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, etc. 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 perseverence 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.
Before Coleridge left for Malta, Humphry Davy wrote the following beautiful letter to Coleridge, and Coleridge replied in a letter equally beautiful in its self-portraiture.
Royal Institution, Twelve o'clock, Monday.
My dear Coleridge,
My mind is disturbed, and my body harassed by many labours; yet I cannot suffer you to depart, without endeavouring to express to you some of the unbroken and higher feelings of my spirit, which have you at once for their cause and object.
Years have passed since we first met; and your presence, and recollections in regard to you, have afforded me continued sources of enjoyment. Some of the better feelings of my nature have been elevated by your converse; and thoughts which you have nursed, have been to me an eternal source of consolation.
In whatever part of the world you are, you will often live with me, not as a fleeting idea, but as a recollection possessed of creative energy,—as an imagination winged with fire, inspiring and rejoicing.
You must not live much longer without giving to all men the proof of power, which those who know you feel in admiration. Perhaps at a distance from the applauding and censuring murmurs of the world, you will be best able to execute those great works which are justly expected from you: you are to be the historian of the philosophy of feeling. Do not in any way dissipate your noble nature! Do not give up your birthright!