Despite the fact that "letters four do
form his name," it is of course an idealised statesman, and not the
real flesh and blood Mr. Pitt, whom the sister furies, Fire, Famine,
and Slaughter, extol as their patron in these terrible lines. The poem
must be treated as what lawyers call an "A. B. case." Coleridge must be
supposed to be lashing certain alphabetical symbols arranged in a
certain order. This idealising process is perfectly easy and familiar
to everybody with the literary sense. The deduction for "poetic
license" is just as readily, though it does not, of course, require to
be as frequently, made with respect to the hyperbole of denunciation as
with respect to that of praise. Nor need we doubt that this deduction
had in fact been made by all intelligent readers long before that
agitating dinner at Mr. Sotheby's, which Coleridge describes with such
anxious gravity in his apologetic preface to the republication of the
lines. On the whole one may pretty safely accept De Quincey's view of
the true character of this incident as related by him in his own
inimitable fashion, namely, that it was in the nature of an elaborate
hoax, played off at the poet's expense.
Pages:
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116