I have not been at the "Courier" office for some months past. I detest writing politics, even on the right side, and when I discovered that the "Courier" was not the independent paper I had been led to believe, and had myself over and over again asserted, I wrote no more for it. Greatly, indeed, do I prefer the present Ministers to the leaders of any other party, but indiscriminate support of any class of men I dare not give, especially when there is so easy and honourable an alternative as not to write politics at all, which, henceforth, nothing but blank necessity shall compel me to do. I will write for the PERMANENT, or not at all. "The Comet" therefore I have never seen or heard of it, yet most true it is that I myself have composed some verses on the comet, but I am quite certain that no one ever saw them, for the best of all reasons, that my own brain is the only substance on which they have been recorded. I will, however, consign them to paper, and send them to you with the "Courier" poem as soon as I can procure it, for the curiosity of the thing....
My most affectionate respects to Lady Beaumont, and believe me, dear Sir George, with heartfelt regard,
Your obliged and grateful friend, S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. Were you in town, I should be very sorry, indeed, to see you in Fetter Lane.[77] The lectures were meant for the young men of the City. Several of my friends join to take notes, and if I can correct what they can shape out of them into any tolerable form, I will send them to you. On Monday I lecture on "Love and the Female Character as displayed by Shakespeare." Good Dr. Bell is in town. He came from Keswick, all delight with my little Sara, and quite enchanted with Southey. Some flights of admiration in the form of questions to me ("Did you ever see anything so finely conceived? so profoundly thought? as this passage in his review on the Methodists? or on the Education?" etc.) embarrassed me in a very ridiculous way; and, I verily believe, that my odd way of hesitating left on Bell's mind some shade of a suspicion, as if I did not like to hear my friend so highly extolled. Half a dozen words from Southey would have precluded this, without diminution to his own fame--I mean, in conversation with Dr. Bell.