There are charges, the very suspicion of which is painful to an ingenuous mind in exact proportion as they are unfounded and inapplicable. I can bear with resignation a charge of enthusiasm. Even if accused of presumption, I will repay myself by deriving from the accusation an additional motive to increased watchfulness over myself, that I may remain entitled to plead, Not guilty! to it in the Court of my own conscience. But if my anxiety to obviate hasty judgments and misapprehensions is imputed to a less honourable motive than the earnest wish to exert my best faculties, as to the most beneficial purposes, so in the way most likely to effectuate them, I can give but one answer: that however great my desires of _profit_ may be, they cannot be greater than my ignorance of the world, if I have chosen a weekly paper planned, as _The Friend_ is, written on such subjects, and composed in such a style, as the most promising method of gratifying them. S. T. C. LETTER 146. TO CANTAB 21 Dec. 1809. I thank the "_Friend's friend and a Cantab_" for his inspiriting Letter, and assure him, that it was not without its intended effect, of giving me encouragement. That this was not needless, he would feel as well as know, if I could convey to him the anxious thoughts and gloomy anticipations, with which I write any single paragraph, that demands the least effort of attention, or requires the Reader to enter into himself and question his own mind as to the truth of that which I am pressing on his notice. But both He and my very kind Malton Correspondent, and all of similar dispositions, may rest assured, that with every imaginable endeavour to make _The Friend_, _collectively,_ as _entertaining_ as is compatible with the main Object of the Work, I shall never so far forget the duty, I owe to them and to my own heart, as not to remember that _mere_ amusement is _not_ that main Object. I have taken upon myself (see Letter 145) all the blame that I could acknowledge without adulation to my readers and hypocritical mock-humility. But the principal source of the obscurity imputed must be sought for in the want of _interest_ concerning the truths themselves. (_Revel._ iii, 17.) My sole Hope (I dare not say expectation) is, that if I am enabled to proceed with the work through an equal number of Essays with those already published, it will gradually find for itself its appropriate Public. S. T. COLERIDGE.[25]