ABSTRACT
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817); review by John Wilson, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, II (Oct. 1817), 3–18. The great instance of modern autobiography at this time was Rousseau’s Confessions (1781), and Wilson’s opening warning of the dangers of the genre is aimed toward Rousseau, not Hume. Notice how Wilson, often classified as a “Lake Poet,” takes pains to level charges of arrogance only at “the original members of the Lake School” (p. 6). But, though offended by the self-assertion of these particular poets, Wilson in his tribute to Scott (pp. 6–7) evinces his high opinion of literature as a calling. Though John Leslie (1766–1832), the early teacher of Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood and in 1819 Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University, is praised here (p. 8), he was later viciously attacked by Maginn in Blackwood’s. On page 13, John Dennis (1657–1734) was a prolific drama critic and enemy of Pope.
