[*] A very interesting contemporary example in connection with which the problem arises perhaps more acutely than ever before is Mr Eliot’s The Waste Land already mentioned. The impatience of so many critics and the fact that they have complained of the presence and necessity of notes well illustrates the confusion which prevails upon this question. A more reasonable complaint would have been that Mr Eliot did not provide a larger apparatus of elucidation. (See Appendix).
[*] E.g. ‘When lovely woman stoops to folly,’ Heraclitus, The Millers Daughter, Alexander Selkirk, and (its best known parts at least) The Skylark.
[*] Difficulties even here arise, e.g. the poet may be dissatisfied without reason. Coleridge thought Kubla Khan merely ‘a psychological curiosity’ without poetic merits, and may have been justified in some degree. If he was not, it is his dream experience which we should presumably have to take as our standard.
[*] Even Coleridge was not exempt from this failing. Cf. his comments on Gloster.
[†] Essay on Casanova, in Affirmations, p. 115.
[†] Affirmations, p. 115.
[*] Coleridge’s debt here to Schelling has been over-estimated. Such borrowings as he made were more hampering to him than helpful.
[†] Biographia Literaria, II, pp. 12, 14.
[*] It may perhaps be desirable to point out that this description of the effects of art follows from the theory of value outlined in Chapter VII. They are the most valuable experiences because they are the least wasteful. Thus the place assigned to them is not a mere personal expression of preference.
[*] May I assume that references here will not distress the reader? Tennyson, Scott, Landor, Shelley, Keats, Scott, Anon; Marvell, Donne, Peacock. I am anxious to facilitate the actual detailed comparison of these poems.