LONGMAN, REES & CO. AND HAMILTON, ADAMS & CG.

1837.

PIJKSUNIVERSITEIT-GENT

994913-4-2-66

FROMRENT LATURIII EN WIJSBEGEERTS

SUNIV

03-5-A

ADVERTISEMENT.

It was my first intention to have drawn up a brief statement of the chief incidents in Mr. Coleridge's Bristol Life, and to have sent it to the gentleman who is now officially engaged in compiling a more extended Memorial of Mr. C. At the time this intention was entertained, I was but imperfectly aware of the extent and complicated nature of my materials, and also of the difficulty, if not the impossibility, which afterward became increasingly manifest, of reducing the narrative to a compass that could have been accepted. If my original purpose had been persisted in, and the compression in question had been effected, this work would never have appeared; in which case, an exclusion, in all likelihood, would have followed, of many, if not of all its most striking features. Being therefore compelled to relinquish my primary design, or submit to a sacrifice of nine tenths of the following pages, in order that the epitome might harmonize with the purposes of another, of acknowledged competence, but, perhaps, with views somewhat different from my own, I thought it best, as well as most likely to accord with the wishes of the Reader, to withhold assent to so large a spoliation and to print the memoir in its present unmutilated state.

PREFACE.

Ir must be regarded as an extraordinary circumstance, that Mr, Coleridge, in his " Biographia Literaria," should have passed over, in silence, all distinct reference to BRISTOL, the cradle of his literature, and for many years his favourite abode; the enlightened inhabitants of which city ever warmly patronized him, and whom he thus addressed, at one of his public lectures, 1814 : "You took me up in younger life, and I could wish to live and die amongst you :" so that but for these reminiscences, no memorial would be preserved of the eventful portion of Mr. Coleridge's days, here detailed; and consequently all that follows is so much snatched from oblivion.