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