6th May, 1796.

My very dear Friend,

The heart is a little relieved, when vexation converts itself into anger. But from this privilege I am utterly precluded by my own epistolary sins and negligences. Yet in very troth thou must be a hard-hearted fellow to let me trot for four weeks together every Thursday to the Bear Inn—to receive no letter. I have sometimes thought that Milton the carrier did not deliver my last parcel, but he assures me he did.

This morning I received a truly fraternal letter from your brother Richard of Sherborne, containing good and acceptable advice. He deems my "Religious Musings" "too metaphysical for common readers." I answer—the poem was not written for common readers. In so miscellaneous a collection as I have presented to the Public, "singula cuique" should be the motto. There are, however, instances of vicious affectation in the phraseology of that poem;—"unshudder'd, unaghasted", for example. ("Not in the poem now".) Good writing is produced more effectually by rapidly glancing the language as it already exists than by a hasty recourse to the mint of invention. The "Religious Musings" has more mind than the Introduction of B. II. of "Joan of Arc", ("Destiny of Nations", Poet. W. I. p. 98) but its versification is not equally rich. It has more passages of sublimity, but it has not that diffused air of severe dignity which characterizes my epic slice. Have I estimated my own performances rightly? …

With regard to my own affairs they are as bad as the most rampant philo-despot could wish in the moment of cursing. After No. XII I shall cease to cry the state of the political atmosphere. It is not pleasant, Thomas Poole, to have worked fourteen weeks for nothing—for nothing; nay, to have given to the Public in addition to that toil, £45. When I began the Watchman I had £40 worth of paper given to me; yet with this I shall not have received a farthing at the end of the quarter. To be sure I have been somewhat fleeced and over-reached by my London publisher. In short, my tradesmen's bills for "The Watchman", including what paper I have bought since the seventh number, the printing, etc., amount exactly to £5 more than the whole of my receipts. "O Watchman, thou hast watched in vain!"—said the Prophet Ezekiel, when, I suppose, he was taking a prophetic glimpse of my sorrow-sallowed cheeks.

My plans are reduced to two;—the first unpracticable,—the second not likely to succeed.

Plan 1. I am studying German, and in about six weeks shall be able to read that language with tolerable fluency. Now I have some thoughts of making a proposal to Robinson, the great London bookseller, of translating all the works of Schiller, which would make a portly quarto, on condition that he should pay my journey and my wife's to and from Jena, a cheap German University where Schiller resides, and allow me two guineas each quarto sheet, which would maintain me. If I could realize this scheme, I should there study chemistry and anatomy, and bring over with me all the works of Semler and Michaelis, the German theologians, and of Kant, the great German metaphysician. On my return I would commence a school for either young men at £105 each, proposing to perfect them in the following studies in this order:—1. Man as an Animal;—including the complete knowledge of anatomy, chemistry, mechanics, and optics:—2. Man as an intellectual Being;—including the ancient metaphysics, the system of Locke and Hartley—of the Scotch philosophers—and the new Kantean system:—3. Man as a Religious Being;—including an historic summary of all religions, and of the arguments for and against natural and revealed religion. Then proceeding from the individual to the aggregate of individuals, and disregarding all chronology, except that of mind, I should perfect them: 1—in the history of savage tribes; 2—of semi-barbarous nations; 3—of nations emerging from semi-barbarism; 4—of civilized states; 5—of luxurious states; 6—of revolutionary states; 7—of colonies. During these studies I should intermix the knowledge of languages, and instruct my scholars in "belles lettres", and the principles of composition.

Now, seriously, do you think that one of my scholars, thus perfected, would make a better senator than perhaps any one member in either of our Houses?—Bright bubbles of the age—ebullient brain! Gracious Heaven! that a scheme so big with advantage to this kingdom—therefore to Europe—therefore to the world—should be demolishable by one monosyllable from a bookseller's mouth!

My second plan is to become a Dissenting Minister, and adjure politics and casual literature. Preaching for hire is not right; because it must prove a strong temptation to continue to profess what I may have ceased to believe, "if ever" maturer judgment with wider and deeper reading should lessen or destroy my faith in Christianity. But though not right in itself, it may become right by the greater wrongness of the only alternative—the remaining in neediness and uncertainty. That in the one case I should be exposed to temptation is a mere contingency; that under necessitous circumstances I am exposed to great and frequent temptations is a melancholy certainty.

Write, my dear Poole! or I will crimp all the rampant Billingsgate of
Burke to abuse you. Count Rumford is being reprinted.

God bless you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

On Friday, the 13th of May, 1796, the tenth and last number of "The Watchman" appeared—the Author having wisely accelerated the termination of a hopeless undertaking, the plan of which was as injudicious as the execution of it by him for any length of time impracticable. Of the 324 pages, of which "The Watchman" consists, not more than a hundred contain original matter by Coleridge, and this is perhaps more remarkable as a test of the marvellous spring of his mind almost immediately afterwards than for any very striking merit of its own. Still, however, the nascent philosopher may be discovered in parts; and the Essay on the Slave Trade, in the fourth number, may be justly distinguished as comprising a perfect summary of the arguments applicable on either side of that question.

In the meantime Mr. Poole had been engaged in circulating a proposal amongst a few common friends for purchasing a small annuity and presenting it to Mr. Coleridge. The plan was not in fact carried into execution;[1] but it was communicated to Mr. C. by Mr. Poole, and the following letter refers to it:—

[Footnote 1: An error. A subscription annuity of £35 or £40 was collected and paid to Coleridge in 1796 and 1797.]