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MISS COLERIDGE i
THE greatest art is, in a sense, impersonal.
We have no biographies of Homer and Sopho-- y^/ - > ' Z9JO
cles, nor do we need them. Of Milton and
Keats we know something ; yet, knowing
their work the less ?
nothing, should we enjoy
It is not for what it reveals of Milton that we
prize " Paradise Lost " the ;
" Grecian Urn "
lives independent of its author and his circum-
stances, a work of art, complete in itself.
Precisely opposite is the case of Miss Mary
Coleridge's poems : they, when in 1908 Mr.
1 " Gathered Leaves from the Prose of Mary E. Coleridge."
With a Memoir by Edith Sichel. (Constable and Co.)
This review, when first published, gave pain, I know ;
it gave pain to friends of Miss Coleridge and to friends of
Miss Sichel and to many of the charming people who were
friends of both. The pain, of course, I regret ; but I cannot
say that I regret the article. The criticism still seems to me
fair, and I know that it was honest : nevertheless, were
Miss Sichel alive, I should not care to reprint it. But that
able and friendly lady is now dead, and her eulogy has been
pronounced by those who knew her best and could best
appreciate her. I, of course, have criticized her only in her
public character, as a writer, and in so doing have transgressed
no law that I, at any rate, can respect. As Voltaire says,
" On doit des egards aux vivants ; on ne doit aux morts
que la v6rit6." To the living, perhaps, I have not always
been as civil as could have been desired ; but of the dead I
have told no lies that I am aware of.