The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ::

The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

including Poems and Versions of Poems now Published for the First Time: Edited with Textual and Bibliographical Notes by Ernest Hartley Coleridge

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

VOL. I: POEMS

II.

VOL. II: DRAMATIC WORKS AND APPENDICES

DRAMATIC WORKS

EPIGRAMS

JEUX D'ESPRIT

FRAGMENTS FROM A NOTEBOOK

FRAGMENTS

METRICAL EXPERIMENTS

APPENDIX V

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36 TO A CRITIC

WHO EXTRACTED A PASSAGE FROM A POEM WITHOUT ADDING A WORD RESPECTING THE CONTEXT, AND THEN DERIDED IT AS UNINTELLIGIBLE.

Most candid critic, what if I,
By way of joke, pull out your eye,
And holding up the fragment, cry,
‘Ha! ha! that men such fools should be!
Behold this shapeless Dab!—and he
Who own'd it, fancied it could see!’
The joke were mighty analytic,
But should you like it, candid critic?

University of Virginia Library

36 TO A CRITIC

WHO EXTRACTED A PASSAGE FROM A POEM WITHOUT ADDING A WORD RESPECTING THE CONTEXT, AND THEN DERIDED IT AS UNINTELLIGIBLE.