Affectionately,
I have to prepare my lecture. Oh! with how blank a spirit![84]
Cottle did not give his sanction to this proposal; but, on the contrary, wrote to Southey detailing what he had discovered about Coleridge, and requesting Southey’s opinion. Southey wrote without delay advising other measures. Southey had been fully cognizant of the consumption of opium and laudanum, and says the Morgans had at one time broken him of the habit when his consumption was from two quarts a week to a pint a day (Rem., 373). It is difficult to credit that any one, even habituated to the drug, could consume this quantity; but Southey evidently believed it. An ordinary dose of laudanum is 30 drops. 480 drops form an ounce, and there are 20 ounces in a pint. This makes 320 doses in a pint; and this, taken within twenty-four hours, would not give a patient time to wake up out of his stupor, even though administered by other hands, to take the successive draughts. Southey recommended that Coleridge should go and visit Poole at Stowey for a few weeks; then come on to Keswick by way of Birmingham and Liverpool, and deliver lectures at these places to raise funds. In answer to a second letter by Cottle to Southey proposing to get up an annuity among Coleridge’s friends to enable him to prosecute some of his projects, Southey threw cold water on the scheme; and Cottle says that Coleridge’s repugnance to visit Greta Hall and apply his talents in the way suggested by Southey was invincible; neither would he visit Poole, nor lecture at Birmingham nor Liverpool. To this Mr. Hall Caine says: “My strong conviction is that the chief bugbear for Coleridge at Greta Hall was none other than Southey himself.” (Life of Coleridge, 126.)
Cottle, having been taken ill after his correspondence with Southey, was prohibited intercourse with friends. “During my illness,” says Cottle, “Mr. Coleridge sent my sister the following letter and the succeeding one to myself.”
Letter 161. To Miss Cottle
13th May, 1814.
Dear Madam,
I am uneasy to know how my friend, J. Cottle, goes on. The walk I took last Monday to enquire, 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 cannot 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. To God all things are possible. I intreat your prayers, your brother has a share in mine.
What an astonishing privilege, that a sinner should be permitted to cry, “Our Father!” Oh, still more stupendous mercy, that this poor ungrateful sinner should be exhorted, invited, nay, commanded, to pray—to pray importunately. That which great men most detest, namely, importunacy; to this the Giver and the Forgiver Encourages his sick petitioners!
I will not trouble you except for one verbal answer to this note. How is your brother?