WHEN this work was first prepared for publication in March 1949 the Notebooks and Collected Letters were still in manuscript, and many of the printed works, if not unavailable, were scarce. The conception of a prose anthology was a stopgap, but the gratifying demand for this selection as a general introduction to Coleridge’s mind and its workings has prompted a reprinting. Although it is being done largely by offset, University of Toronto Press, in the name of honest scholarship, has kindly permitted some corrections of early mistakes in transcription and of some typographical and other errors.
There is a handful of significantly improved readings though it has not been possible to entertain any second thoughts on points of style. Readers of the Notebooks will find here some modifications of punctuation, capital letters, spelling, expansion of abbreviations, for instance, which are not tolerated there. In a first publication of difficult manuscripts, scholarly exactitude was of the essence. In Inquiring Spirit, in the interest of the general, unpedantic reader, it seemed wise to bend the rules slightly for the sake of lucidity.
Thirty years of hindsight and further work on Coleridge naturally have brought to light many more passages I should have liked to put in this anthology: for some of them we shall have to wait until the Notebooks and the Marginalia are completed. In the meantime I am prepared to stand by Inquiring Spirit as representing Coleridge’s intellectual energy, tone and temper, and therefore as a fair introduction to his prose works.
It seems fitting that this new edition should be dedicated to one who has set so many of us climbing the Everest of Coleridge.
K.C.