literatures is a highly recent activity of the Western mind. It isrnlate 18th eenturv. Literary theory, by contrast, is ancient. It hasrnbeen there since Plato and Aristotle, even if its life over twornthousand years is less than continuous. Though more literaternthan numerate, I cannot accept that 200 vears is longer thanrn2,000; and in light of all that, Roland Barthes’ disinclination tornread Coleridge takes on a new and sinister aspect. It was notrnjust ignorance, one suspects, but willful ignorance. There havernbeen theorists in recent years who have refused to read the masterpiecesrnof past ages because they were afraid, and with reason,rnthat their own self-image of modernity would be tarnished ifrnthev did.rnAnd et there is something idiosyncratic about British theor-,rnand the real charge is not insularity. An island is wide openrnto commerce and ideas, after all; for centuries it was easier torntravel b’ sea than by land. Sir Philip Sidney borrowed many ofrnhis ideas from Italian humanists of his own century; Coleridge,rnwho was the first English man of letters to know German andrnto feel the impact of German philosophv, probably read Kantrnas cariv as 1798-99, when he spent nine months in Germany,rnmainh’ at Gottingerr, less than 20 years after Kant’s Critique ofrnPure Reason appeared in 1781. That is likely to be earlier thanrnany study of Kant by a French man of letters.rnThe Biographic Literaria is a very German book, in its metaphvsics,rnand most of it was written in the summer of 1815, atrnthe time of the Battle of Waterloo, when an Anglo-Germanrnarm- under Wellington and Bliacher overthrew Napoleon. Itrnmav not be wholly fanciful to see a connection. Coleridgernloathed Napoleon. In his tenth chapter, he called him a vulturernand his rule a consummate despotism, and he plainly associatedrnthat despotism with the bloodthirsty ideals of Jacobinismrnand the French reign of terror. But then by 1815 he was a Toryrneager to understate his own youthful revolutionary enthusiasms,rnand the Biographia is a rootedly conservative book, darkrnwith fears of a revived Jacobinism. “The poison-tree is notrndead, though the sap may for a season have subsided to itsrnroots.” His mind by then was darkly haunted by the dire effectsrnof abstract speculation and arrogant nationalism.rnSo critical theory can be conservative: a fact seldom mentionedrnin our times; and it is perhaps not wholly coincidentalrnthat the summer that saw the death of revolutionary France atrnWaterloo unwittingly saw the death of critical theory. Coleridge’srnBiographia started nothing in its century, at home orrnabroad. To his deep regret, it failed; it was, so to speak, his Waterloo.rnIt took two years even to publish, because of printing accidents;rnand when it appeared in 1817, it was neglected by thernreviews and failed to sell. Even Wordsworth, its hero, disliked itrnand claimed not to have read it through, and there is evidencernthat the Victorians did not admire it. In a letter of Decemberrn1843, John Ruskin revealed that he did not know of its existence.rnSo the book marks the beginning of a silent century ofrncritical theorv; and more died at Waterloo, it might be said,rnthan the Grand Army of Napoleon.rnWhat was it? The question cannot be easily answered,rnand no answer is likely to concern English criticismrnalone. Critical theory had been a continuous activity in 18thcenturvrnFrance and England, among the philosophes and elsewhere.rnBut it had been an amateur tradition of drawing-roomrnconversation, where the critical theories of Addison, Diderot,rnor Sir Joshua Reynolds were discussed over tea cups and glassesrnof claret. Boswell’s Life of Johnson shows that happening. Itrnwas cmphaticallv not an academic tradition, anywhere in Europe.rnColeridge, too, it is easy to forget, was an amateur. He hadrnleft Cambridge without a degree, as a young revolutionary, andrnwas never to settle long into any profession except journalism.rnHe had already witnessed Napoleon’s first defeat, in 1814,rnwhen he began to write the Biographia, and by then he mayrnhave associated Enlightenment ideas of critical theory with therndiscredited ideas of the French Revolution. But his book dealsrnmore largely with the new German school, with Kant, Schlegel,rnand Schelling—professional philosophers and critics whom hernrightly saw as the new masters of critical debate. They were notrnmen of the drawing-room but of the lecture-platform and thernlearned journal, and they had philosophized criticism in a wayrnthat made the Enlightenment tradition suddenly look facilernand glib.rnIt is notable, however, that the silent century of critical theoryrnthat Coleridge unintentionally began in England was silentrnin France and Germany too. The German tradition had plentyrnof critical methodology in the 19th century, as in Dilthey,rnand some brilliant oddities like Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedyrn(1872); but a continuous tradition of critical theory is nowherernto be found, and the British silence is a European silence. Thernreasons can onK be guessed at. One possibility is that the marriagernColeridge had tried to arrange between amateur criticismrnand professional philosophy in the new German style lookedrntoo awkward to work more than spasmodically. It lacked, inevitably,rnan audience and a market. The Biographia is not arnbook for the academy, and C.S. Lewis used to remark that if itrnwere submitted as a doctoral thesis, he would have to fail it. Nornvery profound admirer of the doctoral process, Lewis may havernmeant that whimsically, as a compliment; but it signalizes thernimportant truth that it is a misshapen work and highly unevenrnin tone, sometimes anecdotal and sometimes scholastic andrnobscure, at once modest and self-justifying, timid and bold. Itsrnown century, which was skeptical of self-revelation and baffledrnby German academic philosophy, simply could not take it in.rnThe silent century of critical theory ended first in Britain. Inrn1923, C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards issued their collaborativernwork The Meaning of Meaning, to be followed in short order byrnRichards’s Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) and PracticalrnCriticism (1929), which were internationally influential and ledrnto his appointment at Harvard in 1939. So England led thernworld in critical theory, for the first and last time, between therntwo world wars, and it was in England that critical theory becamernan academic activity, though it was at first confined tornCambridge. That is what led to the lack of synchrony betweenrnEngland and its European neighbors: continental indifferencernto British critical theory in the 1930’s. When Saussure becamernfashionable among French critics in the 1950’s and later, somern40 years and more after his death, it was assumed that structuralismrnwas something the British had failed to notice. In factrnhe had already been dismissed by Ogden and Richards in ThernMeaning of Meaning, a whole generation eadier; and by thern1950’s, his Cours de hnguistique generale (1916) had long sincernbeen absorbed into the linguistic theories of the English-speakingrnwodd. It was neglected, by then, not because it was avantgardernbut because it was old hat. Our understanding of modernrncritical theory has never recovered from a failure tornunderstand that simple fact; critical theory was suddenly supposedrnto be a French thing, and soon after a French-Americanrnthing; and it now survives better in the United States than inrnJANUARY 1996/13rnrnrn