181. To Joseph Cottle MS. Harvard College Lib. Pub. with omis and as two separate letters, Early Rec. i. 197 and 224. The sentence, 'I like your lines on Savage', appears in Early Rec. i. 288, as a postscript to one of the two letters Cottle made of Letter 180 of this edition. Wednesday Morning [ 15 March 1797] Ten o'clock. My dearest Cottle I write under great anguish of mind, Charles Lloyd being very ill. He has been seized with his fits three times in the space of seven days; and just as I was in bed, last night, I was called up again -and from 12 o clock at night to five this morning he remained in one continued state of agoniz'd Delirium. What with the bodily toil exerted in repressing his frantic struggles, and what with the feelings of anguish for his agonies, you may suppose that I have forced myself from bed with aching temples & a feeble frame. I was not in bed till after five. -- However, I will hastily tell you what is to be done with the poems. -- The Ode must be reprinted -- T. Poole says, that rather than the first poem in the book should appear with so many horrid blunders, you shall put a guinea to his account towards the expence -- & I will scrape up another. -- O'er Nature struggling in portentous birth is printed after Weep & Rejoice -- instead of before it, as the Sense, the Poetry, & (what might have directed you) the correspondent Metre of the second antistrophe demanded -- and you have in page 15 retained one of those two lines, for which two I had substituted this one, By livid fount & -- in consequence, the passage is nonsense, imprimis, & (secondly) there is a line without a rhyme. -- Besides this, there are a multitude of small typographical blunders -- & one or two very foolish alterations. -- Mr Lloyd's poems are to be printed after mine in the order put in page 16 of the copy of my Ode -- The first poem on the Unfortunate Woman will do well for the monthly Magazine -- the second therefore only shall be printed in my poems -- with this title -- Allegorical Lines to an unfortunate Woman, whom I had known in the days of her Innocence. Your remarks are perfectly just on it 1 -- except that, in this country, T. P. informs me, Corn is as often cut with a Scythe, as with a hook. However for Scythesman read Rustic -- for 'poor fond ____________________ 1 In Early Rec. i. 219-24 Cottle prints what purports to be his letter of criticism to Coleridge. -315- thing['] -- read -- foolish Thing, -- & for Flung to fade & rot & die -- read Flung to wither & to die! -- Ill-besped is indeed a sad blotch -- but after having tried at least a hundred ways before I sent the poem to you, and as many more since, -- I find it incurable. -- This first poem is but a so so composition -- I wonder, I could be so blinded by the ardor of recent composition, as to see any thing in it. -- I will send it myself to the Editor. -- I like your lines on Savage -- . . . 1 We offer petitions, not as supposing that we influence the immutable -- but because to petition the Supreme Being is the way, most suited to our nature, to stir up the benevolent affection in our own heart -- Christ positively commands it -- & in St Paul, &c you will find unnumbered instances of prayers for individual Blessings for Kings, rulers, countries, &c &c -- We indeed should always join to our petition -- But thy will be done, Omniscient, All-loving, Immutable God! -- Milton waits impatiently -- S. T. Coleridge