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Biographia Literaria.

BY

S. T. COLERIDGE, Esq.

BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA;

OR

Biographical Sketches

OF

MY LITERARY LIFE

AND

OPINIONS.

BY S. T. COLERIDGE, Esq.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

REST FENNER, 23, PATERNOSTER ROW.

S. Curtis, Printer, Camberwell.

Bayerische
Staatsoliothek

München

BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA.

CHAPTER 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.

DURING the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sun-set diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatu

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