Biographia Literaria

Having asserted in Chapter 18 that poetry is inexplicable in its totality, Coleridge now discusses critical journals. The Edinburgh Review is a good example, Coleridge claims. The critic must not mix literary criticism with “personal injury” (150), and The Edinburgh Review, though worthy, is guilty of substituting “assertion for argument” (151). Coleridge surmises that the reviewer wrote his critique before reading Wordsworth’s poems. Burlesque and travesty have a place in criticism. Coleridge jokes about two Frenchmen imagining that Michelangelo’s Moses was a cuckold. Finally, Coleridge defends the poem “The Excursion” against its critics.

Coleridge examines the defects of Wordsworth poetry. The first major defect of Wordsworth’s poetry is “the inconsistency of the style,” which Coleridge finds distracting (156). The second defect is pragmatism, since Coleridge prefers that poetry “mend the intrigues of fortune by more delightful conveyancers of probable fictions” (159). The “moral effects” of Wordsworth’s poems are inhibited by his choice of “low” characters (161). Mixing high and low registers unhelpfully “perplexes the reader’s feelings” (162). Coleridge’s third criticism is the “undue predilection for the dramatic form in certain poems” (163). His fourth criticism is the “disproportionate” level of feeling associated with the subject matter (163). Finally, Coleridge finds fault in “thoughts and images too great for the subject” (164). Coleridge offers several examples of problematic shifts between high and low registers in Wordsworth. These inconsistencies interfere with the “splendid paradoxes” for which Coleridge argued in Chapter 18 (166).

However, Wordsworth cannot be imitated. His second “characteristic excellence” is the “correspondent weight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments” (167). Wordsworth shares these qualities with Samuel Daniel, but Wordsworth exceeds Daniel in “strength and originality” (170). The fourth strength of Wordsworth’s poems is their “genial intimacy with the very spirit which gives the physiognomic expression to all the works of nature” (170). The fifth quality Coleridge praises is “a meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtle thought with sensibility” (171). Wordsworth is “not always graceful” in his use of fancy, but “in imaginative power, he stands nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton” (172). Coleridge gives several examples of Wordsworth’s imaginative power and concludes that Wordsworth is “capable of producing […] the first genuine philosophic poem” (172). Wordsworth’s critics lack imagination, and Coleridge’s own criticisms relate primarily to Wordsworth’s theory and not his poetic practice.