ABSTRACT

Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867), journalist, barrister and diarist, and one of Coleridge’s friends—extract from his diary, 23 January 1813: ‘Evening at Drury Lane, the first performance of Coleridge’s tragedy, Remorse…. My interest for the play was greater than in the play, and my anxiety for its success took from me the feeling as a mere spectator I should have had. I have no hesitation, however, in saying that its poetical is far greater than its dramatic merit; that it owes its success rather to its faults than its beauties, and that it will have for its less meritorious qualities applause which is really due for its excellencies…. Coleridge’s great fault is that he indulges before the public in those metaphysical and philosophical speculations which are becoming only in solitude and with select minds’ (On Books and Their Writers, ed. Edith J.Morley, London 1938, i, 117).