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ADVERTISEMENT.

HIS new edition of my Father's Biographia Literaria was partly prepared for publication by his late Editor. The corrections of the text in the first nine or ten chapters of Vol. I. and in the first three or four of Vol. II. are by his hand; the notes signed "Editor" were written by him; and he drew up the Biographical Supplement, (the first three chapters of it containing the Letters), which is placed at the end of the second volume. His work it has fallen to me to complete, and the task has been interesting, though full of affecting remembrances, and brought upon me by the deepest sorrow of my life. The biographical sketch I have published as I found it, with trifling alterations and omissions, filling up a few gaps and supplying the mottoes. Had the writer himself taken it up again, he would probably have improved and continued it.

I have only to add that my thanks are due to many kind friends, who have assisted me in my part of the undertaking with advice, information, or loan of books; especially my Father's dear Friend and Fellow Student, Mr. Green, Archdeacon Hare, and my brother-in-law, Mr. Justice Coleridge. I am also much indebted for help toward my work to Mr. Pickering, by whom a great number of the books referred to in the notes were placed in my hands.

CHAP. IX. Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what
are its conditions?-Giordano Bruno-Literary Aris-
tocracy, or the existence of a tacit compact among
the learned as a privileged order-The Author's
obligations to the Mystics-to Immanuel Kant-The
difference between the letter and the spirit of Kant's
writings, and a vindication of prudence in the teach-
ing of Philosophy--Fichte's attempt to complete the
Critical system-Its partial success and ultimate
failure-Obligations to Schelling; and among Eng-
lish writers to Saumarez

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CHAP. XI. An affectionate exhortation to those who in
early life feel themselves disposed to become authors

CHAP. XII. A Chapter of requests and premonitions

concerning the perusal or omission of the chapter

that follows

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INTRODUCTION.

Mr. Coleridge's obligations to Schelling, and the unfair view of the subject presented in Blackwood's Magazine.

OME years ago, when the late Editor of my Father's works was distantly contemplating a new edition of the Biographia Literaria, but had not yet begun to exa

mine the text carefully with a view to this object, his attention was drawn to an article in Blackwood's Magazine of March 1840, in which "the very large and unacknowledged appropriations it contains from the great German Philosopher Schelling" are pointed out; and by this paper I have been directed to those passages in the works of Schelling and of Maasz, to which references are given in the following pages,-to most of them immediately, and to a few more through the strict investigation which it occasioned. Whether or no my Father's obligations to the great German Philosopher are virtually unacknowledged to the extent and with the unfairness which the writer of that article labours to prove, the reader of the present edition will be able to judge for himself; the facts of the case will be all before him, and from these, when the whole of them are fully and fairly considered, I feel

assured that by readers in general,—and I have had some experience on this point already,-no such injurious inferences as are contained in that paper will ever be drawn. The author, it must be observed, before commencing his argument, thinks fit to disclaim the belief, that conscious intentional plagiarism is imputable to the object of his censure; nevertheless, throughout great part of it, Mr. Coleridge is treated as an artful purloiner and selfish plunderer, who knowingly robs others to enrich himself, both the tone and the language of the article expressing this and no other meaning. Such aspersions will not rest, I think they never have rested, upon Coleridge's name; the protest here entered is a duty to his memory from myself rather than a work necessary to his vindication, and the remarks that follow are made less with a view to influence the opinions of others than to record my

own.

The charge brought against my Father by the author of the article appears to be this, that, having borrowed largely from Schelling,' he has made no adequate acknowledgments of obligation to that philosopher, only such general admissions as are quite insufficient to cover the extent of his debt; that his anticipatory defence against a charge of "ungenerous concealment or intentional plagiarism" is no defence at all; and that his particular references are too few and inaccurate to vindicate him from having dealt

The passages borrowed by my Father from Schelling and Maasz are pointed out in this edition in notes at the foot of the pages where they occur. For the particulars and amount of the debt, therefore, readers are referred to the body of the work, chapters v. vii. viii. ix. xii. in the first volume.

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