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.