"Stowey,
My dear Cottle,
I feel it much, and very uncomfortable, that, loving you as a brother, and feeling pleasure in pouring out my heart to you, I should so seldom be able to write a letter to you, unconnected with business, and uncontaminated with excuses and apologies. I give every moment I can spare from my garden and the Reviews (i. e.) from my potatoes and meat to the poem, (Religious Musings) but I go on slowly, for I torture the poem and myself with corrections; and what I write in an hour, I sometimes take two or three days in correcting. You may depend on it, the poem and prefaces will take up exactly the number of pages I mentioned, and I am extremely anxious to have the work as perfect as possible, and which I cannot do, if it be finished immediately. The "Religious Musings" I have altered monstrously, since I read them to you and received your criticisms. I shall send them to you in my next. The Sonnets I will send you with the Musings. God love you!
From your affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge."
Mr. Coleridge at this time meditated the printing of two volumes of his poems. He thus expresses his intention.
"I mean to have none but large poems in the second volume; none under three hundred lines; therefore I have crowded all my little pieces into this."
He speaks in the same letter, of two poems which I never saw. Perhaps they were composed in his own mind, but never recorded on paper; a practice which Mr. C. sometimes adopted. He thus writes. "The 'Nativity' is not quite three hundred lines. It has cost me much labour in polishing; more than any poem I ever wrote, and I believe deserves it more. The epistle to Tom. Poole, which will come with the 'Nativity,' is I think one of my most pleasing compositions."
In a letter of Mr. C. dated from Stowey, Mr. Coleridge also says, "I have written a Ballad of three hundred lines, and also a plan of general study." It appeared right to make these statements, and it is hoped the productions named may still be in existence.
Mr. Coleridge now finding it difficult to superintend the press at so great a distance as Stowey, and that it interfered also with his other literary engagements, he resolved once more to remove to Bristol, the residence of so many friends; and to that city he repaired, the beginning of 1796. A conviction now also rested on his mind, as there was the prospect of an increase in his family, that he must bestir himself, and effectually call his resolutions into exercise. Soon after he was fairly settled, he sent me the following letter.