This promising commencement was soon interrupted by successive and
long-continued delays. The permission I had given to anticipate payment
was remembered and complied with, before the work went to the press.
These delays I little heeded, but they were not quite so acceptable to
the printer, who grievously complained that his types, and his leads, and
his forms, were locked up, week after week, to his great detriment.
Being importuned by the printer, I stated these circumstances to Mr.
Coleridge in a note, expressed in what I thought the mildest possible
way, but which excited, it appeared, uncomfortable feelings in his mind,
never in the least noticed to or by myself, but evidenced to my surprise,
by the following passage in a note to Mr. Wade.
"My very dear Friend,
... Mr. Cottle has ever conducted himself towards me with unbounded
kindness, and one unkind act, no, nor twenty, can obliterate the grateful
remembrance of it. By indolence, and frequent breach of promise, I had
deserved a severe reproof from him, although my present brain-crazing
circumstances, rendered this an improper time for it....