194. To Joseph Cottle Pub. Early Rec. i. 230. Stowey, [Late June] 1797. 2 My dear Cottle, I deeply regret, that my anxieties and my slothfulness, acting in a combined ratio, prevented me from finishing my 'Progress of Liberty, or Visions of the Maid of Orleans,' with that Poem at the head of the volume, with the Ode in the middle, and the 'Religious Musings' at the end. . . . In the 'Lines on the Man of Ross', immediately after these lines, 'He heard the widow's heaven-breathed prayer of praise, He mark'd the shelter'd orphan's tearful gaze,' Please to add these two lines; 'And o'er the portioned maiden's snowy cheek, Bade bridal love suffuse its blushes meek.' And, for the line, 'Beneath this roof, if thy cheer'd moments pass,' I should be glad to substitute this, 'If near ['neath] this roof thy wine-cheer'd moments pass.' ____________________ 1 Cf. line 189 of the Departing Year. 2 Since the changes which Coleridge requests for the Lines on the Man of Ross 'came too late for admission' in the 1797 Poems (Early Rec. i. 281), this letter must have been written in June. See Letter 195. -329-