The Great Romantic in the Role of Critic

WHEN Mr. Raysor states, in his admirable introduction to this first complete and accurate edition of Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism, that "the fragment was the literary genre which was natural to Coleridge, and only in the fragments of marginalia was he entirely himself," he anticipates the present reviewer's reaction to the work in hand. In the first of these two carefully edited volumes appear all of those extant fragments while in the second are contained the reports of the poet's numerous lectures on the subject.

The significance of this criticism cannot be fully appreciated without contrasting it with that of the nee-classics which preceded it. Its emphasis had been on the plots of the plays, on their mechanical form. Coleridge, building on the rebellion of a number of eighteenth century predecessors as well as on the revolutionary Germans, transferred that emphasis to character analysis and to the organic or innate form of the plays, which (again I quote Mr. Raysor) "are historically associated with the rising romantic movement, because of the romantic love of personal individuality." No more illuminating example of this method of treatment can be found in Coleridge than his critical estimate of Hamlet. It is not difficult to understand why this character about which he wrote his most incisive criticism, of all those of Shakespeare, was most attractive to Coleridge. The present editor has put it very succinctly when he writes of Coleridge's diagnosis of the prince's irresolution: "In his own excess of thought over action he found the key to Hamlet's soul." And when he falls short of his customary excellence as a critic, as indeed he does in his estimate of Falstaff, the reason is still the same, that which his own nature lacked, in this case a real sense of humour.

The lectures, though fuller and more prolix, are scarcely more complete or illuminating than the notes. They are verbose and their rambling rhetoric, effective as it may have been to the ears of an audience, when read in silence rings hollow.

With the editor's statement that Coleridge was "the greatest of English critics" it is difficult to agree. That he was potentially so is more likely. For unless criticism is better formulated than his, its significance can scarcely be estimated beyond, in this case, "its historical influence upon Shakespeare's fame."

From the address 27 Rue De Fleurus, 6, in Paris under the name of "The Plain Edition," the unpublished work of Gertrude Stein is being printed in limited editions of 1000 copies each. The first volume to be ready is called "Lucy Church Amiably". This is to be followed by "How to Write Series" in two volumes. It is to be hoped that Miss Stein will here explain some of her peculiarities along these lines.