Coleridge goes so far as to expurgate the poetry
of William Blake, "not for the want of innocence in the poem, but from
the too probable want of it in the readers." [Footnote: Letter to Charles
Augustus Tulk, Highgate, Thursday Evening, 1818, p. 684, Vol. II,
_Letters_, ed. E. Hartley Coleridge.]
The nakedness of any frailties which poets may possess, makes it the
more contemptible, they feel, for the public to wrap itself in the cloak
of hypocrisy before casting stones. The modern poet's weakness for
autobiographical revelation leaves no secret corners in his nature in
which surreptitious vices may lurk. One might generalize what Keats says
of Burns, "We can see horribly clear in the work of such a man his whole
life, as if we were God's spies." [Footnote: Sidney Colvin, _John Keats_,
p. 285.] The Rousseau-like nudity of the poet's soul is sometimes put
forward as a plea that the public should close its eyes to possible
shortcomings. Yet, as a matter of fact, it is precisely in the lack of
privacy characterizing the poet's life that his enemies find their
justification for concerning themselves with his morality.
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