I charge you, my dearest friend, not to dare to encourage gloom or despair—­you are a temporary sharer in human miseries, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine nature.  I charge you, if by any means it be possible, come to me.

[Footnote 1:  See Letter, p. 355.]

TO JOSEPH COTTLE

Literary adventurers

[1798.]

MY DEAR COTTLE,

Neither Wordsworth nor myself could have been otherwise than uncomfortable, if any but yourself had received from us the first offer of our tragedies, and of the volume of Wordsworth’s poems.  At the same time, we did not expect that you could with prudence and propriety, advance such a sum as we should want at the time we specified.  In short, we both regard the publication of our tragedies as an evil.  It is not impossible but that in happier times they may be brought on the stage:  and to throw away this chance for a mere trifle, would be to make the present moment act fraudulently and usuriously towards the future time.

My tragedy employed and strained all my thoughts and faculties for six or seven months; Wordsworth consumed far more time, and far more thought, and far more genius.  We consider the publication of them an evil on any terms; but our thoughts were bent on a plan for the accomplishment of which a certain sum of money was necessary, (the whole) at that particular time, and in order to do this we resolved, although reluctantly, to part with our tragedies:  that is, if we could obtain thirty guineas for each, and at less than thirty guineas Wordsworth will not part with the copyright of his volume of poems.  We shall offer the tragedies to no one, for we have determined to procure the money some other way.  If you choose the volume of poems, at the price mentioned, to be paid at the time specified, i.e. thirty guineas, to be paid sometime in the last fortnight of July, you may have them; but remember, my dear fellow!  I write to you now merely as a bookseller, and entreat you, in your answer, to consider yourself only; as to us, although money is necessary to our plan [that of visiting Germany], yet the plan is not necessary to our happiness; and if it were, W. would sell his poems for that sum to some one else, or we could procure the money without selling the poems.  So I entreat you, again and again, in your answer, which must be immediate, consider yourself only.

Wordsworth has been caballed against so long and so loudly, that he has found it impossible to prevail on the tenant of the Allfoxden estate to let him the house, after their first agreement is expired, so he must quit it at midsummer; whether we shall be able to procure him a house and furniture near Stowey, we know not, and yet we must:  for the hills, and the woods, and the streams, and the sea, and the shores would break forth into reproaches against us, if we did not strain every nerve to keep their poet among them.  Without joking, and in serious sadness, Poole and I cannot endure to think of losing him.