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I am sure that I have neglected poetry all my life for want of some guide to the appreciation and criticism of it, and that I am the worse for it. If you don't use Uncle Sam's "Biographia Literaria," and "Literary Remains," I should much like to have them. 'Do you, Fan, care to have any of my German books? I have, indeed, scarce any but theological ones.
Coleridge, Hunt, Hazlitt, Lamb, and De Quincey were the leaders in this new and immensely important development; and we must not forget the importance of the new periodicals, like the Londen Magazine, founded in 1820, in which Lamb, De Quincey, and Carlyle found their first real encouragement. Of Coleridge's Biographica Literaria and his Lectures on Shakespeare we have already spoken.
Of Coleridge's prose works, the Biographia, Literaria, or Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions , his collected Lectures on Shakespeare , and Aids to Reflection are the most interesting from a literary view point.
It was during the last year of his residence at Cambridge that he first met with these poems, of which he says in the Biographia Literaria that "seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced;" and the effect produced by this volume was steadily enhanced by further acquaintance both with the poet and his works.
Fuller mentions a book writ by our author, entitled Monumenta Literaria, which are said to Non tam labore, condita, quam Lepore condita: The author of English poetry, speaking of several of our old English bards, says thus of our poet. "John Heywood for the mirth and quickness of conceit, more than any good learning that was in him, came to be well rewarded by the king."
Mysticism and Pantheism link hands over the gulf which seemed to divide them." "Miss Benton, is this view of the subject a novel one?" said he, looking at her very intently. "No; a singular passage in the 'Biographia Literaria' suggested it to me long ago. But unwelcome hints are rarely accepted, you know." "Why unwelcome in this case?" She looked at him, but made no reply, and none was needed.
And among the bits of subtle interpretation that abound in his writings may be mentioned his estimate of Wordsworth, in the Biographia Literaria, and his sketch of Hamlet's character one with which he was personally in strong sympathy in the Lectures on Shakspere.
He tells us in the Biographia Literaria that he had translated the eight hymns of Synesius from the Greek into English anacreontics "before his fifteenth year." It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that he had more scholarship in 1782 than most boys of ten years.
But Wheelwright was himself as ignorant of the pun as the faculty were, until both were enlightened the following week, when the real author caused it to be published in the Cistula Literaria an interesting journal, edited by a committee of the junior class with a capital "N" and a superfluous "t" in the monosyllable referred to, as it appears in the present memoir.
The most important of the new works of this period was, as has been said, the Biographia Literaria, or, to give it its other title, Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions. Its interest, however, is wholly critical and illustrative; as a narrative it would be found extremely disappointing and probably irritating by the average reader.
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