CHAP. IX. Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what are its con- ditions?-Giordano Bruno-Literary Aristocracy, or the existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a privileged order-The Author's obligations to the Mystics-to Immanuel Kant-The dif- ference between the letter and the spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of prudence in the teaching of Philosophy-Fichte's attempt to complete the Critical system--Its partial success and ultimate failure-Obligations to Schelling; and among English CHAP. X. A chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that on the nature and genesis of the Imagination or Plastic Power-On Pedantry and pedantic expressions-Advice to young authors respecting publication-Various anecdotes of the Author's literary life, and the progress of his opinions in Religion CHAP. nally proposed-Preface to the second edition-The ensuing con- troversy, its causes and acrimony-Philosophic definitions of a CHAP. XV. The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a critical analysis of Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis, and Rape of CHAP. XVI. Striking points of difference between the Poets of the present age and those of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries- Wish expressed for the union of the characteristic merits of both 464 CHAP. XVII. Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth -Rustic life (above all, low and rustic life) especially unfavorable to the formation of a human diction-The best parts of language the product of philosophers, not of clowns or shepherds-Poetry essentially ideal and generic-The language of Milton as much the language of real life, yea, incomparably more so than that of CHAP. XVIII Language of metrical composition, why and wherein essentially different from that of prose-Origin and elements of metre-Its necessary consequences, and the conditions thereby CHAP. XIX. Continuation.-Concerning the real object which, it is probable, Mr. Wordsworth had before him in his critical preface CHAP. XX. The former subject continued-The neutral style, or that common to Prose and Poetry, exemplified by specimens from CHAP. XXII. The characteristic defects of Wordsworth's poetry, with the principles from which the judgment, that they are de- INTRODUCTION Mr. Coleridge's obligations to Schelling, and the unfair view of the subject presented in Blackwood's Magazine. SOME years ago, when the late Editor of my Father's works was distantly contemplating a new edition of the Biographia Literaria, but had not yet begun to examine the text carefully with a view to this object, his attention was drawn to an article in Blackwood's Magazine of March, 1840, in which "the very large and unacknowledged appropriations it contains from the great German Philosopher Schelling" are pointed out; and by this paper I have been directed to those passages in the works of Schelling and of Maasz, to which references are given in the following pages, to most of them immediately, and to a few more through the strict investigation which it occasioned. Whether or no my Father's obligations to the great German Philosopher are virtually unacknowledged to the extent and with the unfairness which the writer of that article labors to prove, the reader of the present edition will be able to judge for himself; the facts of the case will be all before him, and from these, when the whole of them are fully and fairly considered, I feel assured that by readers in general, and I have had some experience on this point already, no such injurious inferences as are contained in that paper will ever be drawn. The author, it must be observed, before commencing his argument, thinks fit to disclaim the belief, that conscious intentional plagiarism is imputable to the object of his censure; nevertheless, throughout great part of it, Mr. Coleridge is treated as an artful purloiner and selfish plun derer, who knowingly robs others to enrich himself, both the tone and the language of the article expressing this and no other meaning. Such aspersions will not rest, I think they never have rested, upon Coleridge's name; the protest here entered is a duty to his memory from myself rather than a work necessary to his vindication, and the remarks that follow are made less with a view to influence the opinions of others than to record my own. The charge brought against my Father by the author of the article appears to be this, that, having borrowed largely from Schelling,' he has made no adequate acknowledgments of obligation to that philosopher, only such general admissions as are quite insufficient to cover the extent of his debt; that his anticipatory defence against a charge of "ungenerous concealment or intentional plagiarism" is no defence at all; and that his particular references are too few and inaccurate to vindicate him from having dealt unfairly towards the author from whom he has taken so much. The plaintiff opens his case with giving as the whole of this defence of my Father's-(that it is not the whole will appear in the sequel)-certain parts of a passage upon Schelling that occurs in the ninth chapter of the Biographia Literaria; and although, in that passage, the author desires, that, “whatever in this or any future work of his resembles or coincides with the doctrines of his German predecessor though contemporary be wholly attributed to him," yet he insists that Coleridge has de frauded Schelling of his due, and seeks to support the impeachment on these two grounds, first that very "absence of distinct references to his books," which he himself plainly admits and particularly accounts for; or in the accuser's own words, his omission of specific acknowledgments in the instances in which he was indebted to him; secondly, his having affirmed that he had in some sort anticipated the system which he proposed to teach. Now it must be remarked, by way of preliminary, that no man The passages borrowed by my Father from Schelling and Maasz are pointed out in this edition in notes at the foot of the pages where they ocFor the particulars and amount of the debt, therefore, readers are referred to the body of the work, chapters v. vii, viii. ix. xii. in the first volume cur. |