The Collected Writing of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. IIDe Quincey, Thomas
History
The Collected Writing of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II
De Quincey, Thomas
De Quincey, Thomas, 1785-1859; English literature -- 19th century
putting Coleridge to an expense of treble postage at the least. This
he complains of bitterly in his "Biographia Literaria," forgetting
evidently that the evil was due exclusively to his own defective
arrangements. People necessarily sent their subscriptions through
such channels as were open to them, or such as were pointed out by
Coleridge himself. It is also utterly unworthy of Coleridge to have
taxed, as he does, many of his subscribers (or really, for anything
that appears, the whole body) with neglecting to pay at all. Probably
not one neglected. And some ladies, to my knowledge, scrupulously
anxious about transmitting their subscriptions, paid three times over.
Managed as the reader will collect from these indications, the work
was going down-hill from the first. It never gained any accessions of
new subscribers; from what source, then, was the continual dropping
off of names to be supplied? The printer became a bankrupt: Coleridge
was as much in arrear with his articles as with his lectures at the
Royal Institution. _That_ he was from the very first; but now he
was disgusted and desponding; and with No. 28 or 29 the work came
to a final stop. Some years after, it was re-cast and re-published.
But, in fact, this re-cast was altogether and absolutely a new work.
The sole contributors to the original work had been, first of all,
Wordsworth who gave a very valuable paper on the principles concerned
in the composition of Epitaphs; and, secondly, Professor Wilson, who,
in conjunction with Mr. (now Dr.) Blair, an early friend,[76] then
visiting Mr. W. on Windermere, wrote the letter signed "Mathetes," the
reply to which came from Wordsworth.
[76] Alexander Blair, LL.D., Professor of English Literature in
University College, London, from 1830 to 1836.--M.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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