author; but it is in substance just, and I cannot but wish that it were
possible, within the limits of a preface, to set out the whole of it in
excuse for the many inevitable shortcomings of this volume.  Having thus
made an "exhibit" of it, there would only remain to add that the
difficulties with which De Quincey confronts an intending biographer of
Coleridge must necessarily be multiplied many-fold by the conditions
under which this work is here attempted.  No complete biography of
Coleridge, at least on any important scale of dimensions, is in
existence; no critical appreciation of his work _as a whole_, and
as correlated with the circumstances and affected by the changes of his
life, has, so far as I am aware, been attempted.  To perform either of
these two tasks adequately, or even with any approach to adequacy, a
writer should at least have the elbow-room of a portly volume.  To
attempt the two together, therefore, and to attempt them within the
limits prescribed to the manuals of this series, is an enterprise
which I think should claim, from all at least who are not offended by
its audacity, an almost unbounded indulgence. 

The supply of material for a _Life_ of Coleridge is fairly plentiful,
though it is not very easily come by.  For the most part it needs to be