Your very affectionate friend, S. T. COLERIDGE.[110] T. Allsop, Esq. * * * * * Hartley Coleridge had been sent by the generosity of his uncles and Poole, and other friends, to Oxford, and had gained a Fellowship at Oriel in 1819; but at the close of his probationary year forfeited his fellowship on the ground of intemperance. This calamity fell upon Coleridge with great severity. The following letters refer to it. LETTER 181. TO ALLSOP 31st July, 1820. My very dear Friend, Before I opened your letter, or rather before I gave it to my best sister, and, under God, best comforter, to open, a very heavy affliction came upon me with all the aggravations of surprise, sudden as a peal of thunder from a cloudless sky.[111] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Alas! both Mr. and Mrs. Gillman had spoken to him with all the earnestness of the fondest parents; his cousins had warned him, and I (long ago) had written to him, conjuring him to reflect with what a poisoned dagger it would arm my enemies: yea, and the phantoms that, half-_counterfeiting_, half-expounding the conscience, would persecute my sleep. My conscience indeed bears me witness, that from the time I quitted Cambridge, no human being was more indifferent to the pleasures of the table than myself, or less needed any stimulation to my spirits; and that by a most unhappy quackery, after having been almost bedrid for six months with swollen knees and other distressing symptoms of disordered digestive functions, and through that most pernicious form of ignorance, medical half-knowledge, I was _seduced_ into the use of narcotics, not secretly, but (such was my ignorance) openly and exultingly, as one who had discovered and was never weary of recommending, a grand panacea and saw not the truth till my _body_ had contracted a habit and a necessity; and that, even to the latest, my responsibility is for cowardice, and defect of fortitude, not for the least craving after gratification or pleasurable sensation of any sort, but for yielding to pain, terror, and haunting bewilderment. But this I say to _man_ only, who knows only what has been yielded not what has been resisted: before God I have but one voice--"Mercy! mercy! woe is me."--This was the sin of his nature, and this has been fostered by the culpable indulgence, at least non-interference, on my part; while, in a different quarter, contempt of the self-_interest_ he saw seduced him unconsciously into _selfishness_.