ABSTRACT
365Before passing to the letter which this of Mr. Wedgwood’s at length elicited from S. T. Coleridge, it is interesting to hear what Poole says of him and his increased habits of procrastination. His and Coleridge’s letters were both written on the same day. ‘I should have written to you a few days ago,’ wrote Poole to Mr. Wedgwood, at that date in London, ‘but I was willing that Coleridge should write before me, or at the time I did. He has been with me for these three weeks, with Mrs. Coleridge and his Children; but the last three or four days he passed at Aisholt, with Mr. Price, from which Place, I find, he wrote you 366a letter, which I hope you have received. I admire him and pity him more than ever. His information is much extended, the great qualities of his mind heightened and better disciplined; but alas! his health is weaker, and his great failing procrastination, or the incapability of acting agreeably to his Wish and Will, much increased. Where a Man has such a Heaven in his own Mind he is averse to exercise the Body; and if the Body is weak it has little power over the Mind. The tide of life which gives joy does not exist; there is in such a Being little reciprocity of action between Body and Soul. But the worst of all is this—that, for want of such corporeal exercise, the weak Body gets weaker and weaker, till it is finally shook off, and then we lament; for the only medium by which we could communicate with such a spirit in this World, and through which such a Spirit could be useful to us, is destroyed. Heaven grant that Coleridge may be an exception to this sort of necessity attending such Men.
