My Tragedy employed and strained all my thoughts and faculties for six
or seven months; Wordsworth consumed far more time, and far more
thought, and far more genius. We consider the publication of them an
evil on any terms; but our thoughts were bent on a plan for the
accomplishment of which, a certain sum of money was necessary, (the
whole) at that particular time, and in order to this we resolved,
although reluctantly, to part with our Tragedies: that is, if we could
obtain thirty guineas for each, and at less than thirty guineas
Wordsworth will not part with the copyright of his volume of Poems. We
shall offer the Tragedies to no one, for we have determined to procure
the money some other way. If you choose the volume of Poems, at the
price mentioned, to be paid at the time specified, "i.e." thirty
guineas, to be paid sometime in the last fortnight of July, you may have
them; but remember, my dear fellow! I write to you now merely as a
bookseller, and intreat you, in your answer, to consider yourself only;
as to us, although money is necessary to our plan, (that of visiting
Germany) yet the plan is not necessary to our happiness; and if it were,
W. could sell his Poems for that sum to someone else, or we could
procure the money without selling the Poems. So I entreat you, again and
again, in your answer, which must be immediate, consider yourself only.
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