'If substance may be call'd what shadow seem'd, MILTON. Yet after all, I could not but repeat the lines which you had quoted from a MS. poem of your own in the FRIEND, and applied to a work of Mr. Wordsworth's though with a few of 5 the words altered: -An orphic tale indeed, A tale obscure of high and passionate thoughts "Be assured, however, that I look forward anxiously to 10 your great book on the CONSTRUCTIVE PHILOSOPHY, which you have promised and announced: and that I will do my best to understand it. Only I will not promise to descend into the dark cave of Trophonius with you, there to rub my own eyes, in order to make the sparks and figured flashes, which 15 I am required to see. "So much for myself. But as for the PUBLIC, I do not hesitate a moment in advising and urging you to withdraw the Chapter from the present work, and to reserve it for your announced treatises on the Logos or communicative intellect in 20 Man and Deity. First, because, imperfectly as I understand the present Chapter, I see clearly that you have done too much, and yet not enough. You have been obliged to omit so many links, from the necessity of compression, that what remains, looks (if I may recur to my former illustration) like the frag- 25 ments of the winding steps of an old ruined tower. Secondly, a still stronger argument (at least one that I am sure will be more forcible with you) is, that your readers will have both right and reason to complain of you. This Chapter, which cannot, when it is printed, amount to so little as an hundred 30 pages, will of necessity greatly increase the expense of the work; and every reader who, like myself, is neither prepared nor perhaps calculated for the study of so abstruse a subject so abstrusely treated, will, as I have before hinted, be almost entitled to accuse you of a sort of imposition on him. For 35 46 who, he might truly observe, could from your title-page, viz. My Literary Life and Opinions," published too as introductory to a volume of miscellaneous poems, have anticipated, or even conjectured, a long treatise on ideal Realism which 5 holds the same relation in abstruseness to Plotinus, as Plotinus does to Plato. It will be well, if already you have not too much of metaphysical disquisition in your work, though as the larger part of the disquisition is historical, it will doubtless be both interesting and instructive to many to whose unprepared minds 10 your speculations on the esemplastic power would be utterly unintelligible. Be assured, if you do publish this Chapter in the present work, you will be reminded of Bishop Berkley's Siris, announced as an Essay on Tar-water, which beginning with Tar ends with the Trinity, the omne scibile forming the 15 interspace. I say in the present work. In that greater work to which you have devoted so many years, and study so intense and various, it will be in its proper place. Your prospectus will have described and announced both its contents and their nature; and if any persons purchase it, who feel no interest in the subjects 20 of which it treats, they will have themselves only to blame. 66 I could add to these arguments one derived from pecuniary motives, and particularly from the probable effects on the sale of your present publication; but they would weigh little with you compared with the preceding. Besides, I have long observed, 25 that arguments drawn from your own personal interests more often act on you as narcotics than as stimulants, and that in money concerns you have some small portion of pig-nature in your moral idiosyncracy, and, like these amiable creatures, must occasionally be pulled backward from the boat in order to 30 make you enter it. All success attend you, for if hard thinking and hard reading are merits, you have deserved it. Your affectionate, &c." In consequence of this very judicious letter, which produced complete conviction on my mind, I shall content myself for the present with stating the main result of the Chapter, which I have reserved for that future publication, a detailed prospectus of which the reader will find at the close of the second volume. The IMAGINATION then, I consider either as primary, or 5 secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, 10 yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is 15 essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of 20 time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association. 25 Whatever more than this, I shall think it fit to declare concerning the powers and privileges of the imagination in the present work, will be found in the critical essay on the uses of the Supernatural in poetry, and the principles that regulate its introduction: which the reader will find pre- 30 fixed to the poem of The Ancient Mariner. END OF VOLUME FIRST. NOTES TO VOL. I In the notes the following abbreviations have been adopted :Poet. Works = The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge. Edited by J. Dykes Campbell. (Macmillan, 1905.) = Life Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a narrative of the events of his life. By J. Dykes Campbell. (Macmillan, 1896.) = Letters Letters of S. T. Coleridge. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge. (Heinemann, 1895.) Lectures Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare. T. Ashe. (Bohn's Library, 1902.) Miscellanies: = Edited by Miscellanies, Aesthetic and Literary. Edited by T. Ashe. (Bohn's Library, 1892.) = A. P. Anima Poetae: from the unpublished notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge. (Heinemann, 1895.) L. B. = Lyrical Ballads. Edited by G. Sampson. (1903.) Coleridge's Table-Talk. Edited by H. N. Coleridge. The references are given under the dates. O. W. The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. Edited by Thomas Hutchinson. (Oxford Edition, Henry Frowde, 1904.) Biog. Lit. 1847 Biographia Literaria, &c. Second Edition, prepared in part by H. N. Coleridge, completed and published by his widow. 2 vols. (1847.) = = Biog. Lit. The present edition of the Biographia Literaria and the Aesthetical Essays. The references to Schelling are taken from the 1858 edition of his works, and those to Kant from the 1867 edition (by Hartenstein). BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA CHAPTER I PAGE 1 1. 1. This opening paragraph was probably written when the greater part of the book was already complete. See Supplementary Note to Introduction. PAGE 2 1. 3. In 1794. The actual date was the spring of 1796. The volume was entitled 'Poems upon Various Subjects: London: Printed for C. G. and J. Robinson; and J. Cottle, Bookseller, Bristol.' Of these poems the best known are Religious Musings, the Monody on the Death of Chatterton, and the poem afterwards named The Aeolian Harp. Lamb contributed several sonnets, and Southey part of one sonnet, to this volume. 8. The critics of that day. In a letter to Estlin of this year (1796) Coleridge writes: 'The Reviews have been wonderful. The Monthly has cataracted panegyric on my poems, the Critical has cascaded it, and the Analytical has dribbled it with very tolerable civility.' The critic of the Analytical Review was apparently the only one who commented on the 'compound epithets, through which' (as he wrote) 'the language becomes sometimes turgid'. The Monthly Review, while according high praise to the poems, reprimands the author for being often uncouth, obscure, and verging to extravagance'; while the Monthly Magazine remarks that the poems though neglectfully composed, discover the true character of genius'. (See Coleridge's Letters to the Rev. J. P. Estlin, pub. by the Philobiblon Society, p. 21.) II. a profusion of new coined double epithets. Coleridge's note implies that the use of double epithets is the sign of an immature style. But it is rather the quality than the quantity of such words that is affected by the ripening judgement of the poet. Thus no play of Shakespeare's contains so many double epithets as the Troilus and Cressida. And they are also characteristic (to take a more modern instance) of Keats's maturer work. But in both poets, and especially in Keats, the later examples are far more felicitous than the earlier. (See Keats's Poems, ed. E. de Sélincourt, App. C, p. 581.) F.N. Tanquam scopulum, &c. See Gell. Noct. Att. i. 10. 4 'Id quod a C. Caesare, excellentis ingenii ac prudentiae viro, in primo de analogia libro scriptum est; habe semper in memoria atque in pectore, ut tanquam scopulum, sic fugias inauditum atque insolens verbum.' (Caesar's Commentaries, ed. Kübler, iii. 141.) PAGE 3 1. 8. In the after editions. The second edition appeared in 1797. Some twenty of the poems contained in the first edition were omitted and ten new ones added, including the Ode to the Departing Year and Reflections on leaving a place of Retirement. To this edition was 'prefixed the dedication to Coleridge's brother George, which is full of autobiographical interest. Both Lamb and Lloyd contributed to this volume. It was reprinted in 1803, with the omission of Lloyd's poems. 9. I pruned the double epithets with no sparing hand, &c. In the whole of this sentence Coleridge is quoting almost word for word from the preface to the second edition, where he returns thanks to his reviewers for the assistance they have given him in discovering his poetic deficiencies'. A comparison of the two volumes, however, reveals that the 'pruning' process was not carried out so sternly as one is here led to suppose. Thus sorrowshrivelled', deleted in the Monody, is inserted in the Man of Ross. |