Biographia Literaria

It has been my lot to have had my name introduced both in conversation, and in print, more frequently than I find it easy to explain, whether I consider the fewness, unimportanc...

I have often thought, that it would be neither uninstructive nor unamusing to analyze, and bring forward into distinct consciousness, that complex feeling, with which readers in...

To anonymous critics in reviews, magazines, and news-journals of various name and rank, and to satirists with or without a name in verse or prose, or in verse-text aided by pros...

I have wandered far from the object in view, but as I fancied to myself readers who would respect the feelings that had tempted me from the main road; so I dare calculate on not...

There have been men in all ages, who have been impelled as by an instinct to propose their own nature as a problem, and who devote their attempts to its solution. The first step...

Of Hartley’s hypothetical vibrations in his hypothetical oscillating ether of the nerves, which is the first and most obvious distinction between his system and that of Aristotl...

We will pass by the utter incompatibility of such a law--if law it may be called, which would itself be a slave of chances--with even that appearance of rationality forced upon...

The system of Dualism introduced by Des Cartes--Refined first by Spinoza and afterwards by Leibnitz into the doctrine of Harmonia praestabilita--Hylozoism--Materialism--None of...

Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what are its conditions?--Giordano Bruno--Literary Aristocracy, or the existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a privileged or...

A chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that on the nature and genesis of the Imagination or Plastic Power--On pedantry and pedantic expressions--Advice...

It was a favourite remark of the late Mr. Whitbread’s, that no man does any thing from a single motive. The separate motives, or rather moods of mind, which produced the precedi...

In the perusal of philosophical works I have been greatly benefited by a resolve, which, in the antithetic form and with the allowed quaintness of an adage or maxim, I have been...

O Adam, One Almighty is, from whom All things proceed, and up to him return, If not deprav’d from good, created all Such to perfection, one first matter all, Endued with various...

During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of...

In the application of these principles to purposes of practical criticism, as employed in the appraisement of works more or less imperfect, I have endeavoured to discover what t...

Christendom, from its first settlement on feudal rights, has been so far one great body, however imperfectly organized, that a similar spirit will be found in each period to hav...

Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth--Rustic life (above all, low and rustic life) especially unfavourable to the formation of a human diction--The best parts of...

Language of metrical composition, why and wherein essentially different from that of prose--Origin and elements of metre--Its necessary consequences, and the conditions thereby...

It might appear from some passages in the former part of Mr. Wordsworth’s preface, that he meant to confine his theory of style, and the necessity of a close accordance with the...

I have no fear in declaring my conviction, that the excellence defined and exemplified in the preceding chapter is not the characteristic excellence of Mr. Wordsworth’s style; b...

Long have I wished to see a fair and philosophical inquisition into the character of Wordsworth, as a poet, on the evidence of his published works; and a positive, not a compara...

The characteristic defects of Wordsworth’s poetry, with the principles from which the judgment, that they are defects, is deduced--Their proportion to the beauties--For the grea...

On Sunday morning, September 16, 1798, the Hamburg packet set sail from Yarmouth; and I, for the first time in my life, beheld my native land retiring from me. At the moment of...

See how natural the German comes from me, though I have not yet been six weeks in the country!--almost as fluently as English from my neighbour the Amtsschreiber, (or public sec...

RATZEBURG. No little fish thrown back again into the water, no fly unimprisoned from a child’s hand, could more buoyantly enjoy its element, than I this clean and peaceful house...

Quid quod praefatione praemunierim libellum, qua conor omnem offendiculi ansam praecidere? [79] Neque quicquam addubito, quin ea candidis omnibus faciat satis. Quid autem facias...

It sometimes happens that we are punished for our faults by incidents, in the causation of which these faults had no share: and this I have always felt the severest punishment....