Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

416 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
the admirable Christopher gave his suffrage or not,
none of these projects seems to have come to light in
the Magazine.
Some time later Coleridge again appears, this time
in the character of a peace-maker. The person on
whose behalf he interferes was, I imagined, the poet
Proctor, otherwise Barry Cornwall ; but it appears
now more probable that it was F. Hardman, who
seems to have been supposed to be guilty of putting
forth as original the English translation of a German
work already known. But the interest of the letter
is in its statements about himself. We ascertain
from the postmark that it was sent from Highgate,
May 15, 1830:—
S. T. Coleridge to W. Blackvjood.
Within a few days after the receipt of your letter enclosing
an order for £10 on Messrs Cadell—which I have destroyed,
it being against one of my rules to receive payment for work
not delivered, having learnt from experience that by making
me feel uneasy and bound it would be more likely to prevent
than to expedite the execution, not the less however thanking
you for the kindness intended,—within a few days from this,
I say, the Illness commenced which, in a succession of relapses
so close to each other as to form one chain of distemper, has
conducted me to the very brink of the grave, through sufferings
that removed all horror from the anticipation ; and seems (so
my anxious friends hope and wish to believe) to have reached
its height and crisis in an attack during sleep: the sum of
which is, that a noise of some heavy body falling having
alarmed one of the servants then on the stairs, I was found
on the floor pulseless and senseless, and continued thus about
half an hour, when animation was restored, chiefly, I believe,
by means of mustard-plasters applied to the chest and abdomen.
But there was no appearance of convulsion, the expression of
the countenance tranquil, and all my faculties returned entire,