PREFACE. Or the volumes now presented to the public, the First contains a collection of Miscellaneous Essays, principally critical, reprinted, with some additions, from various periodical works: the Second consists of Notes, transcribed for the most part from the margins of the Author's books, and forming several distinct series, more or less regular, on Poetry and on Art, on Biblical criticism and on Church politics. Nothing can be more slight and accidental than these pieces, so far as regards the form under which they were produced: they appear, however, to have been well-studied, and carefully composed. At any rate, they are evidently the genuine and unforced products of PREFACE. Or the volumes now presented to the public, the First contains a collection of Miscellaneous Essays, principally critical, reprinted, with some additions, from various periodical works: the Second consists of Notes, transcribed for the most part from the margins of the Author's books, and forming several distinct series, more or less regular, on Poetry and on Art, on Biblical criticism and on Church politics. Nothing can be more slight and accidental than these pieces, so far as regards the form under which they were produced: they appear, however, to have been well-studied, and carefully composed. At any rate, they are evidently the genuine and unforced products of VOL. I. b the Author's mind, who has put forth in each case exactly what he had to say; neither more nor less. Though written at dates ranging over a period of nearly thirty years (the order of which, speaking generally, is observed in the present publication), commencing in early manhood, and continued through middle life, little inconsistency of opinion, or even of style, is discernible in these pieces. A progress may, however, be traced in simplicity of expression, without loss of liveliness, in justness of thought, and in depth of feeling. In this, and in other respects, they run closely parallel to the author's Poems, recently published,* and in both cases are highly subjective and even personal, differing in this from his father's literary remains in the same kind, which speak with the abstraction of a proverb or an oracle, as if the words were self-originated. A double * Poems of Hartley Coleridge, with a Memoir of his Life, by his Brother. In two volumes. 1851. |