160 



POETRY AND POETS. 



" Secondly, overwhelmed as I am 

 with a sense of my direful infirmity, 

 I have never attempted to disguise 

 or conceal the cause. Oil the con- 

 trary, not only to friends have I 

 stated the whole case with tears, 

 and the very bitterness of shame, 

 but in two instances I have warned 

 young men, mere acquaintances, 

 who had spoken of taking laudanum, 

 of the direful consequences, by an 

 awful exposition of its tremendous 

 effects on myself. 



"Thirdly, though before God I 

 cannot lift up my eyelids, and only 

 do not despair of his mercy, because 

 to despair would be adding crime 

 to crime, yet to my fellow-men I 

 may say, that I was seduced into 

 the accursed habit ignorantly. I 

 liad been almost bedridden for many 

 months, with swellings in my knees. 

 In a medical journal, I unhappily 

 met with an account of a cure per- 

 formed in a similar case, or what 

 appeared to me so, by rubbing in 

 laudanum, at the same time taking 

 a given dose internally. It acted 

 like a charm like a miracle ! I 

 recovered the use of my limbs, of 

 my appetite, of my spirits, and this 

 continued for near a fortnight. At 

 length the unusual stimulus sub- 

 sided, the complaint returned, the 

 supposed remedy was recurred to ; 

 but I cannot go through the dreary 

 history. 



" Suffice it to say, that effects 

 were produced which acted on me 

 by terror and cowardice, of pain 

 and sudden death, not so help me 

 God by any temptation of plea- 

 sure, or expectation or desire of ex- 

 citing pleasurable sensations. On 

 the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and 

 her sister will bear witness so far 

 as to say that the longer I abstained, 

 the higher my spirits, the keener 

 my enjoyments, till the moment, 

 the direful moment arrived, when 

 my pulse began to fluctuate, my 

 heart to palpitate, and such falling 

 down as it were, of my whole frame. 



such intolerable restlessness, and 

 incipient bewilderment, that in the 

 last of my several attempts to aban- 

 don the dire poison, I exclaimed in 

 agony, which I now repeat in seri- 

 ousness and solemnity, 'I am too 

 poor to hazard this.' Had I but a 

 few hundred pounds, but two hun- 

 dred pounds, half to send Mrs. 

 Coleridge, and half to place myself 

 in a private mad-house, where I 

 could procure nothing but what a 

 physician thought proper, and 

 where a medical attendant could be 

 constantly with me for two or three 

 months (in less than that time life 

 or death would be determined), 

 then there might be hope. Now 

 there is none ! You bid me rouse 

 myself : go bid a man, paralytic in 

 both arms, to rub them briskly to- 

 gether, and that will cure him. 

 ' Alas ! ' he would reply, ' that I can- 

 not move my arms is my complaint 

 and my misery.' " 



Writing to another friend, a short 

 time after, he says, " Conceive a 

 poor miserable wretch, who for 

 many years has been attempting to 

 beat off pain by a constant recur- 

 rence to the vice that reproduces it. 

 Conceive a spirit in hell, employed 

 in tracing out for others the road 

 to that heaven from which his 

 crimes exclude him. In short, con- 

 ceive whatever is most wretched, 

 helpless, and hopeless, and you" will 

 form as tolerable a notion of my 

 state as it is possible for a good man 

 to have. I used to think the text 

 in St. James, that ' he who offends 

 in one point offends in all,' very 

 harsh ; but I now feel the awful, 

 the tremendous truth of it. In the 

 one crime of opium, what crime 

 have I not made myself guilty of! 

 Ingratitude to my Maker, and to 

 my benefactors injustice, and un- 

 natural cruelty to my poor children, 

 self- contempt for my repeated pro- 

 mise, breach, nay, too often, actual 

 falsehood." 



It is interesting to know that 



