Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

410 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
on the correspondence and part on my editorial labours. I
neither do nor shall propose any terms myself, but will not
suffer you to wait a single day, beyond the time required for
the mutual receipt of the letters, without a decisive answer,
Yes or No.
If, in your opinion, you do not find yourself able to hazard
any deviation of consequence from your common price, it will
be better to let it drop at once, for I use the words in their
literal sense when I say that I could not assist you on such
terms. For I dare not write what I cannot gladly own and
expect an increase of reputation from. Others, with other sub-
jects, might compose three sheets in the same time and with far
less exertion than I could produce one. I may adopt the words
which Mr Wordsworth once used to Longman : " You pay
others, sir, for what they write ; but you must pay me for what
I do not write, for it is this [i.e., the omissions, erasures, &c.]
that costs me both time and toil." You shall receive my plan
as soon after I hear from you as the post can convey it.
One can easily imagine the blank astonishment and
momentary panic of surprise, soon modified by laugh-
ter, which must have fallen upon the committee of
three, which was about as likely to submit to this
solemn sway as were the steeds of the sun to obey the
hand of Phaethon. Still less was the one responsible
member of that government likely to bind himself
with new rules. Mr Blackwood replied gravely, re-
stating his previous offers, but little more. He begins
by explaining that his suggestion regarding Scraps did
not imply that it was Scraps alone he wanted, but
only that he would rather have the crumbs that fell
from the Master's table than no bread at all :
W. Blackwood to S. T. Coleridge.
—
14 A'pr\l 1819.
All I meant by your sending scraps was simply this, that if
you had been otherwise occupied, and had not had leisure to