I never had any ambition, and now, I trust I have almost as little vanity.
For five months past my mind has been strangely shut up. I have taken the paper with the intention to write to you many times, but it has been one blank feeling;—one blank idealess feeling. I had nothing to say;—could say nothing. How dearly I love you, my very dreams make known to me. I will not trouble you with the gloomy tale of my health. When I am awake, by patience, employment, effort of mind, and walking, I can keep the Fiend at arm's length, but the night is my Hell!—sleep my tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four, I fall asleep, struggling to lie awake, and my frequent night-screams have almost made me a nuisance in my own house. Dreams with me are no shadows, but the very calamities of my life….
In the hope of drawing the gout, if gout it should be, into my feet, I walked previously to my getting into the coach at Perth, 263 miles, in eight days, with no unpleasant fatigue; and if I could do you any service by coming to town, and there were no coaches, I would undertake to be with you, on foot in seven days. I must have strength somewhere. My head is equally strong: my limbs too are strong: but acid or not acid, gout or not gout, something there is in my stomach….
To diversify this dusky letter, I will write an Epitaph, which I composed in my sleep for myself while dreaming that I was dying. To the best of my recollection I have not altered a word.
'Here sleeps at length poor Col. and without screaming
Who died, as he had always lived, a dreaming:
Shot dead, while sleeping, by the gout within,
Alone, and all unknown, at E'nbro' in an Inn.'
It was Tuesday night last, at the 'Black Bull,' Edinburgh. Yours, dear
Wedgewood, gratefully, and
Most affectionately,
S. T. Coleridge.
Thomas Wedgewood, Esq."
"16, Abingdon Street, Westminster, Jan. 1804.