LETTER 71. TO THOMAS WEDGWOOD[1] Shrewsbury, Friday night, (--January), 1798. My dear sir, I have this moment received your letter, and have scarcely more than a moment to answer it by return of post. If kindly feeling can be repaid by kindly feeling, I am not your debtor. I would wish to express the same thing which is big at my heart, but I know not how to do it without indelicacy. As much abstracted from personal feeling as possible, I honor and esteem you for that which you have done. I must of necessity stay here till the close of Sunday next. On Monday morning I shall leave it, and on Tuesday will be with you at Cote-House. Very affectionately yours, S. T. COLERIDGE. T. Wedgwood, Esq. [Footnote 1: Not in "Early Recollections".] The next letter refers to the offer of the Pension of £150 a year, which the Wedgwoods conferred on Coleridge. LETTER 72. TO COTTLE (24 January, 1798). My very dear Cottle, The moment I received Mr. T. Wedgwood's letter, I accepted his offer. How a contrary report could arise, I cannot guess.... I hope to see you at the close of next week. I have been respectfully and kindly treated at Shrewsbury. I am well, and now, and ever, Your grateful and affectionate friend, S. T. COLERIDGE. [1] [Footnote 1: Letter LXXVIII follows 72.] The next letter is an amusing one coming from Coleridge. It is an apology for the "Monody on the Death of Chatterton", which he wished to discard from the second edition of his poems, but which Cottle insisted on retaining among the poet's "choice fish, picked, gutted, and cleaned." LETTER 73. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "MONTHLY MAGAZINE" January 1798. Sir, I hope this letter may arrive time enough to answer its purpose. I cannot help considering myself as having been placed in a very ridiculous light by the gentlemen who have remarked, answered, and rejoined concerning my "Monody on Chatterton". I have not seen the compositions of my competitors (unless indeed the exquisite poem of Warton's, entitled "The Suicide", refer to this subject), but this I know, that my own is a very poor one. It was a school exercise, somewhat altered; and it would have been omitted in the last edition of my poems but for the request of my friend Mr. Cottle, whose property those poems are. If it be not in your intention to exhibit my name on any future month, you will accept my best thanks, and not publish this letter. But if Crito and the Alphabet-men should continue to communicate on this subject, and you should think it proper for reasons best known to yourself to publish their communications, then I depend on your kindness for the insertion of my letter; by which it is possible those your correspondents may be induced to expend their remarks, whether panegyrical or vituperative, on nobler game than on a poem which was, in truth, the first effort of a young man, all whose poems a candid critic will only consider as first efforts. Yours, with due respect, S. T. COLERIDGE. Shrewsbury.