The
critics of all ages coincide with the
ultimate judgment of all countries, in equally denying the praises of a
just poem, on the one hand, to a series of striking lines or distiches,
each of which, absorbing the whole attention of the reader to itself,
becomes disjoined from its context, and forms a separate whole,
instead of a harmonizing part; and on the other hand, to an unsustained
composition, from which the reader collects rapidly the general result
unattracted by the component parts.
ultimate judgment of all countries, in equally denying the praises of a
just poem, on the one hand, to a series of striking lines or distiches,
each of which, absorbing the whole attention of the reader to itself,
becomes disjoined from its context, and forms a separate whole,
instead of a harmonizing part; and on the other hand, to an unsustained
composition, from which the reader collects rapidly the general result
unattracted by the component parts.
Coleridge - Biographia Literaria
