THE FRIEND:

A SERIES OF ESSAYS

TO AID IN THE FORMATION OF FIXED PRINCIPLES

IN POLITICS, MORALS, AND RELIGION,

WITH LITERARY AMUSEMENTS INTERSPERSED.

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

WITH THE AUTHOR'S LAST CORRECTIONS AND AN APPENDIX, AND WITH A

SYNOPTICAL TABLE OF THE CONTENTS OF THE WORK,

BY HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ., M.A.

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS.

1856,

Now for the writing of this werko,
I, who am a lonesome clerke,
Purposed for to write a book
After the world, that whilome took
Its course in oldè days long passed :
But for men sayn, it is now lassed
In worser plight than it was tho,
I thought me for to touch also
The world which neweth every day-
So as I can, so as I may,
Albeit I sickness have and pain,
And long have had, yet would I fain
Do my mind's hest and besiness,
Th in some part, so as I guess,
The gentle mind may be advised.

GOWER, Pro. to the Confess. Amantis.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The present edition of THE FRIEND comprises all the corrections, and most of the notes, found in the author's handwriting in an interleaved copy of the work, bequeathed by him to his daughter-in-law. The Editor has revised the text with as much care as circumstances would permit, and has added a prelin.inary sketch of the plan and details of the whole, with an appendix, containing several passages, parts of the scattered essays originally published in 1809, and omitted in the recast of the work in 1818, but which seem worthy of separate preservation. It is earnestly hoped that what has thus been done may further the more general acceptance of a work, which, with all its imperfections, is, perhaps, the most vigorous of Mr. Coleridge's compositions; and which, if it had contained nothing but the essays, in the first volume, on the duty and conditions of communicating truth, and those in the third, on the principles of scientific method, with the reconcilement of the Platonic and Baconian processes of investigation, would still, as the Editor conceives, have constituted one of the most signal benefits conferred in this age on the cause of morals and sound philosophy.