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OH yet a few short years of useful life, And all will be complete, thy race be run, Thy monument of glory will be raised Then, though too weak to tread the ways of truth This age fall back to old idolatry, Though men return to servitude as fast As the tide ebbs, to ignominy and shame By nations sink together, we shall still Find solace knowing what we have learnt to know, Rich in true happiness if allowed to be Faithful alike in forwarding a day Of firmer trust, joint labourers in the work Should Providence such grace to us vouchsafe Of their deliverance surely yet to come. Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak A lasting inspiration, sanctified By reason, blest by faith what we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how Instruct them how the mind ofman becomes A thousand times more beautiful than the earth On which he dwells, above this frame of things Which, mid all revolution in the hopes And fears ofmen, doth still remain unchanged In beauty exalted, as it is itself Of quality and fabric more divine. WORDSWORTH TO COLERIDGE, PRELUDE XIV., 430-455. PREFACE. THE contributions which Coleridge made to modern thought, rich, ample, and suggestive as they are, have all the character- istics of his varied and eventful life. In Poetry, Criticism, and Philosophy he drove the shaft deep and gave us samples of the wealth of ore lying in their confines. Although he worked these mines only at irregular intervals and passed rapidly from one to the other, yet, by stimulating and quickening activity in his associates and followers, he caused the entire territory to be explored as it never was before in English history. If it cannot be said of him that he left us a rounded andcomplete system, yet it can be said and it is a far nobler tribute that he made it possible for us to grasp those prin- ciples which underlie all systems. His contribution to the literature of power is certainly unsurpassed by that of any That which will writer of modern times. Mr. Arnold says stand of Coleridge is this the stimulus of his continual effort, crowned often with rich success, to get at and to lay bare the real truth of his matter in hand, whether that matter were literary, or philosophical, or political, or religious and this in a country where at that moment such an effort was almost unknown. Coleridges great usefulness lay in his supplying in England, for many years and under critical circumstances, by the spectacle of this effort of his, a stimulus to all minds vcapable of profiting by it, in the generation which grew up around him. Coleridge was indeed, like Goethe, a valiant soldier in the Liberation War of Humanity. Any attempt to give an adequate reason for the character of his work would necessi- tate a thorough study of all the forces which worked upon and through him, hereditary influences, environment, and that most baffling and mysterious of all powers, his own capacious soul. Nothing is more unsatisfactory than many of the attempts which have been made to pluck out the heart of his mystery. And one is often disposed to repeat to these unsym- pathetic monitors the warning of Tennyson Dark-browd sophist, come not anear All the place is holy ground Hollow smile and frozen sneer Come not here...