With regard to the "Poems" I mean to give away, I wish to make it a common interest; that is, I will give away a sheet full of Sonnets. One to Mrs. Barbauld; one to Wakefield; one to Dr. Beddoes; one to Wrangham--a college acquaintance of mine,--an admirer of me, and a pitier of my principles;--one to George Augustus Pollen, Esq.; one to C. Lamb; one to Wordsworth; one to my brother George, and one to Dr. Parr. These Sonnets I mean to write on the blank leaf, respectively, of each copy. * * * * God bless you, and S. T. COLERIDGE. "The Sonnets," says Mr. Cottle, "never arrived." [But a pamphlet of 16 pages, containing 28 Sonnets, was printed, the only extant copy of which is in the Dyce Collection. "Poems", 1893, p. 544.] LETTER 33. TO MR. POOLE 6th May, 1796. My very dear Friend, The heart is a little relieved, when vexation converts itself into anger. But from this privilege I am utterly precluded by my own epistolary sins and negligences. Yet in very troth thou must be a hard-hearted fellow to let me trot for four weeks together every Thursday to the Bear Inn--to receive no letter. I have sometimes thought that Milton the carrier did not deliver my last parcel, but he assures me he did. This morning I received a truly fraternal letter from your brother Richard of Sherborne, containing good and acceptable advice. He deems my "Religious Musings" "too metaphysical for common readers." I answer--the poem was not written for common readers. In so miscellaneous a collection as I have presented to the Public, "singula cuique" should be the motto. There are, however, instances of vicious affectation in the phraseology of that poem;--"unshudder'd, unaghasted", for example. ("Not in the poem now".) Good writing is produced more effectually by rapidly glancing the language as it already exists than by a hasty recourse to the mint of invention. The "Religious Musings" has more mind than the Introduction of B. II. of "Joan of Arc", ("Destiny of Nations", Poet. W. I. p. 98) but its versification is not equally rich. It has more passages of sublimity, but it has not that diffused air of severe dignity which characterizes my epic slice. Have I estimated my own performances rightly? ...