Text extracted from opening pages of book: COLERIDGE'S LITEEAEY CRITICISM WITH AN INTRODUCTION By J. W. MACKAIL LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD 1921 INTRODUCTION MORTC than seventy years have passed since the death of Coleridge; and we now stand far enough off him to see him in intelligible perspective; he begins to tako shape, to assume something like a permanent place aiid value. He affected his own age as changeable and complex force, at first revolutionary, then constructive and interpretative. His influence on English poetry ...
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Text extracted from opening pages of book: COLERIDGE'S LITEEAEY CRITICISM WITH AN INTRODUCTION By J. W. MACKAIL LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD 1921 INTRODUCTION MORTC than seventy years have passed since the death of Coleridge; and we now stand far enough off him to see him in intelligible perspective; he begins to tako shape, to assume something like a permanent place aiid value. He affected his own age as changeable and complex force, at first revolutionary, then constructive and interpretative. His influence on English poetry was far-reaching and profound. His influence on English thought was, as it appeared at the time, even greater. - To the younger genera tioTT'of his mm contemporaries he was a prophet, a teacher who gave light on life. That side of his influence \ vas in its nature transitory; for life is in perpetual progress, and each age has to face the problem of life afresh and find its own interpretation. For six wonderful years he was a poet and one of the immortals. That immortality remains. But he was also; both during the brief culmination of his powers and in the long succeeding period of shattered energy and fragmentary production, a critic of the first rank. In virtue of that faculty alone he was not only an expounder but a creator; and, like all creative work, his criticism has a substantive artistic value, an in herent vitality. The saying that poetry is a criticism of life, so far as it is more than a brilliant paradox, has refer ence to poetry as the highest form of literature, and to criticism as something constructive and vital. In 8. o. a % Iv INTRODUCTION this sense, not only poetry but all literature is a criticism of life. It interprets life and, so to speak, recreates it. But literature itself requires inter pretation; for it also is life: it is a world of its own. The critical faculty as applied to the masterpieces of literature, and still more the critical faculty as applied to the art of literature itself, is akin to the creative faculty of the artist. It does not deal with letters as something detached from life, but as the form or substance in which life is intelligibly presented. Its interpretation is also creation. A sharp line can be drawn between the artist and the critic where they work in different material, as in the criticism of painting, or of music. No such line can be drawn in literary criticism; for the critic works in the same' material, and his criticism so far as it is vital ( that is to say, so far as it is relevant and worth pre servation) is also a work of rrt. Criticism of literature is literature. Like all the other gifts with which he was so richly endowed, and which he misused so tragically, Coleridge exercised his superb critical faculty fitfully and capri ciously. It was often overclouded; it often ra to waste. The body of criticism which he contrij buted to literature has to be pieced together from, fragmentary records; some of it from published writings, some from records of his conversation and notes taken at his lectures. _ But even so it is of lasting value and interest. What a great artist says about his own art is never negligible. Coleridge was a great literary artist, one whose mastery of INTRODUCTION v his art in practice it was impossible to deny, any more than it was possible to deny his subtlety of intellect and copiousness of eloquence. We have here the judgements in letters of one who had singular qualifications for judging. For he was one who impressed all his contemporaries as, in no common sense of the words, noble in reason, infinite in faculty, in action like an angel, in apprehension like a god. This volume, as its title indicates, includes passages dealing with the art of literature in general, and in particular with a number of prose authors and prose writings. These include some of Coleridge's best known and most brilliant sayings. In prose, as much as in poetry, ( he read largely, and seldom read with out making some comment on the effect
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Good. Hardcover with DJ. Pages are clean and unmarked. Covers show light edge wear. Binding is tight, hinges strong. Dust jacket shows edge wear. Presented with clear mylar ARCHIVAL book jacket cover.; 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed! Ships same or next business day!
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Good. No Jacket. 5x7. 266 page hardcover collection and review of Coleridge's literary criticism. Exterior is green cloth with gold designs with light wear. Interior has some writing on front free endpaper, otherwise unmarked, tight and clean.