This was precisely the termination I was prepared to expect. I had never
before, through my whole life refused Mr. C. an application for money;
yet I now hesitated: assured that the sum required, was not meant for the
discharge of board, (for which he paid nothing) but for the purchase of
opium, the expense of which, for years, had amounted nearly to the two
pounds ten shillings per week. Under this conviction, and after a painful
conflict, I sent Mr. C. on the next day, a friendly letter, declining his
request in the kindest manner I could, but enclosing a five pound note.
It happened that my letter to Mr. Coleridge passed on the road, another
letter from him to myself, far more harrowing than the first. This was
the _last_ letter ever received from Mr. C.
The following is Mr. Coleridge's second letter.
"Calne, Wiltshire, March 10, 1815.
My dear Cottle,
I have been waiting with the greatest uneasiness for a letter from you.
My distresses are impatient rather than myself: inasmuch as for the last
five weeks, I know myself to be a burden on those to whom I am under
great obligations: who would gladly do all for me; _but who have done all
they can!_ Incapable of any exertion in this state of mind, I have now
written to Mr. Hood, and have at length bowed my heart down, to beg that
four or five of those, who I had reason to believe, were interested in my
welfare, would raise the sum I mentioned, between them, should you not
find it convenient to do it. Manuscript poems, equal to one volume of 230
to 300 pages, being sent to them immediately. If not, I must instantly
dispose of all my poems, fragments and all, for whatever I can get from
the first rapacious bookseller, that will give anything--and then try to
get my livelihood where I am, by receiving, or waiting on day-pupils,
children, or adults, but even this I am unable to wait for without some
assistance: for I cannot but with consummate baseness, throw the expenses
of my lodging and boarding for the last five or six weeks on those, who
must injure and embarrass themselves in order to pay them. The 'Friend'
has been long out of print, and its re-publication has been called for by
numbers.
Indeed from the manner in which it was first circulated, it is little
less than a new work. To make it a complete and circular work, it needs
but about eight or ten papers. This I could, and would make over to you
at once in full copy-right, and finish it outright, with no other delay
than that of finishing a short and temperate Treatise on the Corn Laws,
and their national and moral effects; which had I even twenty pounds only
to procure myself a week's ease of mind, I could have printed before the
bill had passed the Lords. At all events let me hear by return of post. I
am confident that whether you take the property of my Poems, or of my
Prose Essays, in pledge, you cannot eventually lose the money.
As soon as I can, I shall leave Calne for Bristol, and if I can procure
any day pupils, shall immediately take cheap lodgings near you. My plan
is to have twenty pupils, ten youths or adults, and ten boys. To give the
latter three hours daily, from eleven o'clock to two, with exception of
the usual school vacations, in the Elements of English, Greek, and Latin,
presenting them exercises for their employment during the rest of the
day, and two hours every evening to the adults (that is from sixteen and
older) on a systematic plan of general knowledge; and I should hope that
£15 a year, would not be too much to ask from each, which excluding
Sundays and two vacations, would be little more than a shilling a day, or
six shillings a week, for forty-two weeks.
To this I am certain I could attend with strictest regularity, or indeed
to any thing mechanical.
But composition is no voluntary business. The very necessity of doing it
robs me of the power of doing it. Had I been possessed of a tolerable
competency, I should have been a voluminous writer. But I cannot, as is
feigned of the Nightingale, sing with my breast against a thorn. God
bless you,
Saturday, Midnight.