in the shifting sands of talk; and what remains is but what the few
land-locked pools are to the receding ocean which has left them
casually behind without sensible diminution of its
waters."

Academy, 3d October, 1903.




PREFACE

The work known as the Biographical Supplement of the Biographia
Literaria of S. T. Coleridge, and published with the latter in 1847, was
begun by Henry Nelson Coleridge, and finished after his death by his
widow, Sara Coleridge. The first part, concluding with a letter dated
5th November 1796, is the more valuable portion of the Biographical
Supplement. What follows, written by Sara Coleridge, is more
controversial than biographical and does not continue, like the first
part, to make Coleridge tell his own life by inserting letters in the
narrative. Of 33 letters quoted in the whole work, 30 are contained in
the section written by Henry Nelson Coleridge. Of these 11 were drawn
from Cottle's Early Recollections, seven being letters to Josiah Wade,
four to Joseph Cottle, and the remainder are sixteen letters to Poole,
one to Benjamin Flower, one to Charles E Heath, and one to Henry Martin.

From this I think it is evident that Henry Nelson Coleridge intended
what was published as a Supplement to the Biographia Literaria to be a
Life of Coleridge, either supplementary to the Biographia Literaria or
as an independent narrative, in which most of the letters published by