"Bibliomania.".

  • John Taylor Brown
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: "Bibliomania.". Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    18/44 (page 16)
    Delphini; adding, I do not scruple to prefer Statius to Virgil; his images are strongly conceived and clearly painted, and the force of his language, while it makes the reader feel, proves that the author felt himself. Against this Coleridge has written :— The proper petulance of levelism in a youth of two-and-twenty. I will venture to assert Southey had never read, or more than merely looked through, Statius, or Virgil either, except in school lessons. Again, The lawless magic of Ariosto, says Southey, and the singular theme as well as the singular excellence of Milton, render all rules of epic poetry inapplicable to these authors. On this Coleridge remarks :— N.B.—It is an original discovery of Southey's that the excellence of an epic poem should render the rules of epic poetry inapplicable to it. The Yorkshire pudding [has] beeu made with consummate culinary art; the art culinary is therefore inapplicable to the making thereof. There is just the same difference between a poet, the most thinking of human beings, and a mock poet, as between cooks in egg skill. So likewise, continues Southey, with Spenser, the favourite of my childhood, from whose frequent perusal I have always found increased delight. The marvellous ego- tism, subjoins Coleridge, in the curt ipse dixit of this Bpician! Coming to the poem itself, Coleridge sets down the follow- ing list of abbreviations, which he proposes to use in his marginal notes :— N.B.—S. E. means Southey's English, i.e., no English at all. N. means nonsense. J. means discordant jingle of sound—one word rhyming or half-rhyming to another, proving either utter want of ear, or else very long ones. L. M. ludicrous metaphor. I. M. incongruous metaphor. S = pseudo-poetic slang, generally, too, not English.