Search -
Coleridge's Principles Of Criticism: Chapters I, III, IV, XIV-XXII Of Biographia Literaria
Coleridge's Principles Of Criticism Chapters I III IV XIV-XXII Of Biographia Literaria Author:Samuel Taylor Coleridge Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ' BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. 19 CHAPTER II. The author's obligations to critics, and the probable occasion — Principles of modern criticism— Mr. Southey's wo... more »rks and character. To anonymous critics in reviews, magazines, and news- journals of various name and rank, and to satirists with or without a name, in verse or prose, or in verse-text aided by prose-comment, I do seriously believe and profess, that I owe full two-thirds of whatever reputation and publicity 5 I happen to possess.1 For when the name of an individual has occurred so frequently, in so many works, for so great a length of time, the readers of these works (which with a shelf or two of Beauties, Elegant Extracts, and Anas, form nine-tenths of the reading of the reading public2) cannot but 10 be familiar with the name, without distinctly remembering whether it was introduced for eulogy or for censure. And this becomes the more likely, if (as I believe) the habit of perusing periodical works may be properly added to Aver- roes's3 catalogue of Anti-mnemonics, or weakeners of the 15 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 there- 20 fore (for which, indeed, on my own account, I have no pretext) I may yet be allowed to express some degree of sur- prise, that after having run the critical gauntlet for a- certain class of faults which I had, nothing having come before the judgment-seat in the interim, I should, year after year, quarter after quarter, month after month (not to mention 5 sundry petty periodicals of still quicker revolution, " or weekly or diurnal") have been fo...« less