_Mr. Coleridge to John Murray_.

_August_ 31, 1814.

Dear Sir,

I have received your letter. Considering the necessary labour, and (from
the questionable nature of the original work, both as to its fair claims
to Fame--the diction of the good and wise according to unchanging
principles--and as to its chance for Reputation, as an accidental result
of local and temporary taste), the risk of character on the part of the
Translator, who will assuredly have to answer for any disappointment of
the reader, the terms proposed are humiliatingly low; yet such as, under
modifications, I accede to. I have received testimonials from men not
merely of genius according to my belief, but of the highest accredited
reputation, that my translation of "Wallenstein" was in language and in
metre superior to the original, and the parts most admired were
substitutions of my own, on a principle of compensation. Yet the whole
work went for waste-paper. I was abused--nay, my own remarks in the
Preface were transferred to a Review, as the Reviewer's sentiments
_against_ me, without even a hint that he had copied them from my own
Preface. Such was the fate of "Wallenstein"! And yet I dare appeal to
any number of men of Genius--say, for instance, Mr. W. Scott, Mr.
Southey, Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Sotheby, Sir G. Beaumont, etc.,
whether the "Wallenstein" with all its defects (and it has grievous
defects), is not worth all Schiller's other plays put together. But I
wonder not. It was _too_ good, and not good enough; and the advice of
the younger Pliny: "Aim at pleasing either _all_, or _the few,"_ is as
prudentially good as it is philosophically accurate. I wrote to Mr.
Longman before the work was published, and foretold its fate, even to a