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.
S. T. Coleridge."
The receipt of this letter filled me with the most poignant grief; much for the difficulties to which Mr. C. was reduced, but still more for the cause. In one letter, indignantly spurning the contributions of his "club of subscribers to his poverty;" and in his next, (three days afterwards) earnestly soliciting this assistance! The victorious bearer away of University prizes, now bent down to the humiliating desire of keeping a day school, for a morsel of bread! The man, whose genius has scarcely been surpassed, proposing to "attend" scholars, "children or adults," and to bolster up his head, at night, in "cheap lodgings!" Oppressed with debt, contracted by expending that money on opium, which should have been paid to his impoverished friend; and this, at a moment, when, for the preceding dozen years, if he had called his mighty intellect into exercise, the "world" would have been "all before him, where to choose his place of rest." But at this time he preferred, to all things else, the Circean chalice!
These remarks have reluctantly been forced from me; and never would they have passed the sanctuary of my own breast, but to call on every consumer of the narcotic poison, who fancies, perchance, that in the taking of opium there is pleasure only and no pain, to behold in this memorable example, the inevitable consequences, which follow that "accursed practice!" Property consumed! health destroyed! independence bartered; respectability undermined; family concord subverted! that peace sacrificed, which forms so primary an ingredient in man's cup of happiness!—a deadly war with conscience! and the very mind of the unhappy votary, (whilst the ethereal spirit of natural affection generally escapes! despoiled of its best energies).
I venture the more readily on these reflections, from the hope of impressing some young delinquents, who are beginning to sip the "deadly poison;" little aware that no habit is so progressive, and that he who begins with the little, will rapidly pass on to the much! I am also additionally urged to these mournful disclosures, from their forming one portion only, of Mr. Coleridge's life. It has been my unenviable lot, to exhibit my friend in his lowest points of depression; conflicting with unhallowed practices, and, as the certain consequence, with an accusing conscience.
Most rejoiced should I have been, had my opportunities and acquaintance with Mr. Coleridge continued, to have traced the gradual development into action, of those better principles which were inherent in his mind. This privilege is reserved for a more favoured biographer; and it now remains only for me, in a closing remark, to state, that, had I been satisfied that the money Mr. C. required, would have been expended in lawful purposes, I would have supplied him, (without being an affluent man) to the utmost of his requirements, and not by dividing the honour with others, or receiving his writings in pledge! But, knowing that whatever monies he received would, assuredly, be expended in opium, COMPASSION STAYED MY HAND.
In my reply to his second letter, by "return of post," I enclosed Mr. C. another five pounds: urged him in a kind letter, to come immediately to Bristol, where myself and others, would do all that could be done, to advise and assist him. I told him at the same time, that, when I declined the business of a bookseller, I for ever quitted publishing, so that I could not receive his MSS. valuable as they doubtless were; but I reminded him, that as his merits were now appreciated by the public, the London booksellers would readily enter into a treaty, and remunerate him liberally. Mr. Coleridge returned no answer to my letter; came not to Bristol, but went in the next spring to London, as I learned indirectly: and I now await a narrative of the latter periods of Mr. C.'s life, and particularly the perusal of his "posthumous works," with a solicitude surpassed by none.
I mentioned before that from my intimate knowledge of Mr. Coleridge's sentiments and character, no doubt could be entertained by me, of its being Mr. C.'s earnest wish, in order to exhibit to his successors the pernicious consequences of opium, that, when called from this world, the fullest publicity should be given to its disastrous effects on himself. But whatever confidence existed in my own mind, it might be, I well knew, no easy task, to inspire, with the same assurance, some of his surviving friends; so that I have been compelled to argue the point, and to show, to those who shrunk from such disclosures, that Mr. Coleridge's example was intimately combined with general utility, and that none ought to regret a faithful narration of, (unquestionably) the great bane of his life, since it presented a conspicuous example, which might arrest the attention, and operate as a warning to many others.