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Biographia Literaria

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BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge



CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I Motives to the present work--Reception of the Author's first
publication--Discipline of his taste at school--Effect of
contemporary writers on youthful minds--Bowles's Sonnets-
Comparison between the poets before and since

II Supposed irritability of genius brought to the test of
facts--Causes and occasions of the charge--Its injustice

III The Author's obligations to Critics, and the probable
occasion--Principles of modern criticism--Mr. Southey's
works and character

IV The Lyrical Ballads with the Preface--Mr. Wordsworth's
earlier poems--On Fancy and Imagination--The investigation
of the distinction important to the Fine Arts

V On the law of Association--Its history traced from Aristotle
to Hartley

VI That Hartley's system, as far as it differs from that of
Aristotle, is neither tenable in theory, nor founded
in facts

VII Of the necessary consequences of the Hartleian Theory--Of
the original mistake or equivocation which procured its
admission--Memoria technica

VIII The system of Dualism introduced by Des Cartes--Refined
first by Spinoza and afterwards by Leibnitz into the
doctrine of Harmonia praestabilita--Hylozoism--Materialism
--None of these systems, or any possible theory of
Association, supplies or supersedes a theory of
Perception, or explains the formation of the Associable

XI Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what are its
conditions?--Giordano Bruno--Literary Aristocracy, or the
existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a
privileged order--The Author's obligations to the Mystics-
To Immanuel Kant--The difference between the letter and
The spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of
Prudence in the teaching of Philosophy--Fichte's attempt
to complete the Critical system-Its partial success and
ultimate failure--Obligations to Schelling; and among
English writers to Saumarez

X A Chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude
preceding that on the nature and genesis of the Imagination
or Plastic Power--On Pedantry and pedantic expressions--
Advice to young authors respecting publication--Various
anecdotes of the Author's literary life, and the progress
of his opinions in Religion and Politics

XI An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel
themselves disposed to become authors

XII A Chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal
or omission of the chapter that follows

XIII On the Imagination, or Esemplastic power

XIV Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads, and the objects originally
proposed--Preface to the second edition--The ensuing
controversy, its causes and acrimony--Philosophic
definitions of a Poem and Poetry with scholia

XV The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a
Critical analysis of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and
Rape of Lucrece

XVI Striking points of difference between the Poets of the
present age and those of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries--Wish expressed for the union of the
characteristic merits of both

XVII Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth--
Rustic life (above all, low and rustic life) especially
unfavourable to the formation of a human diction-The
best parts of language the product of philosophers, not of
clowns or shepherds--Poetry essentially ideal and generic--
The language of Milton as much the language of real life,
yea, incomparably more so than that of the cottager

XVIII Language of metrical composition, why and wherein essentially
different from that of prose--Origin and elements of metre
--Its necessary consequences, and the conditions thereby
imposed on the metrical writer in the choice of his diction

XIX Continuation--Concerning the real object, which, it is
probable, Mr. Wordsworth had before him in his critical
preface--Elucidation and application of this

XX The former subject continued--The neutral style, or that
common to Prose and Poetry, exemplified by specimens from
Chaucer, Herbert, and others

XXI Remarks on the present mode of conducting critical journals

XXII The characteristic defects of Wordsworth's poetry, with the
principles from which the judgment, that they are defects,
is deduced--Their proportion to the beauties--For the
greatest part characteristic of his theory only

SATYRANE'S LETTERS

XXIII Critique on Bertram

XXIV Conclusion



So wenig er auch bestimmt seyn mag, andere zu belehren, so wuenscht er
doch sich denen mitzutheilen, die er sich gleichgesinnt weis, (oder
hofft,) deren Anzahl aber in der Breite der Welt zerstreut ist; er
wuenscht sein Verhaeltniss zu den aeltesten Freunden dadurch wieder
anzuknuepfen, mit neuen es fortzusetzen, und in der letzten Generation
sich wieder andere fur seine uebrige Lebenszeit zu gewinnen. Er
wuenscht der Jugend die Umwege zu ersparen, auf denen er sich selbst
verirrte. (Goethe. Einleitung in die Propylaeen.)

TRANSLATION. Little call as he may have to instruct others, he wishes
nevertheless to open out his heart to such as he either knows or hopes
to be of like mind with himself, but who are widely scattered in the
world: he wishes to knit anew his connections with his oldest friends,
to continue those recently formed, and to win other friends among the
rising generation for the remaining course of his life. He wishes to
spare the young those circuitous paths, on which he himself had lost
his way.





BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA




CHAPTER I

Motives to the present work--Reception of the Author's first
publication--Discipline of his taste at school--Effect of contemporary
writers on youthful minds--Bowles's Sonnets--Comparison between the
poets before and since Pope.


It has been my lot to have had my name introduced both in
conversation, and in print, more frequently than I find it easy to
explain, whether I consider the fewness, unimportance, and limited
circulation of my writings, or the retirement and distance, in which I
have lived, both from the literary and political world. Most often it
has been connected with some charge which I could not acknowledge, or
some principle which I had never entertained. Nevertheless, had I had
no other motive or incitement, the reader would not have been troubled
with this exculpation. What my additional purposes were, will be seen
in the following pages. It will be found, that the least of what I
have written concerns myself personally. I have used the narration
chiefly for the purpose of giving a continuity to the work, in part
for the sake of the miscellaneous reflections suggested to me by
particular events, but still more as introductory to a statement of my
principles in Politics, Religion, and Philosophy, and an application
of the rules, deduced from philosophical principles, to poetry and
criticism. But of the objects, which I proposed to myself, it was not
the least important to effect, as far as possible, a settlement of the
long continued controversy concerning the true nature of poetic
diction; and at the same time to define with the utmost impartiality
the real poetic character of the poet, by whose writings this
controversy was first kindled, and has been since fuelled and fanned.

In the spring of 1796, when I had but little passed the verge of
manhood, I published a small volume of juvenile poems. They were
received with a degree of favour, which, young as I was, I well know
was bestowed on them not so much for any positive merit, as because
they were considered buds of hope, and promises of better works to
come. The critics of that day, the most flattering, equally with the
severest, concurred in objecting to them obscurity, a general
turgidness of diction, and a profusion of new coined double epithets
[1]. The first is the fault which a writer is the least able to detect
in his own compositions: and my mind was not then sufficiently
disciplined to receive the authority of others, as a substitute for my
own conviction. Satisfied that the thoughts, such as they were, could
not have been expressed otherwise, or at least more perspicuously, I
forgot to inquire, whether the thoughts themselves did not demand a
degree of attention unsuitable to the nature and objects of poetry.
This remark however applies chiefly, though not exclusively, to the
Religious Musings. The remainder of the charge I admitted to its full
extent, and not without sincere acknowledgments both to my private and
public censors for their friendly admonitions. In the after editions,
I pruned the double epithets with no sparing hand, and used my best
efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of thought and diction;
though in truth, these parasite plants of youthful poetry had
insinuated themselves into my longer poems with such intricacy of
union, that I was often obliged to omit disentangling the weed, from
the fear of snapping the flower. From that period to the date of the
present work I have published nothing, with my name, which could by
any possibility have come before the board of anonymous criticism.
Even the three or four poems, printed with the works of a friend [2],
as far as they were censured at all, were charged with the same or
similar defects, (though I am persuaded not with equal justice),--with
an excess of ornament, in addition to strained and elaborate diction.
I must be permitted to add, that, even at the early period of my
juvenile poems, I saw and admitted the superiority of an austerer and
more natural style, with an insight not less clear, than I at present
possess. My judgment was stronger than were my powers of realizing its
dictates; and the faults of my language, though indeed partly owing to
a wrong choice of subjects, and the desire of giving a poetic
colouring to abstract and metaphysical truths, in which a new world
then seemed to open upon me, did yet, in part likewise, originate in
unfeigned diffidence of my own comparative talent.--During several
years of my youth and early manhood, I reverenced those who had re-
introduced the manly simplicity of the Greek, and of our own elder
poets, with such enthusiasm as made the hope seem presumptuous of
writing successfully in the same style. Perhaps a similar process has
happened to others; but my earliest poems were marked by an ease and
simplicity, which I have studied, perhaps with inferior success, to
impress on my later compositions.

At school, (Christ's Hospital,) I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of
a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master, the
Reverend James Bowyer. He early moulded my taste to the preference of
Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of
Virgil to Ovid. He habituated me to compare Lucretius, (in such
extracts as I then read,) Terence, and above all the chaster poems of
Catullus, not only with the Roman poets of the, so called, silver and
brazen ages; but with even those of the Augustan aera: and on grounds
of plain sense and universal logic to see and assert the superiority
of the former in the truth and nativeness both of their thoughts and
diction. At the same time that we were studying the Greek tragic
poets, he made us read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons: and they
were the lessons too, which required most time and trouble to bring
up, so as to escape his censure. I learned from him, that poetry, even
that of the loftiest and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a
logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult,
because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more
fugitive causes. In the truly great poets, he would say, there is a
reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of
every word; and I well remember that, availing himself of the
synonymes to the Homer of Didymus, he made us attempt to show, with
regard to each, why it would not have answered the same purpose; and
wherein consisted the peculiar fitness of the word in the original
text.

In our own English compositions, (at least for the last three years of
our school education,) he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or
image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might
have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words [3].
Lute, harp, and lyre, Muse, Muses, and inspirations, Pegasus,
Parnassus, and Hippocrene were all an abomination to him. In fancy I
can almost hear him now, exclaiming "Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink,
boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse? Your nurse's daughter, you mean!
Pierian spring? Oh aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose!" Nay certain
introductions, similes, and examples, were placed by name on a list of
interdiction. Among the similes, there was, I remember, that of the
manchineel fruit, as suiting equally well with too many subjects; in
which however it yielded the palm at once to the example of Alexander
and Clytus, which was equally good and apt, whatever might be the
theme. Was it ambition? Alexander and Clytus!-Flattery? Alexander and
Clytus!--anger--drunkenness--pride--friendship--ingratitude--late
repentance? Still, still Alexander and Clytus! At length, the praises
of agriculture having been exemplified in the sagacious observation
that, had Alexander been holding the plough, he would not have run his
friend Clytus through with a spear, this tried, and serviceable old
friend was banished by public edict in saecula saeculorum. I have
sometimes ventured to think, that a list of this kind, or an index
expurgatorius of certain well-known and ever-returning phrases, both
introductory, and transitional, including a large assortment of modest
egoisms, and flattering illeisms, and the like, might be hung up in
our Law-courts, and both Houses of Parliament, with great advantage to
the public, as an important saving of national time, an incalculable
relief to his Majesty's ministers, but above all, as insuring the
thanks of country attornies, and their clients, who have private bills
to carry through the House.

Be this as it may, there was one custom of our master's, which I
cannot pass over in silence, because I think it imitable and worthy of
imitation. He would often permit our exercises, under some pretext of
want of time, to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be
looked over. Then placing the whole number abreast on his desk, he
would ask the writer, why this or that sentence might not have found
as appropriate a place under this or that other thesis: and if no
satisfying answer could be returned, and two faults of the same kind
were found in one exercise, the irrevocable verdict followed, the
exercise was torn up, and another on the same subject to be produced,
in addition to the tasks of the day. The reader will, I trust, excuse
this tribute of recollection to a man, whose severities, even now, not
seldom furnish the dreams, by which the blind fancy would fain
interpret to the mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep; but
neither lessen nor dim the deep sense of my moral and intellectual
obligations. He sent us to the University excellent Latin and Greek
scholars, and tolerable Hebraists. Yet our classical knowledge was the
least of the good gifts, which we derived from his zealous and
conscientious tutorage. He is now gone to his final reward, full of
years, and full of honours, even of those honours, which were dearest
to his heart, as gratefully bestowed by that school, and still binding
him to the interests of that school, in which he had been himself
educated, and to which during his whole life he was a dedicated thing.

From causes, which this is not the place to investigate, no models of
past times, however perfect, can have the same vivid effect on the
youthful mind, as the productions of contemporary genius. The
discipline, my mind had undergone, Ne falleretur rotundo sono et
versuum cursu, cincinnis, et floribus; sed ut inspiceret quidnam
subesset, quae, sedes, quod firmamentum, quis fundus verbis; an
figures essent mera ornatura et orationis fucus; vel sanguinis e
materiae ipsius corde effluentis rubor quidam nativus et incalescentia
genuina;--removed all obstacles to the appreciation of excellence in
style without diminishing my delight. That I was thus prepared for the
perusal of Mr. Bowles's sonnets and earlier poems, at once increased
their influence, and my enthusiasm. The great works of past ages seem
to a young man things of another race, in respect to which his
faculties must remain passive and submiss, even as to the stars and
mountains. But the writings of a contemporary, perhaps not many years
older than himself, surrounded by the same circumstances, and
disciplined by the same manners, possess a reality for him, and
inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a man. His very
admiration is the wind which fans and feeds his hope. The poems
themselves assume the properties of flesh and blood. To recite, to
extol, to contend for them is but the payment of a debt due to one,
who exists to receive it.

There are indeed modes of teaching which have produced, and are
producing, youths of a very different stamp; modes of teaching, in
comparison with which we have been called on to despise our great
public schools, and universities,

in whose halls are hung
Armoury of the invincible knights of old--

modes, by which children are to be metamorphosed into prodigies. And
prodigies with a vengeance have I known thus produced; prodigies of
self-conceit, shallowness, arrogance, and infidelity! Instead of
storing the memory, during the period when the memory is the
predominant faculty, with facts for the after exercise of the
judgment; and instead of awakening by the noblest models the fond and
unmixed love and admiration, which is the natural and graceful temper
of early youth; these nurslings of improved pedagogy are taught to
dispute and decide; to suspect all but their own and their lecturer's
wisdom; and to hold nothing sacred from their contempt, but their own
contemptible arrogance; boy-graduates in all the technicals, and in
all the dirty passions and impudence of anonymous criticism. To such
dispositions alone can the admonition of Pliny be requisite, Neque
enim debet operibus ejus obesse, quod vivit. An si inter eos, quos
nunquam vidimus, floruisset, non solum libros ejus, verum etiam
imagines conquireremus, ejusdem nunc honor prasentis, et gratia quasi
satietate languescet? At hoc pravum, malignumque est, non admirari
hominem admiratione dignissimum, quia videre, complecti, nec laudare
tantum, verum etiam amare contingit.

I had just entered on my seventeenth year, when the sonnets of Mr.
Bowles, twenty in number, and just then published in a quarto
pamphlet, were first made known and presented to me, by a schoolfellow
who had quitted us for the University, and who, during the whole time
that he was in our first form (or in our school language a Grecian,)
had been my patron and protector. I refer to Dr. Middleton, the truly
learned, and every way excellent Bishop of Calcutta:

qui laudibus amplis
Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat,
Calcar agens animo validum. Non omnia terra
Obruta; vivit amor, vivit dolor; ora negatur
Dulcia conspicere; at fiere et meminisse relictum est.

It was a double pleasure to me, and still remains a tender
recollection, that I should have received from a friend so revered the
first knowledge of a poet, by whose works, year after year, I was so
enthusiastically delighted and inspired. My earliest acquaintances
will not have forgotten the undisciplined eagerness and impetuous
zeal, with which I laboured to make proselytes, not only of my
companions, but of all with whom I conversed, of whatever rank, and in
whatever place. As my school finances did not permit me to purchase
copies, I made, within less than a year and a half, more than forty
transcriptions, as the best presents I could offer to those, who had
in any way won my regard. And with almost equal delight did I receive
the three or four following publications of the same author.

Though I have seen and known enough of mankind to be well aware, that
I shall perhaps stand alone in my creed, and that it will be well, if
I subject myself to no worse charge than that of singularity; I am not
therefore deterred from avowing, that I regard, and ever have regarded
the obligations of intellect among the most sacred of the claims of
gratitude. A valuable thought, or a particular train of thoughts,
gives me additional pleasure, when I can safely refer and attribute it
to the conversation or correspondence of another. My obligations to
Mr. Bowles were indeed important, and for radical good. At a very
premature age, even before my fifteenth year, I had bewildered myself
in metaphysics, and in theological controversy. Nothing else pleased
me. History, and particular facts, lost all interest in my mind.
Poetry--(though for a school-boy of that age, I was above par in
English versification, and had already produced two or three
compositions which, I may venture to say, without reference to my age,
were somewhat above mediocrity, and which had gained me more credit
than the sound, good sense of my old master was at all pleased with,)
--poetry itself, yea, novels and romances, became insipid to me. In my
friendless wanderings on our leave-days [4], (for I was an orphan, and
had scarcely any connections in London,) highly was I delighted, if
any passenger, especially if he were dressed in black, would enter
into conversation with me. For I soon found the means of directing it
to my favourite subjects

Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, fore-knowledge absolute,
And found no end in wandering mazes lost.

This preposterous pursuit was, beyond doubt, injurious both to my
natural powers, and to the progress of my education. It would perhaps
have been destructive, had it been continued; but from this I was
auspiciously withdrawn, partly indeed by an accidental introduction to
an amiable family, chiefly however, by the genial influence of a style
of poetry, so tender and yet so manly, so natural and real, and yet so
dignified and harmonious, as the sonnets and other early poems of Mr.
Bowles. Well would it have been for me, perhaps, had I never relapsed
into the same mental disease; if I had continued to pluck the flower
and reap the harvest from the cultivated surface, instead of delving
in the unwholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic lore. And if in
after time I have sought a refuge from bodily pain and mismanaged
sensibility in abstruse researches, which exercised the strength and
subtilty of the understanding without awakening the feelings of the
heart; still there was a long and blessed interval, during which my
natural faculties were allowed to expand, and my original tendencies
to develop themselves;--my fancy, and the love of nature, and the
sense of beauty in forms and sounds.

The second advantage, which I owe to my early perusal, and admiration
of these poems, (to which let me add,) though known to me at a somewhat
later period, the Lewesdon Hill of Mr. Crowe bears more immediately on
my present subject. Among those with whom I conversed, there were, of
course, very many who had formed their taste, and their notions of
poetry, from the writings of Pope and his followers; or to speak more
generally, in that school of French poetry, condensed and invigorated
by English understanding, which had predominated from the last
century. I was not blind to the merits of this school, yet, as from
inexperience of the world, and consequent want of sympathy with the
general subjects of these poems, they gave me little pleasure, I
doubtless undervalued the kind, and with the presumption of youth
withheld from its masters the legitimate name of poets. I saw that the
excellence of this kind consisted in just and acute observations on
men and manners in an artificial state of society, as its matter and
substance; and in the logic of wit, conveyed in smooth and strong
epigrammatic couplets, as its form: that even when the subject was
addressed to the fancy, or the intellect, as in the Rape of the Lock,
or the Essay on Man; nay, when it was a consecutive narration, as in
that astonishing product of matchless talent and ingenuity Pope's
Translation of the Iliad; still a point was looked for at the end of
each second line, and the whole was, as it were, a sorites, or, if I
may exchange a logical for a grammatical metaphor, a conjunction
disjunctive, of epigrams. Meantime the matter and diction seemed to me
characterized not so much by poetic thoughts, as by thoughts
translated into the language of poetry. On this last point, I had
occasion to render my own thoughts gradually more and more plain to
myself, by frequent amicable disputes concerning Darwin's Botanic
Garden, which, for some years, was greatly extolled, not only by the
reading public in general, but even by those, whose genius and natural
robustness of understanding enabled them afterwards to act foremost in
dissipating these "painted mists" that occasionally rise from the
marshes at the foot of Parnassus. During my first Cambridge vacation,
I assisted a friend in a contribution for a literary society in
Devonshire: and in this I remember to have compared Darwin's work to
the Russian palace of ice, glittering, cold and transitory. In the
same essay too, I assigned sundry reasons, chiefly drawn from a
comparison of passages in the Latin poets with the original Greek,
from which they were borrowed, for the preference of Collins's odes to
those of Gray; and of the simile in Shakespeare

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