‘He left behind him a considerable collection of writings, none prepared for publication: of which the following two volumes form a part. The Journal, with which the first commences, and which is continued in the Appendix, reaches from the beginning of 1826, when he was nearly twenty-three, to the spring of 1828. The Occasional Thoughts are carried on to 1829. The Essay on Fiction was written when he was twenty-three; the Sermons, from 1829 to 1833, when he was between twenty-five and thirty.[380] His Letters begin in 1823, when he was twenty, and are carried down to within a month of his death. ‘Those on whom the task has fallen of preparing these various writings for publication, have found it matter of great anxiety to acquit themselves so as to satisfy the claims of duty, which they felt pressing on them in distinct, and, sometimes, apparently opposite directions. ‘Some apology may seem requisite, in the first place, for the very magnitude of the collection: as though authority were being claimed, in a preposterous way, for the opinions of one undistinguished either by station or by known literary eminence. ‘That apology, it is believed, will be found in the truth, and extreme importance, of the views to the development of which the whole is meant to be subservient; and also in the instruction derivable from a full exhibition of the author’s character as a witness to those views. This is the plea which it is desired to bring prominently forward; nothing short of this, it is felt, would justify such ample and unreserved disclosures: neither originality of thought, nor engaging imagery, nor captivating touches of character and turns of expression. ‘Still more is this apology needed, on the more serious grounds of friendship and duty. The publication of a private Journal and private Letters is a serious thing. Too often it has been ventured on, in a kind of reckless way, with an eye singly to the good expected to be accomplished, no regard being had to the author himself, and his wishes. It is in itself painful, nay, revolting, to expose to the common gaze papers only intended for a single correspondent; and it seems little less than sacrilege to bring out the solitary memoranda of one endeavouring to feel, and to be, as much as possible alone with his God: secretly training himself, as in His presence, in that discipline which shuns the light of this world. To such a publication, it were objection enough that it would seem to harmonise but too well with the restless unsparing curiosity which now prevails.