Biographia Literaria (1847) Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Supposed irritability of men of genius brought to the test of facts?Canst and occasions of the charge?Its injustice. I Have often thought, that it would be neither uninstructive nor unamusing to analyse, and bring forward into distinct consciousness, that complex feeling, with which readers in general take part against the author, in favor of the critic; and the readiness with which they apply to all poets the old sarcasm of Horace upon the scribblers of his time :? - genus irritabile vatum. A debility and dimness of the imaginative power, and a consequent necessity of reliance on the immediate impressions of the senses, do, we know well, render the mind liable to superstition and fanaticism. Having a deficient portion of internal and proper warmth, minds of this class seek in the crowd circum fana for a warmth in common, which they do not possess singly. Cold and phlegmatic in their own nature, like damp hay, they heat and inflame by co-acervation ; or, like bees, they become restless and irritable through the increased temperature of collected multitudes. Hence the German word for fanaticism (such, at least, was its original import) is derived from the swarming of bees, namely, schwdrmen, schwdrmerey. The passion being in an inverse proportion to the insight,?that the more vivid, as this the less distinct?anger is the inevitable consequence. The absence of all foundation within their own minds for that, which they yet believe both true and indispensable to their safety and happiness, cannot but produce an uneasy state of feeling, an involuntary sense of fear from which nature has no means ofrescuing herself but by anger. Experience informs us that the first defence of weak minds is to recriminate. There's no philosopher but sees, That rage and fear are...Read More