In consequence of various reports traducing Coleridge's good name, I have thought it an act of justice due to his character, to notice several mistatements here and elsewhere, which I should otherwise have gladly passed over.
Coleridge was always most ready to pass a censure on what appeared to him a defect in his own composition, of which the following is a proof: — In his introductory remarks to this Greek Ode, printed in the
Sibylline Leaves
, he observes:
"The Slaves in the West Indies consider Death as a passport to their native country. This sentiment is expressed in the introduction to the Greek Ode on the Slave Trade, of which the Ideas are better than the language in which they are conveyed."
Certainly this is taking no merit to himself, although the