amongst 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, amongst the worthies of future years, when you are numbered with the dead? (And now I would wish in the most delicate manner, to remind you of the injurious effects which these habits of yours produce on your family. From the estimation in which you are held by the public, I am clear in stating, that a small daily exertion on your part, would be sufficient to obtain for you and them, honour, happiness, and independence. You are still comparatively, a young man, and in such a cause, labour is sweet. Can you withhold so small a sacrifice? Let me sincerely advise you to return home, and live in the circle once more, of your wife and family. There may have been faults on one, possibly on both sides; but calumny itself has never charged criminality. Let all be forgotten, a small effort for the Christian. If I can become a mediator, command me. If you could be prevailed on to adopt this plan, I will gladly defray your expenses to Keswick, and I am sure, with better habits, you would be hailed by your family, I was almost going to say, as an angel from heaven. It will also look better in the eyes of the world, who are always prompt with their own constructions, and these constructions are rarely the most charitable. It would also powerfully promote your own peace of mind.

There is this additional view, which ought to influence you, as it would every generous mind. Your wife and children are domesticated with Southey. He has a family of his own, which by his literary labour, he supports, to his great honour; and to the extra provision required of him on your account, he cheerfully submits; still, will you not divide with him the honour? You have not extinguished in your heart the Father’s feelings. Your daughter is a sweet girl. Your two boys are promising; and Hartley, concerning whom you once so affectionately wrote, is eminently clever. These want only a father’s assistance to give them credit and honourable stations in life. Will you withhold so equitable and small a boon. Your eldest son will soon be qualified for the university, where your name would inevitably secure him patronage, but without your aid, how is he to arrive there; and afterward, how is he to be supported? Revolve on these things, I entreat you, calmly, on your pillow.)[81]

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. 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

Coleridge replied to this next day:

Letter 158. Coleridge to Cottle.

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 I 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. At length the unusual stimulus subsided, the complaint returned,—the supposed remedy was recurred to—but I cannot 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 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 falling abroad,[82] 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 cannot move my arms, is my complaint and my misery.” May God bless you, and

“On receiving this full and mournful disclosure,” Cottle says, “I felt the deepest compassion for Mr. C.’s state, and sent him the following letter. (Necessary to be given to understand Mr. Coleridge’s reply.)”

Cottle To Coleridge

Dear Coleridge,

I am afflicted to perceive that Satan is so busy with you, but God is greater than Satan. Did you ever hear of Jesus Christ? That he came into the world to save sinners? He does not demand, as a condition, any merit of your own, he only says, “Come and be healed!” Leave your idle speculations: forget your vain philosophy. Come as you are. Come and be healed. He only requires you to be sensible of your need of him, to give him your heart, to abandon with penitence, every evil practice, and he has promised that whosoever thus comes, he will in no wise cast out. To such as you Christ ought to be precious, for you see the hopelessness of every other refuge. He will add strength to your own ineffectual efforts.

For your encouragement, I express the conviction, that such exercises as yours, are a conflict that must ultimately prove successful. You do not cloak your sins. You confess and deplore them. I believe that you will still be as “a brand plucked from the burning,” and that you (with all your wanderings) will be restored, and raised up, as a chosen instrument, to spread a Saviour’s name. Many a “chief of sinners,” has been brought, since the days of “Saul of Tarsus,” to sit as a little child at the Redeemer’s feet. To this state you, I am assured, will come. Pray! Pray earnestly, and you will be heard by your Father, which is in Heaven. I could say many things of duty and virtue, but I wish to direct your views at once to Christ, in whom is the alone balm for afflicted souls.

P.S. If my former letter appeared unkind, pardon me! It was not intended. Shall I breathe in your ear?—I know one, who is a stranger to these throes and conflicts, and who finds “Wisdom’s ways to be ways of pleasantness, and her paths, paths of peace.”

To this letter Cottle received the following reply:

Letter 159. To Cottle

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. O, 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.

Cottle informs us that Coleridge had now resolved to put himself under constraint in the asylum of Dr. Fox, in the neighbourhood of Bristol.

Letter 160. To Cottle

(— Apl., 1814.)

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 anything of this kind can be done. Do you know Dr. Fox?

I have to prepare my lecture. Oh! with how blank a spirit![84]

Cottle did not give his sanction to this proposal; but, on the contrary, wrote to Southey detailing what he had discovered about Coleridge, and requesting Southey’s opinion. Southey wrote without delay advising other measures. Southey had been fully cognizant of the consumption of opium and laudanum, and says the Morgans had at one time broken him of the habit when his consumption was from two quarts a week to a pint a day (Rem., 373). It is difficult to credit that any one, even habituated to the drug, could consume this quantity; but Southey evidently believed it. An ordinary dose of laudanum is 30 drops. 480 drops form an ounce, and there are 20 ounces in a pint. This makes 320 doses in a pint; and this, taken within twenty-four hours, would not give a patient time to wake up out of his stupor, even though administered by other hands, to take the successive draughts. Southey recommended that Coleridge should go and visit Poole at Stowey for a few weeks; then come on to Keswick by way of Birmingham and Liverpool, and deliver lectures at these places to raise funds. In answer to a second letter by Cottle to Southey proposing to get up an annuity among Coleridge’s friends to enable him to prosecute some of his projects, Southey threw cold water on the scheme; and Cottle says that Coleridge’s repugnance to visit Greta Hall and apply his talents in the way suggested by Southey was invincible; neither would he visit Poole, nor lecture at Birmingham nor Liverpool. To this Mr. Hall Caine says: “My strong conviction is that the chief bugbear for Coleridge at Greta Hall was none other than Southey himself.” (Life of Coleridge, 126.)

Cottle, having been taken ill after his correspondence with Southey, was prohibited intercourse with friends. “During my illness,” says Cottle, “Mr. Coleridge sent my sister the following letter and the succeeding one to myself.”

Letter 161. To Miss Cottle

13th May, 1814.

Dear Madam,

I am uneasy to know how my friend, J. Cottle, goes on. The walk I took last Monday to enquire, 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 cannot 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. To God all things are possible. I intreat your prayers, your brother has a share in mine.

What an astonishing privilege, that a sinner should be permitted to cry, “Our Father!” Oh, still more stupendous mercy, that this poor ungrateful sinner should be exhorted, invited, nay, commanded, to pray—to pray importunately. That which great men most detest, namely, importunacy; to this the Giver and the Forgiver Encourages his sick petitioners!

I will not trouble you except for one verbal answer to this note. How is your brother?

With affectionate respects to yourself and your sister,

To Miss Cottle, Brunswick Square.

Letter 162. To Cottle

Friday, 27th May, 1814.

My dear Cottle,

Gladness be with you, for your convalescence, and equally so, at the hope, which has sustained and tranquillized you through your imminent peril. Far otherwise is, and hath been, my state; yet I too am grateful; yet I cannot rejoice. 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.

That is, perhaps, in part, a constitutional idiosyncracy, for when a mere boy, I wrote these lines:

And in my early manhood, in lines descriptive of a gloomy solitude, I disguised my own sensations in the following words:

My main comfort, therefore, consists in what the divines call the faith of adherence, and no spiritual effort appears to benefit me so much as the one earnest, importunate, and often, for hours, momently repeated prayer: “I believe, Lord help my unbelief! Give me faith, but as a mustard seed, and I shall remove this mountain! Faith, faith, faith! I believe, O give me faith! O, for my Redeemer’s sake, give me faith in my Redeemer.”

In all this I justify God, for I was accustomed to oppose the preaching of the terrors of the gospel, and to represent it as debasing virtue, by the admixture of slaving selfishness.

I now see that what is spiritual, can only be spiritually apprehended. Comprehended it cannot.

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. Yet, as soon as I may see you, I will call on you.

P.S. It is no small gratification to me, that I have seen and conversed with Mrs. Hannah More. She is, indisputably, the first literary female I ever met with. In part, no doubt, because she is a Christian. Make my best respects when you write.[87]

“Mr. Josiah Wade,” says Cottle, “presented to me the following mournful and touching letter, addressed to him by Mr. Coleridge in the year 1814, which, whilst it relieved my mind from so onerous a burden, fully corroborated all that I had presumed, and all that I had affirmed. Mr. W. handed this letter to me that it might be made public, in conformity with his departed friend’s injunction.”

Letter 163. To Wade

Bristol, June 26th, 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 intreaties for your forgiveness, and for 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—

Meantime, during all this strange transaction with Cottle and Wade, Coleridge during the year 1814, was never more brilliant in his intellectual output, whether as lecturer, letter-writer, or political writer. His letters at this date to Charles Mathews (Letters, 621), to Sir George Beaumont (Col. Mem.) of 9th June; to John Murray (Letters, 624), about a projected translation of Faust; to Daniel Stuart, of 12th September and 30th October; and to John Kenyon, of 3rd November 1814 (Letters, 627–64), his Essays on the Fine Arts to Felix Fairley’s Bristol Journal (August, 1814, see Bohn Lib. Misc. Works, 4–52), and his six political letters to the Editor of The Courier from 20th September to 10th December 1814, show no diminution of intellectual power, but rather sustained mental vigour. C. R. Leslie’s account of Coleridge at this date, too, leaves us to imagine a very different Coleridge from the one depicted in the Reminiscences of this period. Leslie was accompanying the Allstons from London to Bristol. Mr. Allston fell ill at Salt Hill, and Coleridge was sent for from town. Coleridge came to Salt Hill the same afternoon, accompanied by his friend, Dr. Tathill. He stayed and nursed Allston. “We were kept up late,” says Leslie, “in consequence of the critical condition of Allston, and when he retired, Coleridge, seeing a copy of Knickerbocker’s History of New York lying on the table, took it up and began reading. I went to bed, and I think he must have been up the greater part of the night, for the next day I found he had nearly got through Knickerbocker. He was delighted with it.” Leslie adds: “At Salt Hill, and on some other occasions, I witnessed his performance of the duties of friendship in a manner which few men of his constitutional indolence could have roused themselves to equal” (Autobiography, i, pp. 33–35).

Coleridge was a chameleon[89] character; and altered his tone to suit every kind of individual with whom he came into contact. We have seen how he changed his attitude to Godwin between his letter in The Watchman in 1796, and his letters to the author of Political Justice in 1811. It was the same in many cases, and Southey reproved him for it. Hence it was that, in the presence of Cottle and Wade, of an evangelical tone of mind, Coleridge humiliated himself and wrote penitential letters, while at the same time towards Sir George Beaumont, Stuart, and others, he was the Coleridge of vast intellectual pretensions to whom no task was impossible.

Whether Cottle was justified in publishing the “opium letters” of Coleridge has always been a moot point. The fact is Cottle had determined on “pointing a moral and adorning a tale,” as was the custom of writers of his day, and he enlisted the sympathy and support of Southey and John Foster to endorse his project of making moral capital out of the story of Coleridge’s life. The long correspondence at the end of the Reminiscences with these two friends regarding how much he should divulge and how much he should keep back, is a study in the art of compromise; but the “moralist’s duty,” as it was then called, prevailed in the end. They had determined, as is mentioned in the last letter of the correspondence (p. 482) by John Foster, that “an emphatic moral lesson” should be wrung out of the life of Coleridge; and Southey and Foster warned Cottle to be on his guard against collaborating with Gillman—as was his original intention—to write the Life of Coleridge, lest the “solemn warning and example should be lost” (Cottle’s Rem., p. 482).

The real cause of Coleridge’s many and harassing ailments has now been made known. Writing to the Times newspaper in reply to a criticism which had appeared in its columns on Coleridge’s Letters, just published (in 1895), and which had asserted that the perpetual cry of ill health which echoes through the volume from end to end, meant little less than “opium and indolence,” Mrs. Lucy E. Watson, granddaughter of James Gillman, quotes a letter by the latter narrating the circumstances attending the post mortem examination of Coleridge’s body. The disease from which he had suffered was enlargement of the heart, by which the sides of that organ were so attenuated as not to be able to sustain it when raised. An article appeared in the Lancet on 15th June 1895 on the matter, which closes by saying: “The record suffices to prove that this intellectual giant must have suffered more than the world was aware of, and it can be understood that his indolence as well as his opium habit had a physical basis. It can only add to the marvel with which his achievements are justly regarded that one so physically disabled should have made such extensive and profound contributions to philosophy and literature. It is one more instance of the triumph of mind over body” (The Gillmans of Highgate, p. 35).

This physical defect was the cause of all Coleridge’s inability to execute his own ambitious schemes. As he states in his letter to Davy of 25 March 1804, he had Power minus Strength. His enfeeblement of will is attributable to the physical defect of his enlarged heart; and while he treated himself for gout and kindred ailments by taking narcotics he, of course, only increased his own inability to act. He was continually trying to drive what he felt to be an inward stomach gout to the extremities. Coleridge enjoyed, however, at rare intervals, some happy spells of health duly recorded in his letters. He seems to have been best while climbing hills and bathing in the dry, hard air of the East Coast. His ascent of the Brocken, his long walk in the Scottish Highlands in 1803, in which he accomplished 263 miles in 8 days (Letter Col. Mem. i, 7, quoted in Dyke Campbell’s Edition of the Poems, 631), and other hill walks seemed to inspire him with a new life. He has given an account of the effects of mountain climbing on him in his letter to Tom Wedgwood of 14th January 1803, and this is one of his most surprising letters.

Coleridge made a great mistake, however—labouring under the impression that his ailment was gout—of choosing warm and slumberous climates for his health-recruiting spheres. Malta did him no good, for he had an intellectual affinity for the sunshine, for the land of the Lotus. In fact, Coleridge’s addiction to opium was temperamental as well as acquired. He contracted the habit to deaden pain, it is true; but his nature was of an Asiatic cast. He had in his infancy, as he tells us, been brought up on the Arabian Nights, and his mind had been habituated to the Vast (Letter 4). Joined to a dreaminess of imagination was the love of warm climatic associations betraying the Asiatic temperament. Kubla Khan, with its slumberous melody and vague music, embodies the Asiatic sentiment. We feel in reading it on the borders of the Buddhistic territory. To those endowed with such a temperament the opium habit is easy to fall into; their dreamy soul is the seed-bed on which it fastens. Indolence, Procrastination, vast ambitions, unachieved accomplishments are the results: and we have in Coleridge and his brother genius, Amiel, two examples in the Western world of the Asiatic Genius, one terminating his career in opium and the other in the Malady of the Ideal. Both endeavoured to push beyond the limitations of Humanity. “Man can destroy the harmony of his being in two ways,” says Chateaubriand, Coleridge’s great French contemporary and brother Romanticist, “by wishing to love too much and by wishing to know too much” (Genius of Christianity, 1st Part, III, chap. iii). Coleridge and Amiel have this fault in common; it is one of the defects of their qualities.]