The two _Lay Sermons_ were published, the one in 1816, the other in 1817. The first is entitled _The Statesman's Manual_, or _The Bible the best Guide to Political skill and foresight_: a Lay Sermon addressed to the higher classes of society, with an Appendix, containing comments and essays connected with the study of the inspired writings:--the second _A Lay Sermon_, addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes, on the existing distresses and discontents. Mr. Gillman says he "had the intention of addressing a third to the lower classes."
The _Biographia Literaria_ was published in 1817, but parts of the first volume must have been composed some years earlier.[72] The _Edinburgh Review_ in its August number of that year was as favourable to the book _as could be expected_."[73]
[46] [The above chapter is by Sara Coleridge.]
[47] [_Love_, not till second edition of _Lyrical Ballads_, 1800.]
[48] [Should be 1798. See _Letters_, p. 245.]
[49] [Letter CXCV is our 152. Letters CLXXXIII-CXCIV precede it in chronological order: Letter CXCVI follows.]
[52] [The original _Osorio_ is republished in Dykes Campbell's edition of the _Poems_, p. 479.]
[55] [Many of the dates of the Poems are now ascertained to be different from those in the text of Sara Coleridge.]
[73] The remarks in that article upon my Father's remarks on _poetic diction_ I have vainly tried to understand:--"a paste of rich and honeyed words, like the candied coat of the auricula, a glittering tissue of quaint conceits and sparkling metaphors, crusting over the rough stalk of homely thoughts; &c. such is the style of Pope and Gray; such very often is that of Shakespeare and Milton; and, notwithstanding Mr. Coleridge's decision to the contrary, of Spenser's _Faëry Queen_." _Homely_ thoughts clothed in a glittering tissue of poetic diction are but pseudo-poetry; and the powder on the auricula would be nothing, if the coat itself were not of velvet. Mr. C.'s decision respecting the _Faëry Queen_ is equally misrepresented, for he maintains that Spenser's language _is_ distinct from that of prose, such language being required by his thoughts and in harmony with them. To say that he decided "the contrary," as if he had denied poetic diction to Spenser, is not like the auricula's coat, _candid_.--S. C.