Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Highgate, to Joseph Henry Green, 1833 April 25 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying that Green's letter was a partial comfort to him because it gave him "a definite object to my Prayers, and blended some warmth and light of Love with the mist and fog of self-concerning fear and heaviness [...] For this is one of the worst afflictions of long continued Sickness, that all our reproachful Recollections and gloomy Fancies eddy round and round the Thought, and under the name and form of SELF (because we dare not derive them from God) acquire a phantom unity, a pseudo-hypostasis"; speculating about the causes of an epidemic (probably of influenza, mentioned in the previous letter MA 1856.42) and asking "may we suppose, that in it's long Journey over the vast Steppes, the enormous Depressions, Moon-holes, and Dead Seas of Scytho-tartar Asia it has been freighted with contraband waves of more specific quality? Ex. gr. with nitrous Salts in infinitesimal subdivision?"; adding "I remember at Malta a drying wind that made the wooden Window-shutters, the Tables, the very Tea-caddies split and go off as Pistols. But it produced no effects on the Health. On the other hand, the occasional wind from the Barbary Coast, loaded with Sand so subtle that the Maltese believe that it passes thro' Glass, produced complaints on the head, eyes, chest and mucous membrane that bore no distant analogy to the symptoms of the present Fever"; saying that John Sterling will be paying him a call that day and he will ask him to stop at Green's and find out how they are doing: "Need I say, in what anxiety I must remain till I hear of your assured Convalescence? Would not 3 or 4 of your Namesake's [referring to the physician Jonathan Green] Caloric Baths be a probable Clearer off, & Preventive of Relapse?"; mentioning that there is a lectureship vacant in Enfield that James Gillman Jr. is a candidate for and asking, on behalf of Mrs. Gillman, if Green knows a "Mr Holt, a medical Man there"; asking further if Green could "interest [Holt] in favor of James, who by favor of the Vicar is to read & preach there, as probationary. You might call him a theological Protégé of mine --"; reporting "I am myself as usual -- only that my Teeth are worse & worse, & distemper my left eye"; sending his love and sympathy to Anne Green and adding "You seal your two last Notes with black wax -- God bless you!"