II.  UPON EPITAPHS.

(a) From ‘The Friend.’ (b and c) From the Author’s MSS., for the first time.

Of (a) CHARLES LAMB wrote:  ’Your Essay on Epitaphs is the only sensible thing which has been written on that subject, and it goes to the bottom’ (Talfourd’s ‘Final Memorials,’ vol. i. p. 180).  The two additional Papers—­only briefly quoted from in the ‘Memoirs’ (c. xxx. vol. i.)—­were also intended for ‘The Friend,’ had COLERIDGE succeeded in his announced arrangement of principles.  These additional papers are in every respect equal to the first, with Wordsworthian touches and turns in his cunningest faculty.  They are faithfully given from the MSS.

III.  ESSAYS, LETTERS, AND NOTES ELUCIDATORY AND CONFIRMATORY OF THE POEMS, 1798-1835.

(a) Of the Principles of Poetry and the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ (1798-1802.)

(b) Of Poetic Diction.

(c) Poetry as a Study (1815).

(d) Of Poetry as Observation and Description, and Dedication of 1815.

(e) Of ‘The Excursion:’  Preface.

(f) Letters to Sir George and Lady Beaumont and others on the Poems and related Subjects.

(g) Letter to Charles Fox with the ‘Lyrical Ballads,’ and his Answer, &c.

(h) Letter on the Principles of Poetry and his own Poems to (afterwards) Professor John Wilson.

(a) to (e) form appendices to the early and later editions of the Poems, and created an epoch in literary criticism.  COLERIDGE put forth his utmost strength on a critical examination of them, oblivious that he had himself impelled, not to say compelled, his friend to write these Prefaces, as WORDSWORTH signifies.  It is not meant by this that COLERIDGE was thereby shut out from criticising the definitions and statements to which he objected.

IV.  DESCRIPTIVE.

(a) A Guide through the District of the Lakes, 1835.

(b) Kendal and Windermere Railway:  two Letters, &c.

These very much explain themselves; but of the former it may be of bibliographical interest to state that it formed originally the letterpress and Introduction to ’Select Views in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire,’ by the Rev. JOSEPH WILKINSON, Rector of East Wrotham, Norfolk, 1810 (folio).  It was reprinted in the volume of Sonnets on the River Duddon.  The fifth edition (1835) has been selected as the Author’s own final text.  In Notes and Illustrations in the place, a strangely overlooked early account of the Lake District is pointed out and quoted from.  The ‘Two Letters’ need no vindication at this late day.  Ruskin is reiterating their arguments and sentiment eloquently as these pages pass through the press.  Apart from deeper reasons, let the fault-finder realise to himself the differentia of general approval of railways, and a railway forced through the ‘old churchyard’ that holds his mother’s grave or the garden of his young prime.  It was a merely sordid matter on the part of the promoters.  Their professions of care for the poor and interest in the humbler classes getting to the Lakes had a Judas element in them, nothing higher or purer.