leap Well" is the tale for me; in matter as good as this, in
manner infinitely before it, in my poor judgment. Why did you not add
"The Wagoner"? Have I thanked you, though, yet for "Peter Bell"? I would
not _not have it_ for a good deal of money. Coleridge is very foolish to
scribble about books.

Neither his tongue nor fingers are very retentive. But I shall not say
anything to him about it. He would only begin a very long story with a
very long face, and I see him far too seldom to tease him with affairs
of business or conscience when I do see him. He never comes near our
house, and when we go to see him he is generally writing or thinking; he
is writing in his study till the dinner comes, and that is scarce over
before the stage summons us away. The mock "P.B." had only this effect
on me, that after twice reading it over in hopes to find something
diverting in it, I reached your two books off the shelf, and set into a
steady reading of them, till I had nearly finished both before I went to
bed,--the two of your last edition, of course, I mean, And in the
morning I awoke determined to take down the "Excursion." I wish the
scoundrel imitator could know this. But why waste a wish on him? I do
not believe that paddling about with a stick in a pond, and fishing up
a dead author, whom _his_ intolerable wrongs had driven to that deed of
desperation, would turn the heart of one of these obtuse literary BELLS.
There is no Cock for such Peters, damn 'em! I am glad this aspiration
came upon the red-ink line. [2] It is more of a bloody curse. I have
delivered over your other presents to Alsager and G. Dyer, A., I am
sure, will value it and be proud of the hand from which it came. To G.D.
a poem is a poem,--his own as good as anybody's, and, God bless him!
anybody's as good as his own; for I do not think he has the most distant
guess of the possibility of one poem being better than another. The
gods, by denying him the very faculty itself of discrimination, have
effectually cut off every seed of envy in his bosom. But with envy they
excited curiosity also; and if you wish the copy again, which you
destined for him, I think I shall be able to find it again for you on
his third shelf, where he stuffs his presentation copies, uncut, in
shape and matter resembling a lump of dry dust; but on carefully
removing that stratum, a thing like a pamphlet will emerge. I have tried
this with fifty different poetical works that have been given