SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE VOLUME 1, 1794–1834 THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES General Editor: B.C.Southam The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer’s work and its place within a literary tradition. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published documentary material, such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer’s death. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE VOLUME 1, 1794–1834 THE CRITICAL HERITAGE Edited by J.R.DE J.JACKSON London and New York First Published in 1968 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE & 29 West 35th Street New York, NY10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1968 J.R.De J.Jackson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data ISBN 0-415-13442-0 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-203-19875-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-19878-6 (Glassbook Format) General Editor’s Preface The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and near- contemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism at large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes towards a single writer; at the same time, through private comments in letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes and literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of this kind helps us to understand the writer’s historical situation, the nature of his immediate reading-public, and his response to these pressures. The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record of this early criticism. Clearly for many of the highly-productive and lengthily-reviewed nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, there exists an enormous body of material; and in these cases the volume editors have made a selection of the most important views, significant for their intrinsic critical worth or for their representative quality— perhaps even registering incomprehension! For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials are much scarcer and the historical period has been extended, sometimes far beyond the writer’s lifetime, in order to show the inception and growth of critical views which were initially slow to appear. In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction, discussing the material assembled and relating the early stages of the author’s reception to what we have come to identify as the critical tradition. The volumes will make available much material which would otherwise be difficult of access and it is hoped that the modern reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of the ways in which literature has been read and judged. B.C.S. Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS page xii NOTE ON THE TEXT xiii INTRODUCTION 1 The Fall of Robespierre (1794) 1 ‘D.M.’ in Analytical Review 1794 21 2 Review in Critical Review 1794 22 3 Notice in British Critic 1795 23 A Moral and Political Lecture (1795) 4 Review in Critical Review 1795 24 Conciones ad Populum (1795) 5 Review in Analytical Review 1796 25 6 Notice in Monthly Review 1796 27 7 Review in Critical Review 1796 27 8 Review in British Critic 1796 28 The Plot Discovered (1795) 9 Review in Analytical Review 1796 29 10 Review in British Critic 1796 29 The Watchman (1796) 11 Letter in Bristol Gazette 1796 30 Poems on Various Subjects (1796) 12 Notice in British Critic 1796 32 13 Review in Analytical Review 1796 32 14 Review in Critical Review 1796 34 15 JOHN AIKIN in Monthly Review 1796 36 16 Notice in Monthly Mirror 1796 38 Ode on the Departing Year (1796) 17 ALEXANDER HAMILTON in Monthly Review 1797 39 18 Notice in Monthly Mirror 1797 40 19 Review in Critical Review 1797 41 vii CONTENTS Poems second edition (1797) 20 Review in Critical Review 1798 42 Fears in Solitude (1798) 21 ‘D.M.S.’ in Analytical Review 1798 44 22 C.L.MOODY in Monthly Review 1799 45 23 Review in British Critic 1799 48 24 Review in Critical Review 1799 49 Lyrical Ballads (1798) 25 Review in Analytical Review 1798 51 26 ROBERT SOUTHEY in Critical Review 1798 53 27 CHARLES BURNEY in Monthly Review 1799 55 28 Review in British Critic 1799 57 29 Notice in Anti-Jacobin 1800 59 30 Private opinions by LAMB, SOUTHEY, FRANCIS JEFFREY, SARA COLERIDGE 60 Wallenstein (1800) 31 JOHN FERRIAR in Monthly Review 1800 62 32 Review in Critical Review 1800 64 33 Review in British Critic 1801 65 Poems third edition (1803) 34 Review in Annual Review 1803 67 35 Notice in Poetical Register 1806 69 General Estimates (1809–10) 36(a) Lampoon in Satirist 1809 70 36(b) Article in Edinburgh Annual Register for 1808 1810 72 The Friend (1809–10) 37 Serial letter in Monthly Mirror 1810 73 38 JOHN FOSTER in Eclectic Review 1811 92 Remorse the performance (1813) 39 Review in Morning Chronicle 1813 111 40 Review in Morning Post 1813 117 41 Review in The Times 1813 118 42 THOMAS BARNES in Examiner 1813 122 43 Review in Satirist 1813 125 44 Review in Theatrical Inquisitor 1813 131 viii CONTENTS 45 Review in European Magazine 1813 134 46 Review in Literary Panorama 1813 135 47 Review in Universal Magazine 1813 136 48 Review in La Belle Assemblée 1813 137 49 Private opinions by ROBINSON, MICHAEL KELLY, SOUTHEY 138 Remorse the publication (1813) 50 ‘H.’ in Theatrical Inquisitor 1813 140 51 Review in Christian Observer 1813 145 52 Review in Critical Review 1813 153 53 FRANCIS HODGSON in Monthly Review 1813 155 54 Review in British Review 1813 166 55 J.T.COLERIDGE in Quarterly Review 1814 General Estimates (1814–15) 175 56 THOMAS BARNES in Champion 1814 189 57 Coleridge as poet and dramatist in Pamphleteer 1815 194 Christabel; Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep (1816) 58 Review in Critical Review 1816 199 59 WILLIAM HAZLITT in Examiner 1816 205 60 JOSIAH CONDER in Eclectic Review 1816 209 61 Review in Literary Panorama 1816 213 62 Review in Anti-Jacobin 1816 217 63 WILLIAM ROBERTS in British Review 1816 221 * 64 THOMAS MOORE in Edinburgh Review 1816 226 65 G.F.MATHEW in European Review 1816 236 66 Review in Monthly Review 1817 244 The Statesman’s Manual (1816) 67 WILLIAM HAZLITT in Examiner 1816 248 68 WILLIAM HAZLITT in Examiner 1816 253 69 WILLIAM HAZLITT in Edinburgh Review 1816 262 70 Notice in Monthly Magazine 1817 278 71 HENRY CRABB ROBINSON in Critical Review 1817 278 ‘Blessed Are Ye That Sow Beside All Waters!’ A Lay Sermon (1817) 72 Review in Monthly Magazine 1817 285 73 Review in Monthly Repository 1817 286 74 HENRY CRABB ROBINSON in Critical Review 1817 289 Biographia Literaria (1817) 75 WILLIAM HAZLITT in Edinburgh Review 1817 295 A* ix