Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

A RETAINING FEE. 407
the more likely way — too dreamy to have remem-
bered that assault upon him, it is certain that he lent
a not unwilling ear to Blackwood's suggestion that he
had but to call at the oiEce of Messrs Cadell & Davies
any day with a little roll of MS. in order to procure
ten guineas, in whole or part payment, whenever he
pleased and as often as he pleased. That this was
not to be the limit of the offered price was implied,
but it was. a sort of retaining fee, and evidence of
good faith. Coleridge was already at Highgate in
the curious retirement in which the rest of his life
was spent when this proposal reached him ; but he
was still comparatively a young man, and evidently
felt himself quite able to enter into the arena of
active life. There had also been in the meantime
amende honorable fully made in the Magazine by a
most admiring and genial review.
Mr Blackwood's original letter to the poet I have
unfortunately mislaid ; but this is the answer to it,
and the reader will be amused by the elaborate and de-
tailed plan, to be accompanied by an equally elaborate
theory as to the proper method of conducting a maga-
zine, thus suddenly presented to the three extremely
spontaneous and strong-willed individuals in whose
hands the Magazine had already become a power, and
who were as little troubled with plans and theories,
and as clearly aware of what they intended to do
which was, in the first place, to take orders, or even
advice, from no man—as any three in the kingdom.
This was how, in sublime exaltation of theory and
absolute unconsciousness of the complications and
difficulties of combination, and the character and in-
dividuality of other men, the poet wrote from amid
—