295. To Thomas Ward

Address: To Mr Ward | this pentagonal | Letter | comes | as penn'd. MS. Miss Helen M. Cam. Pub. Thomas Poole, i. 304. 'Letter the first' thanks Ward for some quill pens which he had commissioned the clerk, Govett, to mend; 'Letter the second' is an acknowledgement of another batch of pens which Ward, fearing Govett's might not be satisfactory, prepared himself.

Octob. 7. 1799 Stowey

Letter the first

My dear Ward Thank you! --

S. T. Coleridge

Letter the second

Most exquisite Benefactor! -- I will speak dirt & daggers of the Wretch who shall deny thee to be the most heaven-inspired, munificent Penmaker that these latter Times, these superficial, weak, and evirtuate ages, have produced -- to redeem themselves from ignominy! -- And may he, great Calamist! who shall vilipend or derogate from thy penmaking merits, do penance & suffer penitential penality, penn'd up in some penurious peninsula of
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1 	Poems, ii. 958.

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 penal & penetrant Fire, pensive and pendulous, pending a huge slice of Eternity! -- Were I to write till Pentecost, filling whole Pentateuchs, my grateful Expressions would still remain merely a Penumbra of my Debt & Gratitude -

thine,

S. T. Coleridge

Your Messenger neither came or returns penniless.