My current literary interest (read: obsession) is Mr. Samuel T. Coleridge, so I’ve been reading biographies, including the definitive Coleridge, The Damaged Archangel by Norman Fruman. Mr. Fruman explained that Coleridge is known to plagiarize several poets (including Wordsworth who obviously knew and either gave his permission explicitly or implicitly by never mentioning it publically), but mostly he stole work from little known German authors and philosophers. He translated their work, stuck his name on it, created elaborate lies about how the poem was written, and published them.
One poem has interested me in particular, Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni. The reason this poem interests me is because just two weeks ago, I wrote a paper comparing it to Shelley’s Mont Blanc and necessarily came to know it quite well. Of course, none of the lines in this poem is Coleridge’s. Fruman makes it pretty clear that this is not a secret. It’s common knowledge now. I have my suspicions about why Coleridge repeatedly stole from other authors (it has to do with his relationships with Wordsworth and Southey) but that’s not my concern.
My concern is that I initially found Hymn before Sun-rise… in my Romantics Anthology, complete with fabricated preface. The editor of the work didn’t even mention that it was plagiarized or doubt its veractiy. I doubt the work he stole from Wordsworth is anthologized, but I haven’t checked to confirm. My question is: Why do editors and Coleridge scholars continue to credit him for work he never wrote when there is clear evidence that it’s not his? Pure inertia? Laziness? Unwilling to acknowledge that Coleridge has a shrinking canon? Pure hero-worship? Nobody cares but me?