Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/45

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TRIALS OF A PUBLISHER
41

the true Prayer of the Praise and Admiration."

Fancy the feelings of a poor publisher assailed with this raging torrent of words! Murray, stemming the tide as best he can, replies in a short, businesslike note, proposing terms—not very liberal ones—for the desired translation. Whereupon Coleridge writes a second letter, actually longer than the first, intimating that a hundred pounds is but scant remuneration for such a piece of work, "executed as alone I can or dare do it—that is, to the utmost of my power; for which the intolerable Pain, nay the far greater Toil and Effort of doing otherwise, is a far safer Pledge than any solicitude on my part concerning the approbation of the Public."

Finally, the undertaking was abandoned, and the English-speaking world lost its single chance of having Faust adequately translated; lost it, I truly believe, through the reluctance of even a patient man to stomach any further correspondence.

Trials of a very different order poured in on