354. To Daniel Stuart Address: Daniel Stuart Esq. | No / 335 | (Morning Post Office.) | Strand | London Double Sheet MS. British Museum. Pub. Letters from the Lake Poets, 12. Postmark: > 3? < October 1800. Stamped: Keswick. Greta Hall, Keswick, Cumberland. [Circa 80 September 1800] Dear Stuart I am prevented by Mrs Coleridge's distress concerning our Infant from transcribing the fifth Essay, on this blank Paper. -I have sent you the third and fourth. I am fearful the third is too long, especially if you print it (as I confess, I think it well deserves) leaded. -- / In the fifth & sixth Essays I return to the monopolists & the Riots -- and advert on the conduct & probable motives of ministry. In [the] 7th I take a survey of what is called the Prosperity of the Kingdom. -- You may [th]en republish PITT, to which I shall lead -- / then you shall have a second part of Pitt, & Bonaparte. -- When these are finished, I should [wis]h the whole to be published together in the form of a Pamphlet / but of this [y]ou will be the best Judge. -- I shall send you the fifth Essay to morrow. / -- I have by me, tho' in a rough state, a very long Letter to Sir Francis Burdett Jones, 1 on the subject of solitary imprisonment; concerning which I am in doubt, whether I shall publish it just before the meeting of Parliament, in the form of a Pamphlet, or whether I shall split [it) into a series of Letters, & send it forth in your paper. If I were convinced, that it would be serviceable to your paper, I should not hesitate a moment; but altho' it will not, I trust, be found deficient in eloquence indignant & pathetic, nor in examples various, apt, and entertaining, yet a large part of it is devoted to the austerest metaphysical (re]asoning / and this I suspect would ill harmonize with the tastes of [Lond]on Coffee house men & breakfast-table People of Quality, on whom [poss]ibly your paper depends in a great degree. But if it would [do yo]ur paper no good, no positive good, I mean, I should be [reluc]tant that a work on which I had exerted so much thought, should [be] inserted at all. I would far rather send it to the Baronet, in manuscript, & never publish it. -- Wordsworth's health declines constantly -- in a few days his Poems will be published, with a long poem of mine. Of course, you will procure them. The Preface contains our joint opinions on Poetry. 2 ____________________ 1 Sir Francis Burdett ( 1770-1844), the politician, whose mother was the heiress, Eleanor Jones. 2 Within two years Coleridge was to disavow complete agreement with -627- You will be so good as not to forget to have the Newspaper addressed to me, at Keswick -- If these Essays should please you, & suit your purpose, and if you are not deterred by my long Silence from entering into any engagement with me, I am willing to recommence my old occupation, binding myself down to send you six columns a week / any week in which I do not send at least five Columns I should consent to be counted as nothing. -- At all events, whether you enter on any engagement or no, you would oblige by inclosing to Mr Godwin, the Polygon, Sommers' Town, 10£ in my name. 1 -- Before this week has passed I trust I shall have gone a good way towards earning it. -- Your's sincerely S. T. Coleridge