File:Coventry Patmore (1905) (14799025043).jpg

Identifier: coventrypatmore00goss (find matches)
Title: Coventry Patmore
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Gosse, Edmund, 1849-1928
Subjects: Patmore, Coventry Kersey Dighton, 1823-1896 Poets, English -- 19th century
Publisher: London : Hodder and Stoughton
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image:
r he gave interesting
evidence of the clearness of his intellect and
the vigour of his will.

Chapter VI

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

THERE can be no question that at the
present day too much attention is fre-
quently given to the little acts and
oddities of those whose real import-
ance lies entirely in their productions. Our
biographies tend to become anecdotages, and
what is essential is lost in a tiresome record of
what is accidental. The tendency of modern
society is to take away the salient and the sur-
prising elements from the lives of those whose
chief mission is an intellectual or a moral one,
and there is little that is not trivial or mono-
tonous to record about most of our poets and
philosophers. But to this rule every age pro-
duces eminent exceptions, and of these Coven-
try Patmore was one. To deal exclusively
with his verses or, as some have wished to do,
to soften into mediocrity the violent lines of
his personal character, would be to stultify our
aim. If we wish to preserve for posterity an
Text Appearing After Image:

Coventry Patmore

From the Portrait by J. S. Sargant, R.A. (1894). Now in the National
Portrait Gallery.

[Reproduced from "The Work of John S. S. Sargent R.A.;
by kind permission of Mr. William Heinemann.]

Personal Characteristics 177

opportunity to study this extraordinary man,
it is necessary that we should preserve with
care the character of his person as well as that
of his works. In dwelling faithfully upon what
he was, those who observed him closely are not
merely justified in setting forth their observa-
tions, but have a duty so to do. Patmore him-s
elf would have been the first to insist upon this
fidelity. He was not one of those who wish the
truth to be smothered in foolish posthumous
flatteries ; he never desired to see the forms
of vitality attenuated, but always reinforced.
His grim ghost will not rise to upbraid the
biographer who strives to paint him exactly as
he was.
The central impression which long impact
with the mind of Coventry Patmore produced
was that here was an example, — possibly the

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