Explore "Feminine Genius and Pirates" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
-- -- 's face is almost the only exception I know to the observation, that / something feminine -- not _effeminate_, mind -- is discoverable in the / countenances of all men of genius. Look at that face of old Dampier, a / rough sailor, but a man of exquisite mind. How soft is the air of his / countenance, how delicate the shape of his temples!
I think it very absurd and misplaced to call Raleigh and Drake, and others / of our naval heroes of Elizabeth's age, pirates. No man is a _pirate_, / unless his contemporaries agree to call him so. Drake said, -- "The subjects / of the king of Spain have done their best to ruin my country: _ergo_, I / will try to ruin the king of Spain's country. " Would it not be silly to / call the Argonauts pirates in our sense of the word?