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REMINISCENCES.

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Ten years ago I published "Recollections of S. T. Coleridge." This work I
have revised, and embodied in the present "Reminiscences of S. T.
Coleridge, and Robert Southey." My views and motives have been explained
in the Introduction.

If some Readers should consider that there are occasional documents
introduced into the following work, too unimportant and derogatory to
legitimate biography, I would observe, that it was designed that nothing
should be admitted which was not characteristic of the individual; and
that which illustrates _character_ in a man of genius, cannot well be
esteemed trifling and deserving of rejection.--In preparing those
Reminiscences, some effort has been required. I have endeavoured to
forget the intervening space of forty or fifty years, and, as far as it
was practicable, to enter on the scenes and circumstances described with
all the feelings coincident with that distant period. My primary design
has been to elucidate the incidents referring to the early lives of the
late Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Southey: yet I purposed, in addition, to
introduce brief notices of some other remarkable characters, known in
Bristol at this time.

To account for my introduction to all the persons subsequently noticed,
it is necessary to apprise the Reader that I was a bookseller in Bristol
from the year 1791 to 1798; from the age of 21 to 28: and having imbibed