Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, London, to Sir George Beaumont, 1808 February 18 : autograph manuscript signed.

Concerning his health and the weeks he has been ill; saying he has been confined to his bed and "In my pain I earnestly wish to die - and in my best hours the only odor of Hope, that remains at the bottom of my Pandora Casket, is a relaxation of that wish - a passiveness of Life - the continuance of which to any useful purpose I have as little reason to expect, as, for any pleasurable end, to desire, I have written this, most reluctantly; but the instinct not wholly to lose the kind thoughts of the two or three, whom in my heart's heart I revere, still works and will be obeyed. Proofs of this feeling, tho' for the greater part fragmentary or not fully polished, will be found by those who may examine my manuscripts when I am no more;" relating, at length and in detail, the news that Henry Hutchinson, brother of Sara Hutchinson & Mary Hutchinson Wordsworth, "was captured in the Betsy and taken in to Guadeloupe - there a prisoner for 3 months - thence exchanged & sent to Antigua;" relating further news of his release, subsequent travels and misadventures and a second imprisonment for 4 months in Vera Cruz after which he was exchanged and sent home to Plymouth; recounting how much Henry Hutchinson has suffered; saying "He has done enough - he has suffered enough. - And to me it is as if it were my own child - far more than if it were myself - for he is the Brother of the two Beings, whom of all on Earth I most highly honor, most fervently love;" asking for his help in securing his "Liberation;" adding, in a postscript, that he has "...been so exceedingly ill, that I have been able to do nothing - save that I have only to write a concluding Paragraph to a moral & political Defence of the Copenhagen Business. I shall dismay many friends - but I do it from my conscience. What other motive have I?"