What else relates to myself, I will write on Monday. Would to heaven you were going with me to Malta, if it were but for the voyage! With all other things I could make the passage with an unwavering mind. But without cheerings of hope, let me mention one thing; Lord Cadogan was brought to absolute despair, and hatred of life, by a stomach complaint, being now an old man. The symptoms, as stated to me, were strikingly like yours, excepting the nervous difference of the two characters; the flittering fever, &c. He was advised to reduce lean beef to a pure jelly, by Papin's digester, with as little water as could secure it from burning, and of this to take half a wine glass 10 or 14 times a day. This and nothing else. He did so. Sir George Beaumont saw, within a few weeks a letter from himself to Lord St. Asaph, in which he relates the circumstance of his perseverance in it, and rapid amelioration, and final recovery. 'I am now,' he says, 'in real good health; as good, and in as cheerful spirits as I ever was when a young man.'
May God bless you, even here,
S. T. Coleridge."
Mr. Coleridge, in the preceding letters, refers to the different states of his health. In the letter dated January, 1800, he observed, "I have my health perfectly;" and in the same letter he clearly indicates that he was no stranger to opium, by remarking, "I have a stomach sensation attached to all my thoughts, like those which succeed to the pleasurable operations of a dose of opium." I can testify, that during the four or five years in which Mr. C. resided in or near Bristol, no young man could enjoy more robust health. Dr. Carlyon[111] also, verbally stated that Mr. C; both at Cambridge, and at Gottingen, "possessed sound health." From these premises the conclusion is fair, that Mr. Coleridge's unhappy use of narcotics, which commenced thus early, was the true cause of all his maladies, his languor, his acute and chronic pains, his indigestion, his swellings, the disturbances of his general corporeal system, his sleepless nights, and his terrific dreams!
* * * * *
Extracts, concerning Mr. Coleridge, from letters of the late Thomas
Poole, Esq., to the late Thomas Wedgewood, Esq.
"Stowey, Nov. 14, 1801.
… I expect Coleridge here in a week or ten days. He has promised to spend two or three months with me. I trust this air will re-establish his health, and that I shall restore him to his family and his friends a perfect man."
"Stowey, Nov. 24, 1801.
I now expect daily to see Coleridge. He is detained I fear, by a thorn, which he unfortunately took in his heel a day or two before he wrote to me his last letter. He comes alone. As soon as he is here he shall write to you."