518. To A. Welles

MS. New York Public Lib. Pub. E. L. G. i. 276. The condition of the manuscript indicates that it is a rough draft of the letter sent to Welles. Obviously Coleridge was pleased with his letter, for he told Southey: 'I was very much amused by Welles's Letter -- & have written him a droll one enough in returnof which, if I am not too lazy, I will take a Copy.' Letter 519.

Welles's letter, which drew forth Coleridge's reply, reads in part: 'It is seldom that I feel more satisfaction in any action than I do in the one I am now ingaged in. A letter from Dr. Beddoes yesterday informed me you were gouty -- he need not have added that you wished to be cured -- for I should have supposed it. I have in my possession a kind of Nectar / for it removes pain, & of course promotes pleasure -- & may in the end immortalize -- me / which I freely offer to you. I will further add the prediction, founded on experience, that you may be relieved from the gout, & your general health improved into the bargain. For confirmation of this you may consult Sir Wilfred Lawson Bart. Brayton Hall Cockermouth, who is near you.'

Tuesday: Feb. [September] 13. 1803. Edinburgh

Dear Sir

I have, but even now, received your very obliging Letter, which comforted as well as amused me. I will give the medicine the fullest, and fairest Trial, yield the most implicit obedience to your Instructions, and add to both every possible attention to Diet and Exercise. My Disorder I believe to be atonic Gout: my Sufferings are often sufficiently great by day; but by patience, effort of mind, and hard walking I can contrive to keep the Fiend at arm's length, as long as I am in possession of Reason & Will. But with Sleep my Horrors commence; & they are such, three nights out of four, as literally to stun the intervening Day, so that more often than otherwise I fall asleep, struggling to remain awake. Believe me, Sir! Dreams are no Shadows with me; but the real, substantial miseries of Life. If in consequence of your Medicine I should be at length delivered from these sore Visitations, my greatest uneasiness will then [be], how best & most fully I can evince my gratitude: -should I commence Preacher, raise a new Sect to your honor, & make, in short, a greater clamour in your favor, as the Antipodagra, 'that was to come, and is already in the world', than ever the Puritans did against the poor Pope, as the Antichrist -- Ho! all ye, who are heavy laden -- come, and draw waters of Healing from the Wells of Salvation. This in my own opinion I might say without impiety, for if to clear men's body [bodies] from Torture, Lassitude & Captivity, their understandings from mists & broodings, & their very hearts & souls from despair, if to enable them to go about their Duty steadily & quietly, to love God, & be chearful -- if all this be not a work of Salvation, I would fain be informed, what is. --

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Or I have thought of becoming theorizing Physician of demonstrations, (for that is the fashionable word) that all Diseases are to be arranged under Gout, as the Genus generalissimum / that all our faulty Laws, Regulations, national mismanagements, Rebellions, Invasions, Heresies, Seditions, not to mention public Squabbles & commissions of Bankruptcies have originated in the false Trains of Ideas introduced by diseased Sensations from the Stomach into the Brains of our Senators, Priests, & Merchants -- of our great & little men / hence to deduce, that all Diseases being Gout & your M. curing the G. your medicine must cure all Diseases -- then, joining party with Thomas Taylor, the Pagan (for whom I have already a sneaking affection on account of his devout Love of Greek) to re-introduce the Heathen Mythology, to detect in your per[son] another descent & metamorphosis of the God of the Sun, to erect a Temple to you, as Phoebo Sanatori; & if you have a Wife, to have her deified, by act of Parliament, under the name of the Nymph, Panacea. But probably it would not be agreeable to you to be taken up, like the Tibetan Delha Llama [Dalai Lama], and to be imprisoned during life  * for a God. You would rather, I doubt not, find your deserved reward in an ample independent fortune, & your sublunary Immortalization in the praises, & thanks of good and sensible men: of all who have suffered in themselves or for others. -- And in sober earnest, my dear Sir! (dropping All Joke, to which your lively & enlivening Letter has led me) to this last reward I shall be most happy to become instrumental, by being first a proof, & ever after an evidence & zealous Witnesser, of the powers & virtues of your discovery. -- I leave Edinburgh tomorrow morning, having walked 263 miles in eight days in the hope of forcing the Disease into the extremities: & if the Coachman does not put an end to all my earthly Ills by breaking my neck, I shall be at Greta Hall, Keswick, Thursday Afternoon -- at which place I shall wait, with respectful Impatience, for a Letter & Parcel from you. In the mean time, dear Sir! accept the best Thanks & warmest wishes

of your obliged & grateful | humble Servant S. T. Coleridge
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* 	P.S. Great & well-founded however as your objection may be to my proposed national apotheosis of your Person, yet as whatever, Verse or Prose, I write hereafter, would be chiefly owing to the cure by you performed, at all events 'eris mihi magnus Apollo.['] -- [Note by S. T. C.]

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