S. T. Coleridge."
"Sheffield, Jan. 1796.
My very dear friend,
I arrived at this place, late last night, by the mail from Nottingham, where I have been treated with kindness and friendship, of which I can give you but a faint idea. I preached a charity sermon there last sunday; I preached in colored clothes. With regard to the gown at Birmingham (of which you inquire) I suffered myself to be over-persuaded:—first of all, my sermon being of so political a tendency, had I worn my blue coat, it would have impugned Edwards. They would have said, he had stuck a political lecturer in his pulpit. Secondly,—the society is of all sorts. Unitarians, Arians, Trinitarians, &c.! and I must have shocked a multitude of prejudices. And thirdly,—there is a difference between an Inn, and a place of residence. In the first, your example, is of little consequence; in a single instance only, it ceases to operate as example; and my refusal would have been imputed to affectation, or an unaccommodating spirit. Assuredly I would not do it in a place where I intended to preach often. And even in the vestry at Birmingham, when they at last persuaded me, I told them, I was acting against my better knowledge, and should possibly feel uneasy after. So these accounts of the matter you must consider as reasons and palliations, concluding, 'I plead guilty my Lord!' Indeed I want firmness. I perceive I do. I have that within me which makes it difficult to say, No! (repeatedly) to a number of persons who seem uneasy and anxious….
My kind remembrances to Mrs. Wade. God bless her, and you, and (like a bad shilling slipped in between two guineas.)
Your faithful and affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge."
Mr. Coleridge, in the course of his extensive journey, having had to act the tradesman on rather an extended scale; conferring and settling with all the booksellers in the respective towns, as to the means of conveyance, allowance, remittances, &c. he thus wrote in a dejected mood, to his friend Mr. Wade,—an unpropitious state of mind for a new enterprise, and very different from those sanguine hopes which he had expressed on other occasions.
"My dear friend,
… I succeeded very well here at Litchfield. Belcher, bookseller,
Birmingham; Sutton, Nottingham; Pritchard, Derby; and Thomson,
Manchester, are the publishers. In every number of the 'Watchman,' there
be printed these words, 'Published in Bristol, by the Author, S. T.
Coleridge, and sold, &c. &c.'