by Coleridge · Cluster: Satire of Society · Epigram · Satire
Abstract
A literary-satirical epigram retorting against a critic who quoted a passage out of context, threatening to pull out the critic’s eye as ‘analytic.‘
Connections
Motifs: Eyes and Sight Themes & Concepts: Literary Criticism (2), Satire of Society, Grotesque Forms & Genres: Epigram
Testo integrale / Full text
WHO EXTRACTED A PASSAGE FROM A POEM WITHOUT ADDING A WORD RESPECTING THE CONTEXT, AND THEN DERIDED IT AS UNINTELLIGIBLE.
Most candid critic, what if I,
By way of joke, pull out your eye,
And holding up the fragment, cry,
‘Ha! ha! that men such fools should be!
Behold this shapeless Dab! — and he
Who own’d it, fancied it could see!’
The joke were mighty analytic,
But should you like it, candid critic?
First published in Morning Post, Dec. 16, 1801: included in Keepsake, 1829, and in Essays, &c., iii. 977-8. First collected in P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 167.