[267:1] Parts III and IV of the _Three Graves_ were first published in _The Friend_, No. VI, September 21, 1809. They were included in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817, 1828, 1829, and 1834. Parts I and II, which were probably written in the spring of 1798, at the same time as Parts III and IV, were first published, from an autograph MS. copy, in _Poems_, 1893. [For evidence of date compare ll. 255-8 with Dorothy Wordsworth's _Alfoxden Journal_ for March 20, 24, and April 6, 8.] The original MS. of Parts III and IV is not forthcoming. The MS. of the poem as published in _The Friend_ is in the handwriting of Miss Sarah Stoddart (afterwards Mrs. Hazlitt), and is preserved with other 'copy' of _The Friend_ (of which the greater part is in the handwriting of Miss Sarah Hutchinson) in the Forster Collection which forms part of the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. The preface and emendations are in the handwriting of S. T. C. The poem was reprinted in the _British Minstrel_, Glasgow, 1821 as 'a modern ballad of the very first rank'. In a marginal note in Mr. Samuel's copy of _Sibylline Leaves_ Coleridge writes:--'This very poem was selected, notwithstanding the preface, as a proof of my judgment and poetic diction, and a fair specimen of the style of my poems generally (see the _Mirror_): nay! the very words of the preface were used, omitting the _not_,' &c. See for this and other critical matter, _Lyrical Ballads_, 1798, edited by Thomas Hutchinson, 1898. _Notes_, p. 257. [268:1] in the common ballad metre _MS._ [268:2] mistaking _The Friend_. [269:1] In the first issue of _The Friend_, No. VI, September 21, 1809, the poem was thus introduced:--'As I wish to commence the important Subject of--_The Principles_ of political Justice with a separate number of THE FRIEND, and shall at the same time comply with the wishes communicated to me by one of my female Readers, who writes as the representative of many others, I shall conclude this Number with the following Fragment, or the third and fourth [second and third _MS. S. T. C._] parts of a Tale consisting of six. The two last parts may be given hereafter, if the present should appear to have afforded pleasure, and to have answered the purpose of a relief and amusement to my Readers. The story as it is contained in the first and second parts is as follows: _Edward a young farmer_, etc.' [271:1] It is uncertain whether this stanza is erased, or merely blotted in the MS. [271:2] _Othello_ iii. 3. [271:3] The words 'Part II' are not in the MS.