Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 2: being The Biographical Supplement of Coleridge's Biographia LiterariaColeridge, Samuel Taylor
General
Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 2: being The Biographical Supplement of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 -- Correspondence
perfect originality or proper creation of the Shakspearian Drama; the
contradistinction of the latter from the Greek Drama, and its still
remaining _uniqueness_, with the causes of this, from the combined
influences of Shakespeare himself, as man, poet, philosopher, and
finally, by conjunction of all these, dramatic poet; and of the age,
events, manners, and state of the English language. This work, with
every art of compression, amounts to three volumes of about five hundred
pages each.--II. Philosophical Analysis of the Genius and Works of
Dante, Spenser, Milton, Cervantes, and Calderon, with similar, but more
compressed Criticisms on Chaucer, Ariosto, Donne, Rabelais, and others,
during the predominance of the Romantic Poetry.[113] In one large
volume.--These two works will, I flatter myself, form a complete code of
the principles of judgment and feeling applied to Works of Taste; and
not of _Poetry_ only, but of Poesy in all its forms, Painting, Statuary,
Music, etc. etc.--III. The History of Philosophy considered as a
Tendency of the Human Mind to exhibit the Powers of the Human Reason, to
discover by its own Strength the Origin and Laws of Man and the World
from Pythagoras to Locke and Condillac. Two volumes.--IV. Letters on the
Old and New Testament, and on the Doctrine and Principles held in common
by the Fathers and Founders of the Reformation, addressed to a Candidate
for Holy Orders; including Advice on the Plan and Subjects of Preaching,
proper to a Minister of the Established Church.
To the completion of these four works I have literally nothing more to
do than _to transcribe_; but, as I before hinted, from so many scraps
and _Sibylline_ leaves, including margins of books and blank pages,
that, unfortunately, I must be my own scribe, and not done by myself,
they will be all but lost; or perhaps (as has been too often the case
already) furnish feathers for the caps of others; some for this purpose,
and some to plume the arrows of detraction, to be let fly against the
luckless bird from whom they had been plucked or moulted.
In addition to these--of my GREAT WORK, to the preparation of which more
than twenty years of my life have been devoted, and on which my hopes of
extensive and permanent utility, of fame, in the noblest[114] sense of
the word, mainly rest--that, by which I might,
As now by thee, by all the good be known,
When this weak frame lies moulder'd in the grave,
Which self-surviving I might call my own,
Which Folly cannot mar, nor Hate deprave--
The incense of those powers, which, risen in flame,
Might make me dear to Him from whom they came.
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