LETTER 29. TO MR. POOLE.

11th April, 1796.

My dear, very dear Friend,

I have sent the 5th, 6th, and part of the 7th Number--all as yet
printed. Your censures are all right: I wish your praises were equally
so. The Essay on Fasts I am ashamed of. It was conceived in the spirit,
and clothed in the harsh scoffing, of an Infidel. You wish to have one
long essay;--so should I wish; but so do not my subscribers wish. I feel
the perplexities of my undertaking increase daily. In London and Bristol
"The Watchman" is read for its original matter,--the news and debates
barely tolerated. The people of Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham,
etc., take it as a newspaper, and regard the essays and poems as
intruders unwished for and unwelcome. In short, each subscriber, instead
of regarding himself as a point in the circumference entitled to some
one diverging ray, considers me as the circumference, and himself as
the centre to which all the rays ought to converge. To tell you the
truth, I do not think "The Watchman" will succeed. Hitherto I have
scarcely sold enough to pay the expenses;--no wonder, when I tell you
that on the 200 which Parsons in Paternoster Row sells weekly, he gains
eight shillings more than I do. Nay, I am convinced that at the end of
the half year he will have cleared considerably more by his 200 than I
by the proprietorship of the whole work.

Colson has been indefatigable in my service, and writes with such zeal
for my interests, and such warmth of sorrow for my sufferings, as if he
wrote with fire and tears. God bless him! I wish above all things to