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S.T. COLERIDGE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA, 1817 CHAPTER X A chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that on the nature and genesis of the Imagination or Plastic Power--On  pedantry and pedantic ex pressions--Advice to young authors resp ecting  publication--V arious anecdotes of the Author' s literary life, and the  progress of his opini ons in eligion and Po litics! "#semplastic! $he word is not in %ohnson, nor have I met with it elsewhere!" &either have, I! I constructed it myself from the ree( words, eis en plattein, to shape into one) because, having to convey a new sense, I thought that a new term would both aid the recollection of my meaning, and prevent its being confounded with the usual import of the word, imagination! "*ut this is pedantry+" &ot necessarily so, I hope! If I am not misinformed, pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company! $he language of the mar(et would be in the schools as pedantic, though it might not be reprobated  by that name, as the language o f the schools in the mar(et! $he mere man of the world, who insists that no other terms but such as occur in common conversation should be employed in a scientific disuisition, and with no greater precision, is as truly a pedant as the man of letters, who either over-rating the acuirements of his auditors, or misled by his own familiarity with technical or scholastic terms, converses at the wine-table with his mind fixed on his museum or laboratory) even though the latter pedant instead of desiring his wife to ma(e the tea should bid her add to the uant! suff! of thea inensis the oxyd of hydrogen saturated with caloric! $o use the collouial .and in truth somewhat vulgar/ metaphor, if the pedant of the cloister, and the pedant of the lobby, both smell eually of the shop, yet the odour from the ussian binding of good old authentic- loo(ing folios and uartos is less annoying than the steams from the tavern or bagnio! &ay, though the pedantry of the scholar should  betray a little osten tation, yet a well-condi tioned mind would m ore easily , methin(s, tolerate the fox brush of learned vanity, than the sans culotterie of a contemptuous ignorance, that assumes a merit from mutilation in the self-consoling sneer at the pompous incumbrance of tails! 0

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