You have poured oil in the raw and festering Wound of an old friend's Conscience, Cottle! but it is oil of Vitriol! I but barely glanced at the middle of the first page of your Letter, & have seen no more of it--not from resentment (God forbid!) but from the state of my bodily & mental sufferings, that scarcely permitted human fortitude to let in a new visitor of affliction. The object of my present reply is to state the case just as it is--first, that for years the anguish of my spirit has been indescribable, the sense of my danger staring, but the conscience of my GUILT worse, far far worse than all!--I have prayed with drops of agony on my Brow, trembling not only before the Justice of my Maker, but even before the Mercy of my Redeemer. ``I gave thee so many Talents. What hast thou done with them''?--Secondly--that it is false & cruel to say, (overwhelmed as I am with the sense of my direful Infirmity) that I attempt or ever have attempted to disguise or conceal the cause. On the contrary, not only to friends have I stated the whole Case with tears & the very bitterness of shame; but in two instances I have warned young men, mere acquaintances who had spoken of having taken Laudanum, of the direful Consequences, by an ample exposition of it's tremendous effects on myself--Thirdly, tho' before God I dare not lift up my eyelids, & 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 had been almost bed-ridden for many months with swellings in my knees--in a medical Journal I unhappily met with an account of a cure performed in a similar case (or what to me appeared so) by rubbing in of 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--& this continued for near a fortnight--At length, the unusual Stimulus subsided--the complaint returned--the supposed remedy was recurred to----but I can not go thro' the dreary history--suffice it to say, that effects were produced, which acted on me by Terror & Cowardice of PAIN & sudden Death, not (so help me God!) by any temptation of Pleasure, or expectation or desire of exciting pleasurable Sensations. On the very contrary, Mrs Morgan & her Sister will bear witness so far, as to say that the longer I abstained, the higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyments--till the moment, the direful moment, arrived, when my pulse began to fluctuate, my Heart to palpitate, & such a dreadful falling-abroad, as it were, of my whole frame, such intolerable Restlessness & incipient Bewilderment, that in the last of my several attempts to abandon the dire poison, I exclaimed in agony, what I now repeat in seriousness & solemnity--``I am too poor to hazard this! Had I but a few hundred Pounds, but 200 £, half to send to Mrs Coleridge, & half to place myself in a private madhouse, where I could procure nothing but what a Physician thought proper, & 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!''--O God! how willingly would I place myself under Dr Fox in his Establishment--for my Case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement, an utter impotence of the Volition, & not of the intellectual Faculties--You bid me rouse myself--go, bid a man paralytic in both arms rub them briskly together, & that will cure him. Alas! (he would reply) that I cannot move my arms is my Complaint & my misery.--

My friend, Wade, is not at home--& I sent off all the little money, I had--or I would with this have inclosed the 10 £ received from you.--

May God bless you
&
Your affectionate &
most afflicted

S. T. Coleridge.--

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