biographia literaria coleridge

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.And this becomes the more likely, if (as I believe) the habit of perusing periodical works may be properly added to Averrhoe's16 catalogue of ANTI-MNEMONICS, or weakeners of the memory.But where this has not been the case, yet the reader will be apt to suspect, that there must be something more than usually strong and extensive in a reputation, that could either require or stand so merciless and long-continued a cannonading.Without any feeling of anger therefore (for which indeed, on my own account, I have no pretext) I may yet be allowed to express some degree of surprize, that, after having run the critical gauntlet for a certain class of faults which I had, nothing having come before the judgement-seat in the interim, I should, year after year, quarter after quarter, month after month (not to mention sundry petty periodicals of still quicker revolution, ›or weekly or diurnal‹) have been, for at least 17 years consecutively dragged forth by them into the foremost ranks of the proscribed, and forced to abide the brunt of abuse, for faults directly opposite, and which I certainly had not.How shall I explain this?Whatever may have been the case with others, I certainly cannot attribute this persecution to personal dislike, or to envy, or to feelings of vindictive animosity.Not to the former, for with the exception of a very few who are my intimate friends, and were so before they were known as authors, I have had little other acquaintance with literary characters, than what may be implied in an accidental introduction, or casual meeting in a mixt company.And, as far as words and looks can be trusted, I must believe that, even in these instances, I had excited no unfriendly disposition17.Neither by letter, or in conversation, have I ever had dispute or controversy beyond the common social interchange of opinions.Nay, where I had reason to suppose my convictions fundamentally different, it has been my habit, and I may add, the impulse of my nature, to assign the grounds of my belief, rather than the belief itself; and not to express dissent, till I could establish some points of complete sympathy, some grounds common to both sides, from which to commence its explanation.Still less can I place these attacks to the charge of envy.The few pages which I have published, are of too distant a date; and the extent of their sale a proof too conclusive against their having been popular at any time; to render probable, I had almost said possible, the excitement of envy on their account; and the man who should envy me on any other, verily he must be envy-mad!Lastly, with as little semblance of reason, could I suspect any animosity towards me from vindictive feelings as the cause.I have before said, that my acquaintance with literary men has been limited and distant; and that I have had neither dispute nor controversy.From my first entrance into life, I have, with few and short intervals, lived either abroad or in retirement.My different essays on subjects of national interest, published at different times, first in the Morning Post and then in the Courier, with my courses of lectures on the principles of criticism as applied to Shakespeare and Milton, constitute my whole publicity; the only occasions on which I could offend any member of the republic of letters.With one solitary exception in which my words were first misstated and then wantonly applied to an individual, I could never learn, that I had excited the displeasure of any among my literary contemporaries.Having announced my intention to give a course of lectures on the characteristic merits and defects of English poetry in its different æras; first, from Chaucer to Milton; second, from Dryden inclusive to Thompson; and third, from Cowper to the present day; I changed my plan, and confined my disquisition to the two former æras, that I might furnish no possible pretext for the unthinking to misconstrue, or the malignant to misapply my words, and having stampt their own meaning on them, to pass them as current coin in the marts of garrulity or detraction.Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the deserving; and it is too true, and too frequent, that Bacon, Harrington, Machiavel, and Spinosa, are not read, because Hume, Condillac, and Voltaire are.But in promiscuous company no prudent man will oppugn the merits of a contemporary in his own supposed department; contenting himself with praising in his turn those whom he deems excellent.If I should ever deem it my duty at all to oppose the pretensions of individuals, I would oppose them in books which could be weighed and answered, in which I could evolve the whole of my reasons and feelings, with their requisite limits and modifications; not in irrecoverable conversation, where however strong the reasons might be, the feelings that prompted them would assuredly be attributed by some one or other to envy and discontent.Besides I well know, and I trust, have acted on that knowledge, that it must be the ignorant and injudicious who extol the unworthy; and the eulogies of critics without taste or judgement are the natural reward of authors without feeling or genius.»Sint unicuique sua præmia.«How then, dismissing, as I do, these three causes, am I to account for attacks, the long continuance and inveteracy of which it would require all three to explain? The solution may seem to have been given, or at least suggested, in a note to a preceding page.I was in habits of intimacy with Mr.Wordsworth and Mr.Southey! This, however, transfers, rather than removes the difficulty.Be it, that, by an unconscionable extension of the old adage, ›noscitur a socio,‹ my literary friends are never under the water-fall of criticism, but I must be wet through with the spray; yet how came the torrent to descend upon them?First then, with regard to Mr.Southey.I well remember the general reception of his earlier publications: viz.the poems published with Mr.Lovell under the names of Moschus and Bion; the two volumes of poems under his own name, and the Joan of Arc.The censures of the critics by profession are extant, and may be easily referred to: – careless lines, inequality in the merit of the different poems, and (in the lighter works) a predilection for the strange and whimsical; in short, such faults as might have been anticipated in a young and rapid writer, were indeed sufficiently enforced.Nor was there at that time wanting a party spirit to aggravate the defects of a poet, who with all the courage of uncorrupted youth had avowed his zeal for a cause, which he deemed that of liberty, and his abhorrence of oppression by whatever name consecrated.But it was as little objected by others, as dreamt of by the poet himself, that he preferred, careless and prosaic lines on rule and of forethought, or indeed that he pretended to any other art or theory of poetic diction, besides that which we may all learn from Horace, Quinctilian, the admirable dialogue de Causis Corruptae Eloquentiæ, or Strada's Prolusions; if indeed natural good sense and the early study of the best models in his own language had not infused the same maxims more securely, and, if I may venture the expression, more vitally.All that could have been fairly deduced was, that in his taste and estimation of writers Mr.Southey agreed far more with Warton, than with Johnson.Nor do I mean to deny, that at all times Mr.Southey was of the same mind with Sir Philip Sidney in preferring an excellent ballad in the humblest style of poetry to twenty indifferent poems that strutted in the highest [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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