In his "Advertisement" to the first edition of "Lyrical Ballads" (1798) Wordsworth writes,
"The lines entitled 'Expostulation and Reply', and those which follow, arose out of conversation with a friend who was somewhat unreasonably attached to modern books of Moral Philosophy."
Was the friend Sir James Mackintosh? or was it —a much more probable supposition—his friend, S. T. Coleridge?—Ed.
[The Tables Turned]
an evening scene on the same subject.