agination_ in the highest and strictest sense of the word ...' is
itself a pleasure to be derived only from the gift of criticism of the
highest and strictest kind.

The object of this examination has been to show, not that the
_Biographia Literaria_ is undeserving of the high praise which has been
bestowed upon it, but that the praise has been to some extent
undiscriminating. It has now become almost a tradition to hold up to our
admiration Coleridge's chapter on poetic diction, and Sir Arthur
Quiller-Couch, in a preface that is as unconventional in manner as it is
stimulating in most of its substance, maintains the tradition. As a
matter of fact, what Coleridge has to say on poetic diction is prolix
and perilously near commonplace. Instead of making to Wordsworth the
wholly sufficient answer that much poetry of the highest kind employs a
language that by no perversion can be called essentially the same as the
language of prose, he allows himself to be led by his German metaphysic
into considering poetry as a _Ding an sich_ and deducing therefrom the
proposition that poetry _must_ employ a language different from that of
prose. That proposition is false, as Coleridge himself quite adequately
shows from his remarks upon what he called the 'neutral' language of
Chaucer and Herbert. But instead of following up the clue and beginning
to inquire whether or not narrative poetry by nature demands a language
approximating to that of prose, and whether Wordsworth, in so far as he
aimed at being a narrative poet, was not working on a correct but
exaggerated principle, he leaves the bald contradiction and swerves off
to the analysis of the defects and excellences of Wordsworth's actual
achievement. Precisely because we consider it of the greatest importance
that the best of Coleridge's criticism should be studied and studied
again, we think it unfortunate that Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch should
recommend the apprentice to get the chapters on poetic diction by heart.
He will be condemned to carry about with him a good deal of dubious
logic and a false conclusion. What is worth while learning from
Coleridge is something different; it is not his behaviour with 'a
principle,' but his conduct when confronted with poetry in the concrete,
his magisterial ordonnance (to use his own word) and explication of his
own aesthetic intuitions, and his manner of employing in this, the
essential task of poetic criticism, the results of his own deep st