[MARCH, 1920.
_Coleridge's Criticism_
It is probably true that _Biographia Literaria_ is the best book of
criticism in the English language; nevertheless, it is rash to assume
that it is a book of criticism of the highest excellence, even when it
has passed through the salutary process of drastic editing, such as that
to which, in the present case,[15] the competent hands of Mr George
Sampson have submitted it. Its garrulity, its digressions, its verbiage,
the marks which even the finest portions show of submersion in the tepid
transcendentalism that wrought such havoc upon Coleridge's mind--these
are its familiar disfigurements. They are not easily removed; for they
enter fairly deeply even in the texture of those portions of the book in
which Coleridge devotes himself, as severely as he can, to the proper
business of literary criticism.
[Footnote 15: _Coleridge: Biographia Literaria_, Chapters I.-IV.,
XIV.-XXII.--_Wordsworth: Prefaces and Essays on Poetry_, 1800-1815.
Edited by George Sampson, with an Introductory Essay by Sir Arthur
Quiller-Couch.
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