vindication of the principles of romantic art, he brought to bear a
philosophic depth and subtlety such as had never before been applied in
England to a merely belletristic subject. He revolutionised, for one
thing, the critical view of Shakspere, devoting several lecture courses
to the exposition of the thesis that "Shakspere's judgment was
commensurate with his genius." These lectures borrowed a number of
passages from A. W. von Schlegel's "Vorlesungen über Dramatische Kunst
und Litteratur," delivered at Vienna in 1808, but engrafted with original
matter of the highest value. Compared with these Shakspere notes, with
the chapters on Wordsworth in the "Biographia Literaria," and with the
_obiter dicta_, sown through Coleridge's prose, all previous English
criticism appears crude and superficial, and the contemporary squabble
over Pope like a scolding match in the nursery.

Coleridge's acute and sympathetic insight into the principles of
Shaksperian drama did not save him from producing his abortive "Zapolya"
in avowed imitation of the "Winter's Tale." What curse is on the English
stage that men who have done work of the highest grade in other
departments, as soon as they essay playwriting, become capable of
failures like "The Borderers" and "John Woodville" and "Manfred" and
"Zapolya"? As for "Remorse," with its Moorish sea-coasts, wild
mountains, chapel interiors with painted windows, torchlight and
moonlight, dripping caverns, dungeons, daggers and poisoned goblets, the
best that can be said of it is that it is less bad than "Zapolya." And
of both it may be said that they are romantic not after the fashion of
Shakspere, but of those very German melodramas which Coleridge ridiculed
in his "Critique on Bertram." [28]


[1] For Coleridge's relations with German romance, see vol. i., pp.