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INTRODUCTION.

profit of the means without the least real desire to promote the end, or render the patient independent of their costly services; that they even hid the Gospel, lest men should see by its light how, under God, to heal themselves. He denounced the whole system not merely as liable to corruption, but as certainly, in the long run, involving it, being based on untruth and mere human policy. The cross of the Christian profession, in the Bible, is wrapped up in Christian duty strictly performed; the Papist makes a separate thing of it, and thus converts it into an engine of superstition.

So wenig er auch bestimmt seyn mag, andere zu belehren, so wünscht er doch sich denen mitzutheilen, die er sich gleichgesinnt weiss (eder hofft), deren Anzahl aber in der Breite der Welt zerstreut ist ; er wünscht sein Verhältniss zu den áltesten Freunden dadurch wieder anzuknüpfen, mit neuen es fortzusetzen, und in der letzen Generation sich wieder andere für seine übrige Lebenszeit zu gewinnen. Er wünscht der Jugend die Umwege zu ersparen, auf denen er sich selbst verirrte.

(Goethe. Einleitung in die Propyläen.)

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 connexions with his oldest friends, to continue those recently formed, and to win other friends among the rising genera tion 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 has it 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 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.1

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 favor, 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.' The first is the fault

1 [The first volume of the Lyrical Ballads was published in the summer of 1798, by Mr. Joseph Cottle, of Bristol, who purchased the copyright for thirty guineas. That copyright was afterwards transferred with others to Messrs. Longman and Co. And it is related by Mr. Cottle, that in estimating the value, the Lyrical Ballads were reckoned as nothing by the head of that firm. This copyright was subsequently given back to Mr. Cottle, and by him restored to Mr. Wordsworth. Would that he and his might hold it for ever!

The second volume, with Mr. Wordsworth's Preface, appeared in 1800. Ed:]

2 [This volume was published by Mr. Cottle at Bristol in the Spring of 1796, in conjunction with the Messrs. Robinson in London. It contained fifty-one small pieces, of which the best known at the present day are the Religious Musings, Monody on Chatterton, Song of the Pixies, and the exquisite lines written at Clevedon, beginning, " My pensive Sara, &c." To this poem Mr. Coleridge many years afterwards added the magnificent passage

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He was then twenty-three years and a half old. Ed.]

3 The authority of Milton and Shakspeare may be usefully pointed out to young authors. In the Comus and other early poems of Milton there is a superfluity of double epithets; while in the Paradise Lost we find very few, in the Paradise Regained scarce any. The same remark holds almost equally true of the Love's Labor Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece, compared with the Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and

BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA.

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 perspicu ously, 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 insi

Hamlet of our great Dramatist. The rule for the admission of double epithets seems to be this: either that they should be already denizens of our language, such as blood-stained, terror-stricken, self-applauding; or when a new epithet, or one found in books only, is hazarded, that it, at least, be one word, not two words made one by mere virtue of the printer's hyphen. A language which, like the English, is almost without cases, is indeed in its very genius unfitted for compounds. If a writer, every time a compounded word suggests itself to him, would seek for some other mode of expressing the same sense, the chances are always greatly in favor of Ut tanquam scopulum sic fugias insolens verhis finding a better word. bum, is the wise advice of Cæsar to the Roman Orators,* and the precept applies with double force to the writers in our own language. But it must not be forgotten, that the same Cæsar wrote a Treatisef for the purpose of reforming the ordinary language by bringing it to a greater accordance with the principles of logic or universal grammar.

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4 [The second edition appeared in May, 1797, with the same publishers' Upwards of twenty of the pieces contained in the first edition were omitted in this, and ten new poems were added. Amongst these latter were the Dedication to his brother, the Reverend George Coleridge, the Ode on the Departing Year, and the Reflections on having left a place of Retirement. (Poet. Works, i.) The volume comprised poems by Lamb and Lloyd, and on the title page was printed the prophetic aspiration:Duplex novis vinculum, et amicitiæ junctarumque Camœnarum ;—quoa utinam neque mors solvat ; neque temporis longinquitas! Ed]

[The expression is so given by A. Gellius (Noct. Att. i., 10). Macrobius says, infre (Saturn. i., 5.) Ed.] quens atque insolens verbum.

+De Analogia Libri duo, the first of which contained the precept above mentioned

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