Chapter LX: Letter 175: To Mr. Britton

(Feb.-Mch., 1819)

My next Friday's lecture will, if I do not grossly flatter-blind myself, be interesting, and the points of view not only original, but new to the audience. I make this distinction, because sixteen or rather seventeen years ago, I delivered eighteen lectures on Shakespeare, at the Royal Institution; three-fourths of which appeared at that time startling paradoxes, although they have since been adopted even by men, who then made use of them as proofs of my flighty and paradoxical turn of mind; all tending to prove that Shakespeare's judgment was, if possible, still more wonderful than his genius; or rather, that the contra-distinction itself between judgment and genius rested on an utterly false theory. This, and its proofs and grounds have been--I should not have said adopted, but produced as their own legitimate children by some, and by others the merit of them attributed to a foreign writer, whose lectures were not given orally till two years after mine, rather than to their countryman; though I dare appeal to the most adequate judges, as Sir George Beaumont, the Bishop of Durham, Mr. Sotheby, and afterwards to Mr. Rogers and Lord Byron, whether there is one single principle in Schlegel's work (which is not an admitted drawback from its merits), that was not established and applied in detail by me. Plutarch tells us, that egotism is a venial fault in the unfortunate, and justifiable in the calumniated, &c.[102]

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Mr. Dykes Campbell thinks these letters to Mr. Britton refer to a course projected to be given at the Russell Institution; but there is no evidence that another Shakespeare course was delivered after that of 1818-19 (Dykes Campbell's _Life of Coleridge_, p. 240). Coleridge's indebtedness to Kant, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Jean Paul Richter, and Augustus Schlegel is traced by Brandl (_Life of Coleridge_, pp. 296-322). Schlegel's Lectures were delivered in 1808, the same year as Coleridge's first course. Coleridge did not peruse Schlegel's _Lectures_ till 1811; but as no full record of his Lectures of 1808 exist, the original indebtedness of Coleridge to Schlegel cannot be determined.

During his stay at Highgate, Coleridge occasionally went to Ramsgate to enjoy the seaside. The next letter was written on his return from one of his visits to Ramsgate.