PREFATORY NOTE
complete publication for the first time of those parts of the Diary and letters which give an account of the quarrel between Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the reconciliation effected between them in 1812 by Crabb Robinson. It was tempting to enlarge the volume by the inclusion of other matter, e.g. the Diary accounts of Hazlitt's lectures, Carlyle's letters relating to his translations from German novels, or Landor's letters, which are among the contents of outstanding interest. But I have thought it wiser to confine myself to very definite limits, in order that the volume may be within the reach of all those who desire to possess it.
My thanks are due to Dr. Williams's Trustees for their permission to publish these extracts from the MSS., and to the Rev. Travers Herford, their secretary, and Mr. Stephen Jones and Miss Borthwick, his assistants, for the kindness they have shown in facilitating my work at the Library. Mr. Herford is responsible for the transcripts from shorthand, the key to which he has discovered and been good enough to hand on to me. I am also much indebted to Mr. McKechnie, of the Manchester University Press, for his invaluable help in preparing the volume for publication.
University College, Reading,
August 1922.
[Words and letters in square brackets have been supplied by the Editor. H. C. R.'s spelling and punctuation have been corrected, and his abbreviations, particularly of proper names, written in extenso wherever these alterations seemed to make the text clearer. Apart from such changes, it is an exact transcript from the originals.]
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