believed, that little apology will be required by the public. It must be added, that time has robbed of their charm certain sportive effusions of Mr. C.'s later years, which were given to the public, in the first gloss and glow of novelty in 1834, and has proved that, though not devoid of the quality of genius, they possess, upon the whole, not more than an ephemeral interest. These the Editors have not scrupled to omit on the same grounds and in the same confidence that has been already explained. Four short pieces only have been added, the third and ninth Sonnets (pages 41 and 45), from the edition of 1796, the "Day-Dream" (page 221), from the Appendix to Coleridge's "Essays on his own Times," and the "Hymn" (page 315), which is now printed for the first time The Portrait has been engraved from a picture of S. T. Coleridge, at twenty-six years of age, which origi nally belonged to the poet's admirable friend, Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, by the kind permission of R. P. King, Esq., of Brislington, near Bath, its present owner. It is presented not as altogether satisfactory, but as the best and most interesting record of the Poet's youthful face that was to be obtained. CHESTER PLACE, REGENT'S PARK. March, 1852. S. C. *This humorous piece first appeared in the Morning Post, when, according to the Editor of that Journal, it made so great a sensation that several hundred sheets extra were sold by them, as the paper was in request for days and weeks afterwards. Ite hinc, Camænæ! vos quoque ite, suaves Revisitote, sed pudenter et raro.-VIRG., Catal. vii. (From the Preface to the Sibylline Leaves.) PREFACE. COMPOSITIONS resembling those of the present volume are not unfrequently condemned for their querulous egotism. But egotism is to be condemned then only when it offends against time and place, as in a history or an epic poem. To censure it in a monody or sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write Sonnets or Monodies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps nothing else could. After the more violent emotions of sorrow, the mind demands amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is a painful and most often an unavailing effort. "But O! how grateful to a wounded heart From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow, SHAW. The communicativeness of our nature leads us to describe our own sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is exerted; and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure, which is gradually associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the painful subject of the description. "True!" (it may be answered) "but how is the Public interested in your sorrows or your description?" We are for ever attributing personal unities to imaginary aggregates. What is the Public, but a term for a number of scattered individuals? Of whom as many will be interested in these sorrows, as have experienced the same or similar. "Holy be the lay Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way." If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesi tate to affirm, that the most interesting passages in all writings are those in which the author developes his own feelings? The sweet voice of Cona* never sounds so sweetly, as when it speaks of itself; and I should almost suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read the opening of the third book of the Paradise Lost without peculiar emotion. By a law of our nature, he, who labours under a strong feeling, is impelled to seek for sympathy; but a poet's feelings are all strong. Quicquid amet valde amat. Akenside therefore speaks with philosophical accuracy when he classes Love and Poetry, as producing the same effects: "Love and the wish of Poets when their tongue PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. * Ossian. There is one species of egotism which is truly disgusting; not that which leads us to communicate our feelings to others, but that which would reduce the feelings of others to an identity with our own. The atheist, who exclaims, "pshaw!" when he glances his eye on the praises of Deity, is an egotist: an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of Love-verses, is an egotist: and the sleek favourites of fortune are egotists, when they condemn all "melancholy, discontented" verses. Surely, it would be candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases ourselves, but to consider whether or no there. may not be others, to whom it is well calculated to give an innocent pleasure. I shall only add, that each of my readers will, I hope, remember, that these poems on various subjects, which he reads at one time and under the influence of one set of feelings, were written at different times and prompted by very different feelings; and therefore that the supposed inferiority of one poem to another may sometimes be owing to the temper of mind, in which he happens to peruse it. My poems have been rightly charged with a profusion of double-epithets, and a general turgidness. have pruned the double-epithets with no sparing hand; and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of thought and diction.* This latter fault how Without any feeling of anger, I may yet be allowed to express some degree of surprise, that after having run the critical gauntlet for a certain class of faults, which I had, viz., a too ornate, and elaborately poetic diction, and nothing having come before the judgment-seat of the Reviewers during the |