[779]. i. 74-164.
[780]. It opens the second vol., and goes to p. 81.
[781]. V. sup., p. [81]. That which follows on Voss, Matthisson, and Schmidt is rather over full of citation.
[782]. I have already waived the controversy between Coleridge and the Schlegels. The fact is that the resemblance is mainly one of attitude—one of those results of “skyey influences” which constantly manifest themselves in different persons of genius and talent more or less simultaneously. And it may be added that the general presence of this attitude in Coleridge before his German visit, before either Schlegel had attained any great notoriety, or had written anything likely to penetrate to England, or even anything very characteristic, is attested not merely by the concrete document, in not so very alien material, of The Ancient Mariner, but by testimonies as to his conversation, from half a dozen different people.
[783]. It is No. 19, which describes Æsthetics as “the salt which dutiful disciples are going to put on the tail of the Ideal (enjoined upon them as so necessary to poetry), as soon as they get near enough.”
[784]. Nor had Schlegel attained the art of grasping and exhibiting a writer, not merely as Sainte-Beuve was to do, but even as Johnson had done. The “Chamfort” in this book (i. 338-365) show this.
[785]. Gespr. mit Eck., iii. 100. Effeminacy, as well as coxcombry, was frequently charged against him: and the unpopularity of both brothers as persons was very great. But this Camarina, like all such, is better unstirred.
[786]. i. 47, ed. cit. He is “the last in value as in time,” of ancient critics, “the inventor of sentimental æsthetic,” “empty of ideas.” “All which propositions I for the present content myself,” as Carlyle observes in another matter, “with modestly, but peremptorily and irrevocably, denying.”
[787]. P. 49. He bewails their “practical sterility,” their “muddle of Art and Nature” (das man Kunst und Natur so durcheinander warf), &c.
[788]. He praises the mot, “According to Burke, the Beautiful is a tolerably pretty strumpet, and the Sublime is a grenadier with a big moustache.” Who said this?