Coleridge, as an amateur,
enriched the language with a few priceless poems, and then got
involved in the morass of dialectical metaphysics. The point is
whether a man writes simply because he cannot help it, or whether
he writes to make an income. The latter motive does not by any
means prevent his doing first-rate artistic work--indeed, there
are certain persons who seem to have required the stimulus of
necessity to make them break through an initial indolence of
nature. When Johnson found fault with Gray for having times of the
year when he wrote more easily, from the vernal to the autumnal
equinox, he added that a man could write at any time if he set
himself doggedly to it. True, no doubt! But to write doggedly is
not to court favourable conditions for artistic work. It may be a
finer sight for a moralist to see a man performing an appointed
task heavily and faithfully, with grim tenacity, than it is to see
an artist in a frenzy of delight dashing down an overpowering
impression of beauty; but what has always hampered the British
appreciation of literature is that we cannot disentangle the moral
element from it: we are interested in morals, not in art, and we
require a dash of optimistic piety in all writing that we propose
to enjoy.
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