Volume 11, Number 11 · December 19, 1968
Coleridge Lives!
By L.C. Knights
Coleridge
by Walter Jackson Bate
Macmillan, 244 pp., $5.95
Of all works of literary scholarship a short critical biography must be one of the most difficult to write. 'A shilling life'—even if we add a bit for inflation—won't really 'give you all the facts,' for the obvious reason that in dealing with a man worth this kind of attention the facts that matter are facts of mind demanding rather extensive discussion. Even facts in the common sense—friends, marriage, personal habits, and so on—are nothing except as they relate to the particular intellectual adventure that demands our attention. When interpretation tries to grapple with the work of a man so prolific, so many-sided, and often so exasperating as Coleridge, only the firmest grasp and finest tact can get the proportions right. Let me say at once that Mr. Bate has not only the range of knowledge necessary to see Coleridge in his historical perspective, but, what is more important, the critical acumen and good sense to bring out without fuss or dogmatism just what it is that makes Coleridge a major figure in our intellectual landscape. His book is valuable both to the beginning student and to the mature reader.
Review, 3990 words
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