Sonnets I will send you with the "Musings". God love you!

From your affectionate friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.]

Shortly afterwards, mistaking the object of a message from Mr. Cottle
for an application for "copy" for the press, Coleridge wrote the
following letter with reference to the painful subject:



LETTER 25

Redcliff Hill, February 22, 1796.

My dear Sir,

It is my duty and business to thank God for all his dispensations, and
to believe them the best possible; but, indeed, I think I should have
been more thankful, if He had made me a journeyman shoemaker, instead of
an author by trade. I have left my friends; I have left plenty; I have
left that ease which would have secured a literary immortality, and have
enabled me to give to the public works conceived in moments of
inspiration, and polished with leisurely solicitude; and, alas! for what
have I left them? For--who deserted me in the hour of distress, and for
a scheme of virtue impracticable and romantic! So I am forced to write
for bread--write the flights of poetic enthusiasm, when every minute I
am hearing a groan from my wife! Groans, and complaints, and sickness!
The present hour I am in a quick-set hedge of embarrassment, and,