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A SERIES OF ESSAYS

To aid in the Formation of fixed Principles in Politics,
Morals, and Religion, with Literary
Amusements interspersed :

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Now for the writing of this werke,
I, who am a lonesome clerke,
Purpofed for to write a book
After the world, that whilome took
Its course in oldè days long paffed:
But for men fayn, it is now laffed
In worfer plight than it was tho,
I thought me for to touch alfo
The world which neweth every day—
So as I can, fo as I may,

Albeit I fickness have and pain,

And long have had, yet would I fain
Do

my mind's heft and befinefs,

That in fome part, fo as I guess,
The gentle mind may be advised.

GOWER, Pro. to the Confeff. Amantis.

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ADVERTISEMENT.

HE prefent 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 preliminary sketch of the plan and details of the whole, with an appendix, containing several paffages, parts of the scattered essays originally published in 1809, and omitted in the recast of the work in 1818, but which feem 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 compofitions; and which, if it had contained nothing but the effays, 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 proceffes of inveftigation, would ftill, as the Editor conceives, have constituted one of the most signal benefits conferred in this age on the cause of morals and found philofophy.

Lincoln's Inn, 11th September, 1837.

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