Women, or _Pour et Contre_. The
reverend author's Bertram had, it may be remembered, undergone some
rather rough usage in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria; {p.225} and
he was now desirous to revenge himself by a preface of the polemical
sort:--

TO THE REV. C. R. MATURIN, DUBLIN.

26th February, 1818.

DEAR SIR,--I am going to claim the utmost and best privilege
of sincere friendship and good-will, that of offering a few
words of well-meant advice; and you may be sure that the
occasion seems important to induce me to venture so far upon
your tolerance. It respects the preface to your work, which
Constable and Co. have sent to me. It is as well written as
that sort of thing can be; but will you forgive me if I
say--it is too much in the tone of the offence which gave
rise to it, to be agreeable either to good taste or to
general feeling. Coleridge's work has been little read or
heard of, and has made no general impression
whatever--certainly no impression unfavorable to you or your
play. In the opinion, therefore, of many, you will be
resenting an injury of which they are unacquainted with the
existence. If I see a man beating another unmercifully, I am
apt to condemn him upon the first blush of the business, and
hardly excuse him though I may afterwards learn he had ample
provocation. Besides, your diatribe is not _hujus loci_. We
take up a novel for amusement, and this current of
controversy breaks out upon us like a stream of lava out of
the side of a beautiful green hill; men will say you should
have reserved your disputes for reviews or periodical
publications, and they will sympathize less with your anger,
because they will not think the time proper for expressing
it. We are bad judges, bad physicians, and bad divines in
our own case; but, above all, we are seldom able, when
injured or insulted, to judge of the degree of sympathy
which the world will bear in our resentment and our
retaliation. The instant, however, that such degree of
sympathy is exceeded, we hurt ourselves, and not our
adversary. I am so convinced {p.226} of this, and so deeply
fixed in the opinion, that besides the uncomfortable
feelings which are generated in the course of literary
debate, a man lowers his estimation in the publ