sonnets were first printed in the Monthly Magazine for Nov. 1797. In Cottle's Reminiscences (p. 160) appears a letter from Coleridge (which must have been written in the same month), where he says: 'I sent to the Monthly Magazine three mock sonnets in ridicule of my own Poems, and Charles Lloyd's, and Charles Lamb's, &c., &c., exposing that affectation of unaffectedness, of jumping and misplaced accent, in commonplace epithets, flat lines forced into poetry by italics (signifying how well and mouthishly the author would read them), puny pathos, &c., &c. The instances were all taken from myself and Lloyd and Lamb. I signed them "Nehemiah Higginbottom". I think they may do good to our young Bards' (see Poet. Works, p. 599). It is to be noticed that Coleridge here writes as if all the sonnets were example of the same faults. A comparison of the sonnets in their original form (Poet. Works, p. 110), and as they appear in the Biog. Lit., shows that Coleridge has added largely, in the first sonnet, to the number of italicized words and employed capital letters where they are not found in the originals. In Lloyd's early poems the examples of these faults are very few yet the style and sentiment of the first sonnet suggest that it was aimed at Lloyd. The second sonnet seems a satire, not so much on Lloyd's style as on Lloyd himself ("'Tis true on Lady Fortune's gentlest pad I amble on,' &c.). Of the affected simplicity in language of this sonnet, however, Lamb's sonnets are probably the prototype; whereas in the last sonnet, Coleridge seems to have been, as he declares, his own victim.

PAGE 18 F. N. written and inserted in the Morning Post. Coleridge is here inventing. The epigram in question appeared in the Morning Post, Jan. 24, 1800, with this heading: 'To MR PYE on his Carmen Seculare (a title which has by various persons who have heard it been thus translated, "A Poem an age long"). See Poet. Works, p. 444.

CHAPTER II

The first chapter of the Biographia Literaria is the only one in which we have anything like consecutive biography. In this second chapter Coleridge turns to a quite irrelevant topic, the irritability of men of genius, which leads him on to a denunciation of irresponsible criticism. His attacks on the false methods of criticism prevailing in his day, though occasionally they took too personal a direction, constitute one of the most interesting and significant features of the Biographia Literaria.

How long before this Coleridge had arrived at the conclusions embodied in this chapter with regard to genius is shown in a letter to Sotheby (Sept. 1802: Letters, p. 402): It is my faith that the genus irritabile is a phrase applicable only to bad poets. Men of great genius have indeed as an essential of their composition great sen

sibility, but they have likewise great confidence in their own powers; and fear must always precede anger in the human mind.' And A. P. 1805 (p. 160): Those only who feel no originality, no consciousness of having received their thoughts and opinions from direct inspiration, are anxious to be thought original. The certainty, the feeling that he is right, is enough for the man of genius.'

PAGE 19 1. 14. Genus irritabile vatum. Horace, Ep. II. ii. 102. 27. Schwärmerei. 'Schwärmer' in the sense of fanatic is found as early as the sixteenth century (Alberus, Luther). Its commoner use in the present day is to signify 'passionate devotion to any cause or object, reasonable or unreasonable' (see Heyne, Deutsches Wörterbuch).

PAGE 20 1. 29. While the former rest content between thought and reality. The man of absolute genius, that is, chooses an imaginative and ideal medium of expression-the world of artistic forms; the man of commanding genius chooses a real medium —the actual world of existing things and human lives. And it is by choosing an irrelevant and inadequate medium that the latter become the shaping spirit of Ruin'. Cf. The Friend (1809-10), No. 8: 'Luther was possessed with his poetic images as with substances apart from himself: Luther did not write, he acted poems.'

PAGE 21 1. 19. Chaucer. T. T., March 15, 1834: 'I take unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my old age,' &c.

F. N. Mr. Pope was under the common error of his age. For Coleridge's exposure of this error (the substitution of a criterion extracted from the art-forms of a particular age for a criterion founded in the universal nature of man) compare his lectures on Shakespeare passim, and especially the introductory lectures of the courses of 1811-12 and 1818. But Coleridge hardly realized to what extent the admiration which the critics of the eighteenth century entertained for Shakespeare shook their confidence in their own theories. (See especially Johnson's 'Preface'.)

the first course of lectures, which differed, &c. Coleridge's first course was given early in 1808. The record preserved is too scanty to enable us to verify his description of their contents. Schlegel's lectures (which were delivered in the same year) seem first to have come into his hands when most of the lectures of the second course (1811-12) had been delivered. Coleridge again and again asserted his independence of Schlegel. See especially Lect. IX (1811-12), the statement prefixed to the notes on Hamlet in the lectures and notes of 1818, and the letter to a gentleman written in Feb. 1818 (Lectures, p. 127); also the letter to Sir G. Beaumont (1804: Memorials of Coleorton, i. 48), where reference is made to an analysis of Hamlet's character by Coleridge. There is no doubt, however, that in the lectures of 1818 he borrowed largely

from Schlegel. See the Appendix to Notes and Lectures on Shakespeare by S. T. Coleridge, edited by his daughter (1849).

PAGE 22 1. 1. grew immortal in his own despite. Pope's Epist. to Augustus (Imit. of Horace), 11. 69 foll.: Shakespeare For gain not glory winged his roving flight, And grew immortal in his own despite.

2. Speaking of one whom he had celebrated. Coleridge's opinion, to the end of his life, was that Shakespeare's sonnets were all addressed to a woman (T. T., May 14, 1833). The theory that the hero of sonnets i-cxxvi is William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was put forward by J. Boaden in the Gentleman's Magazine for Oct. 1832. A month later H. W. Bright wrote to the Magazine claiming to have reached the same conclusion in 1819. (See the Gentleman's Magazine for Oct. and Nov. 1832.) The defects of this theory are exposed in his Life of Shakespeare (pp. 422-6) by Mr. Sidney Lee, who advances strong arguments for the claims of the Earl of Southampton. But neither with regard to the identity of Shakespeare's friend, nor of the rival alluded to in the next quotation, has any single theory as yet found general acceptance.

PAGE 23 1. 20. the unjust persecution of Burleigh, &c. Coleridge here represents the view commonly held in his day, and based upon the transparent attack on Burleigh in Mother Hubbard's Tale, that Burleigh was the chief obstacle in the path of Spenser's preferment. (Cf. also Landor, Imaginary Conversations, Queen Elizabeth and Cecil'.) But there is no evidence whatever of unjust persecution. Spenser's rewards may seem to us ill-proportioned to his deserts, but they were far greater than have fallen to the lot of many poets. His appointment as secretary to Lord Grey was the result of his success with the Shepheard's Calendar, and thence sprang his estate in Ireland, no inconsiderable property. On the publication of the Faery Queene, i-iii, he obtained a pension of £50 a year (about £400 in our own money). His lack of further success was probably due (1) to his unfortunate choice of patrons-first Leicester, then Raleigh, then Essex-and to his loyalty to them when out of favour; and (2) to the outspoken criticism of public affairs in the Faery Queene. Coleridge is still less historical when he speaks of 'the severe calamities which overwhelmed Spenser's latter days' as 'diffusing over his compositions a melancholy grace'. For before the attack upon his house in 1598 he cannot be said to have suffered any severe calamity, and after that date he wrote no poetry at all.

28. Milton... reserved his anger, &c. For Coleridge's view of the causes and character of Milton's invective in his controversial writings, see the Apologetic Preface prefixed to Fire, Famine, and Slaughter in 1817 (Poet. Works, p. 527).

34. Darkness before, and danger's voice behind. From the passage on Milton in The Prelude, iii. 285.

PAGE 24 1. 2. men before whom he strode so far, &c. The same figure is used by Coleridge of Wordsworth and his contemporaries (Crabb Robinson, Diary, &c., 1869, iii. 486).

Milton: Second sonnet to Cyriac Skinner. The correct reading is

I argue not

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot

Of heart or hope: but still bear up and steer
Right onward.

PAGE 26 F. N. In the course of one of my Lectures. In the remains of Coleridge's lectures there is much said of Pope, but this particular criticism is not to be found. But in a letter to

Mrs. Clarkson (Diary, &c., Jan. 1812) on the subject of Coleridge's lectures, H. E. Robinson speaks of 'an attack on Pope's "Homer", qualified by insincere eulogy'.

As when the moon, &c. Pope's rendering of Iliad, Bk. VIII, 11. 555 ff. This passage in his translation is quoted by Wordsworth (Essay Supplementary to the Preface, 1815) as illustrating 'to what a low state knowledge of the most obvious and important phenomena had sunk' in Pope's day (O. W., p. 986).

an... article on Chalmers's British Poets. This article, which was written by Southey, appeared in the Quarterly for July 1814. But it contains nothing corresponding to Coleridge's description.

I had long before detected. Cf. A. P. p. 5 (? 1797): 'The Bard once intoxicated me: but now I read it without pleasure.' Hazlitt (My First Acquaintance with Poets) records that Coleridge in 1798 spoke with contempt of Gray. And Wordsworth in the same year (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, O. W., p. 948) writes of Gray as more than any other man curiously elaborate in the structure of his poetical diction'. Coleridge's opinion did not change. See T. T., Oct. 23, 1833, and p. 340 (edition of 1858).

Especially in this age, &c. From The Friend (1809-10), No. 10. See The Friend (1818), vol. ii, Essay I.

PAGE 28 1. 1o. they become the fit instruments. The argument is here a little obscure. Coleridge is speaking of unsuccessful authors who revenge themselves by turning critics.

PAGE 29 1. 1. 'synodical individuals.' In a footnote to No. 7 of The Friend (1809-10), where he is attacking the evil of anonymous criticism, Coleridge speaks of 'each man expressing himself, to use the words of Andrew Marvell, as a 'synodical individuum. I do not know where the phrase originally occurs. In like manner Southey complains (Life and Correspondence of R. S.

1849, vol. iii, p. 124) of Jeffrey's 'taking it for granted that the critic is, by virtue of his office, superior to every person he chooses to summon before him'. And long before the appearance of the Biog. Lit., Southey had urged Coleridge to 'lift up his voice' against Jeffrey (ib. p. 135).

3. the Paras of Hindustan.

Should be written 'Parias'.

PAGE 30 l. 14. it is not less an essential mark of true genius. Cf. Biog. Lit. ii. 14: 'A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects very remote,' &c. Cp. Goethe (Conversations with Eckermann, 29 Jan. 1826): As long as he (the poet) merely expresses his small stock of subjective emotions, he is not yet worthy the name (of poet) but as soon as he succeeds in assimilating and expressing the world outside him, he is a poet.' Was not Coleridge himself wanting in this second promise of genius'? See also T. T., July 23, 1827, on 'genius and selfishness".

F. N. Dryden's famous line. Absalom and Achitophel, i. 163:
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

PAGE 32 1. 25. I have laid too many eggs, &c. Coleridge was fond of this figure. Cf. Letter to Sir G. Beaumont, Dec. 17, 1808; and to T. Poole, Oct. 14, 1803. (Memorials of Coleorton, i. 63.)

33. Sic vos, non vobis. The well-known line in the poem popularly attributed to Virgil.

PAGE 33 1. 3. Fletcher's lines. See The Faithful Shepherdess, Act i, Sc. 2, 1. 134. For thro' read thoro'. See Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, ed. Theobald, Seward & Simpson, 1750, iii. 113; Spenser's Shepheard's Calendar, July, 11. 21-4; Homer's Iliad, xxii. 30.

CHAPTER III

In this and the following chapter Coleridge's apparent object is to account for 'the fiction of the new school of poetry', in which Wordsworth, Southey, and himself were supposed to be united, as common upholders of certain poetical theories and methods. Before the end of the fourth chapter, however, he has digressed to another and an engrossing subject-the distinction of fancy and imagination--which gives rise to the discussion on the nature of association in chapters v, vi, vii, and viii.

The

PAGE 34 1. 1. To anonymous critics in reviews, &c. majority of the criticisms to which Coleridge here refers (if they were indeed so numerous as he asserts) must have occurred in ephemeral and insignificant publications, which have now been