[82] It is probable that during his stay at Penrith he recovered a number of unbound sheets of the reprint of _The Friend_. His proposal to Gale and Curtis must have been to conclude the unfinished narrative of the life of Sir Alexander Ball, and to publish the whole as a complete work. A printed slip cut out of a page of publishers' advertisements and forwarded to "H. N. Coleridge, Esq., from W. Pickering," contains the following announcement:--
"Mr. Coleridge's _Friend_, of which twenty-eight Numbers are published, may now be had, in one Volume, royal 8vo. boards, of Mess. Gale and Curtis, Paternoster Row. And Mr. C. intends to complete the Work, in from eight to ten similar sheets to the foregoing, which will be published together in one part, sewed. The Subscribers to the former part can obtain them through their regular Booksellers. Only 300 copies remain of the 28 numbers, and their being printed on unstamped paper will account to the Subscribers for the difference of price. 23, Paternoster Row, London, 1st February, 1812."
[83] The full title of this work was _The Origin, Nature and Object of the New System of Education_. Southey's _Life of Dr. Bell_, ii. 409.
[84] The Honourable and Right Reverend John Shute Barrington, 1734-1826, sixth son of the first Lord Barrington, was successively Bishop of Llandaff, Salisbury, and Durham. He was a warm supporter of the Madras system of education. It was no doubt Dr. Bell who helped to interest the Bishop in Coleridge's Lectures.
[85] Herbert Southey, known in the family as "Dog-Lunus," and "Lunus," and "The Moon." _Letters of R. Southey_, ii. 399.
[86] Readers of _The Doctor_ will not be at a loss to understand the significance of the references to Dr. Daniel Dove and his horse Nobs. According to Cuthbert Southey, the actual composition of the book began in 1813, but the date of this letter (April, 1812) shows that the myth or legend of the "Doctor," and his iron-grey, which had taken shape certainly as early as 1805, was fully developed in the spring of 1812, when Coleridge paid his last visit to Greta Hall. It was not till the winter of 1833-1834, that the first two volumes of _The Doctor_ appeared in print, and, as they were published anonymously, they were, probably, by persons familiar with his contribution to _Blackwood_ and the _London Magazine_, attributed to Hartley Coleridge. "No clue to the author has reached me," wrote Southey to his friend Wynne. "As for Hartley Coleridge, I wish it were his, but am certain that it is not. He is quite clever enough to have written it--quite odd enough, but his opinions are desperately radical, and he is the last person in the world to disguise them. One report was that his father had assisted him; there is not a page in the book, wise or foolish, which the latter _could_ have written, neither his wisdom nor his folly are of that kind." There had been a time when Southey would have expressed himself differently, but in 1834 dissociation from Coleridge had become a matter alike of habit and of principle. _Southey's Life and Correspondence_, ii. 355, vi. 225-229; _Letters of R. Southey_, iv. 373.
