Page "Kubla Khan" Paragraph 119

The first of the negative reviews was written by William Hazlitt, literary critic and Romantic writer.

He reviewed the collection of poems for the 2 June 1816 Examiner, and, in his analysis, he attacked the fragmentary nature of the work and argued, " The fault of Mr Coleridge is, that he comes to no conclusion ... from an excess of capacity, he does little or nothing " and that the poem revealed that " Mr Coleridge can write better nonsense verse than any man in English.

" In conclusion, Hazlitt admitted, " We could repeat these lines to ourselves not the less often for not knowing the meaning of them.

" Following in the June 1816 Eclectic Review, Josiah Conder dismissed the poem: " As to ' Kubla Khan ', and the ' Pains of Sleep ', we can only regret the publication of them, as affording a proof that the Author over-rates the importance of his name.

With regard to the former, which is professedly published as a psychological curiosity, it having been composed during sleep, there appears to us nothing in the quality of the lines to render this circumstance extraordinary.

" He then continued by focusing on the manner in which the poem was composed, ' We could have informed Mr. Coleridge of a reverend friend of ours, who actually wrote down two sermons on a passage in the Apocalypse, from the recollection of the spontaneous exercise of his faculties in sleep.

To persons who are in the habit of poetical composition, a similar phenomenon would not be a stranger occurrence, than the spirited dialogues in prose which take place in dreams of persons of duller invention than our poet, and which not unfrequently leave behind a very vivid impression.