these two tasks adequately, or even with any approach to adequacy, a
writer should at least have the elbow-room of a portly volume. To
attempt the two together, therefore, and to attempt them within the
limits prescribed to the manuals of this series, is an enterprise
which I think should claim, from all at least who are not offended by
its audacity, an almost unbounded indulgence.

The supply of material for a _Life_ of Coleridge is fairly plentiful,
though it is not very easily come by. For the most part it needs to be
hunted up or fished up--those accustomed to the work will appreciate
the difference between the two processes--from a considerable variety
of contemporary documents. Completed biography of the poet-philosopher
there is none, as has been said, in existence; and the one volume of
the unfinished _Life_ left us by Mr. Gillman--a name never to be
mentioned with disrespect, however difficult it may sometimes be to
avoid doing so, by any one who honours the name and genius of
Coleridge--covers, and that in but a loose and rambling fashion, no
more than a few years. Mr. Cottle's _Recollections of Southey,
Wordsworth, and Coleridge_ contains some valuable information on
certain points of importance, as also does the _Letters, Conversations,
etc., of S. T. C._ by Mr. Allsop. Miss Meteyard's _Group of Eminent
Englishmen_ throws much light on the relations between Coleridge and
his early patrons the Wedgwoods. Everything, whether critical or
biographical, that De Quincey wrote on Coleridgian matters requires,
with whatever discount, to be carefully studied. _The Life of Wordsworth,_
by the Bishop of St. Andrews; _The Correspondence of Southey;_
the Rev. Derwent Coleridge's brief account of his father's life and
writings; and the prefatory memoir prefixed to the 1880 edition of
Coleridge's _Poetical and Dramatic Works_, have all had to be
consulted. But, after all, there remain several tantalising gaps in