Biographia Literaria

Just as Descartes, speaking as a naturalist, sought to render the construction of the universe intelligible through matter and motion, Coleridge’s “transcendental philosopher” seeks to apprehend the self within infinity (94). Wrestling with observations about the nature of space and motion, Coleridge claims that transcendental philosophy requires that “two forces should be conceived which counteract each other by their essential nature” (95). Coleridge transcribes a letter from a friend who reproves him for the length of his arguments about imagination. Thus Coleridge curtails his argument, concluding that Imagination is the “living power and prime agent of all human perception,” while Fancy is a “mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space,” and associated with autonomy (99).

Coleridge now takes up the subject of Lyrical Ballads and the friendship between he and his collaborator William Wordsworth. Coleridge devotes himself to poetry relating to the supernatural, Wordsworth to the wonders of the everyday. To this end, Coleridge wrote “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and other unfinished works, different in kind from Wordsworth’s profusion of great poems. Some readers were outraged by Wordsworth’s preface, but soon his admirers grew numerous. Explaining his differences with Wordsworth, Coleridge firstly defines a poem and then poetry.