Samuel Taylor Coleridge

by abdo Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:26 pm

Samuel
Taylor Coleridge

For
the late 19th century classical composer, see Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Coleridge in 1795.
Born	21 October 1772(1772-10-21) Ottery St. Mary, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], England
Died	25 July 1834(1834-07-25) (aged 61) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], England
Occupation	Poet, critic, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Literary movement	[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Notable work(s)	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan
Spouse(s)	Sarah Fricker
Children	[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], Berkeley Coleridge, Derwent Coleridge, Hartley Coleridge

Signature	[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(pronounced [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]; 21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
was a founder of the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in England and a member of the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. He is probably
best known for his poems The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], as well as
for his major prose work [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
His critical work, especially on [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
was highly influential, and he helped introduce German
idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. He coined many familiar
words and phrases, including the celebrated suspension of
disbelief. He was a major influence, via [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], on American [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Throughout his adult life,
Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been
speculated that he suffered from [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], a
mental disorder which was unknown during his life.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Coleridge chose to treat these episodes with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], becoming an addict in the
process. This addiction would affect him in the future.

Early life

Main
article: Early
life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge was born on 21
October 1772 in
the country town of Ottery
St Mary, Devon, England.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Samuel's father, the Reverend John Coleridge (1718–1781), was a well-respected [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] of the parish and
headmaster of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] at Ottery. He had
three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by Reverend
Coleridge's second wife, Anne Bowden (1726–1809).^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}Coleridge
suggests that he "took no pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read
"incessantly" and played by himself.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
After John Coleridge died in 1781, the then 8-year-old Samuel was sent to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
a charity school founded in the 16th century in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], London,
where he remained throughout his childhood, studying and writing poetry. At
that school Coleridge became friends with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], a schoolmate, and studied the
works of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
In one of a series of autobiographical letters written to Thomas Poole,
Coleridge wrote: "At six years old I remember to have read Belisarius,
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
and Philip Quarll – and then I found the Arabian Nights'
Entertainments – one tale of which (the tale of a man who was compelled to
seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an impression on me (I had read it in the
evening while my mother was mending stockings) that I was haunted by spectres whenever
I was in the dark – and I distinctly remember the anxious and fearful eagerness
with which I used to watch the window in which the books lay – and whenever the
sun lay upon them, I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask, and
read."^{[[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]]}

However, Coleridge seems to
have appreciated his teacher, as he wrote in recollections of his schooldays in
Biographia Literaria:

I enjoyed the inestimable
advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master
[...] At the same time that we were studying the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], he made us read [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
as lessons: and they were the lessons too, which required most time and trouble
to bring up, so as to escape his censure. I learnt from him, that Poetry, even
that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of
its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle,
more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes. [...] In our own
English compositions (at least for the last three years of our school
education) he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a
sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force
and dignity in plainer words... In fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming Harp?
Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse? your Nurse's daughter,
you mean! Pierian spring? Oh aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose! [...] Be
this as it may, there was one custom of our master's, which I cannot pass over
in silence, because I think it ... worthy of imitation. He would often permit
our theme exercises, ... to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be
looked over. Then placing the whole number abreast on his desk, he would ask
the writer, why this or that sentence might not have found as appropriate a
place under this or that other thesis: and if no satisfying answer could be
returned, and two faults of the same kind were found in one exercise, the
irrevocable verdict followed, the exercise was torn up, and another on the same
subject to be produced, in addition to the tasks of the day.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

Throughout life, Coleridge
idealized his father as pious and innocent, while his relationship with his
mother was more problematic.^{[[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]]} His childhood
was characterized by attention seeking, which has been linked to his dependent
personality as an adult.^{[[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]]} He was rarely
allowed to return home during the school term, and this distance from his
family at such a turbulent time proved emotionally damaging.^{[[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]]} He later wrote
of his loneliness at school in the poem Frost at Midnight: "With
unclosed lids, already had I dreamt/Of my sweet birthplace."

From 1791 until 1794,
Coleridge attended Jesus College,
Cambridge.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
In 1792, he won the Browne Gold Medal for an ode that he wrote on the slave
trade.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
In December 1793, he left the college and enlisted in the Royal
Dragoons using the false name "Silas Tomkyn Comberbache",^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
perhaps because of debt or because the girl that he loved, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], had rejected
him. Afterwards, he was rumored to have had a bout with severe depression.^{[[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]]} His brothers
arranged for his discharge a few months later under the reason of
"insanity" and he was readmitted to Jesus College, though he would
never receive a degree from Cambridge.

Pantisocracy and marriage

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Plaque
commemorating Coleridge at Ottery St Mary Church

At the university, he was
introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical,
including those of the poet [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, soon abandoned, to found a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]-like society, called [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], in the
wilderness of Pennsylvania.
In 1795, the two friends married sisters Sarah and Edith Fricker, in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
but Coleridge's marriage proved unhappy. He grew to detest his wife, whom he
only married because of social constraints. He eventually separated from her.
Coleridge made plans to establish a journal, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], which
would print every eight days in order to avoid a weekly newspaper tax.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
The first issue of the short-lived journal was published in March 1796; it
ceased publication by May of that year.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

The years 1797 and 1798,
during which he lived in what is now known as [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], in
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], Somerset, were among the
most fruitful of Coleridge's life. In 1795, Coleridge met poet [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
and his sister [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. (Wordsworth, having visited him and
being enchanted by the surroundings, rented Alfoxton
Park, a little over three miles [5 km] away.) Besides the Rime of
The Ancient Mariner, he composed the symbolic poem Kubla Khan,
written—Coleridge himself claimed—as a result of an opium dream, in "a
kind of a reverie"; and the first part of the narrative poem Christabel.
The writing of Kubla Khan, written about the Asian emperor Kublai Khan,
was said to have been interrupted by the arrival of a "[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]"—an
event that has been embellished upon in such varied contexts as science fiction
and Nabokov's [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
During this period, he also produced his much-praised "conversation"
poems This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Frost at Midnight, and The
Nightingale.

In 1798, Coleridge and Wordsworth published a joint volume of poetry, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
which proved to be the starting point for the English romantic
movement. Wordsworth may have contributed more poems, but the real star of
the collection was Coleridge's first version of The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner. It was the longest work and drew more praise and
attention than anything else in the volume. In the spring Coleridge temporarily
took over for Rev. Joshua
Toulmin at Taunton's
Mary Street Unitarian Chapel^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
while Rev. Toulmin grieved over the drowning death of his daughter Jane.
Poetically commenting on Toulmin's strength, Coleridge wrote in a 1798 letter
to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
"I walked into Taunton
(eleven miles) and back again, and performed the divine services for Dr.
Toulmin. I suppose you must have heard that his daughter, (Jane, on 15 April
1798) in a melancholy derangement, suffered herself to be swallowed up by the
tide on the sea-coast between [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
(sic. Beer). These events cut cruelly into the hearts of old men: but the good
Dr. Toulmin bears it like the true practical Christian, – there is indeed a
tear in his eye, but that eye is lifted up to the Heavenly
Father.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

In the autumn of 1798,
Coleridge and Wordsworth left for a stay in Germany; Coleridge soon went his own
way and spent much of his time in university towns. During this period, he
became interested in German philosophy, especially the transcendental
idealism and critical
philosophy of Immanuel
Kant, and in the literary criticism of the 18th century dramatist Gotthold
Lessing. Coleridge studied German and, after his return to England,
translated the dramatic trilogy Wallenstein by the German Classical poet
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into English. He continued to pioneer these ideas through his own critical
writings for the rest of his life (sometimes without attribution), although
they were unfamiliar and difficult for a culture dominated by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

In 1799, Coleridge and
Wordsworth stayed at Thomas Hutchinson's farm on the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], near [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

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Samuel
Taylor Coleridge's daughter Sara
Fricker-Coleridge – 1830. Portrait by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It was at Sockburn that
Coleridge wrote his ballad-poem Love, addressed to Sara. The knight
mentioned is the mailed figure on the Conyers tomb in ruined Sockburn church.
The figure has a wyvern at his feet, a reference to the Sockburn worm slain by
Sir John Conyers (and a possible source for [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]). The worm
was supposedly buried under the rock in the nearby pasture; this was the
'greystone' of Coleridge's first draft, later transformed into a 'mount'. The
poem was a direct inspiration for [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]' famous poem La Belle Dame
Sans Merci.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

Coleridge's early
intellectual debts, besides German idealists like Kant and critics like
Lessing, were first to William
Godwin's Political Justice, especially during his Pantisocratic
period, and to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s Observations on Man,
which is the source of the psychology which is found in Frost at Midnight.
Hartley argued that one becomes aware of sensory events as impressions, and
that "ideas" are derived by noticing similarities and differences
between impressions and then by naming them. Connections resulting from the
coincidence of impressions create linkages, so that the occurrence of one
impression triggers those links and calls up the memory of those ideas with
which it is associated (See Dorothy Emmet, "Coleridge and
Philosophy").

Coleridge was critical of the
literary taste of his contemporaries, and a literary conservative insofar as he
was afraid that the lack of taste in the ever growing masses of literate people
would mean a continued desecration of literature itself.

In 1800, he returned to England and shortly thereafter settled with his
family and friends at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to be near [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], where Wordsworth had
moved. Soon, however, he was beset by marital problems, illnesses, increased
opium dependency, tensions with Wordsworth, and a lack of confidence in his
poetic powers, all of which fueled the composition of Dejection: An Ode
and an intensification of his philosophical studies.

Later life and increasing drug use

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Coleridge
at age 42, engraving by Samuel
Cousins from a portrait by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Main
article: Coleridge
and opium

In 1804, he travelled to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], working for a time as
Acting Public Secretary of Malta
under the Commissioner, Alexander Ball, a task he performed quite successfully.
However, he gave this up and returned to England in 1806. Dorothy Wordsworth
was shocked at his condition upon his return. From 1807 to 1808, Coleridge
returned to Malta and then
travelled in Sicily and Italy, in the hope that leaving Britain's damp
climate would improve his health and thus enable him to reduce his consumption
of opium. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] alleges in his Recollections
of the Lakes and the Lake Poets that it was during this period that
Coleridge became a full-blown opium addict, using the drug as a substitute for
the lost vigour and creativity of his youth. It has been suggested, however,
that this reflects de Quincey's own experiences more than Coleridge's.

His opium addiction (he was
using as much as two quarts of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
a week) now began to take over his life: he separated from his wife Sarah in
1808, quarrelled with Wordsworth in 1810, lost part of his annuity in 1811, and
put himself under the care of Dr. Daniel in 1814.

In 1809, Coleridge made his
second attempt to become a newspaper publisher with the publication of the
journal entitled The Friend. It was a weekly publication that, in
Coleridge’s typically ambitious style, was written, edited, and published
almost entirely single-handedly. Given that Coleridge tended to be highly
disorganized and had no head for business, the publication was probably doomed
from the start. Coleridge financed the journal by selling over five hundred
subscriptions, over two dozen of which were sold to members of Parliament, but
in late 1809, publication was crippled by a financial crisis and Coleridge was
obliged to approach [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Tom Poole and one or two other wealthy friends for an emergency loan in order
to continue. The Friend was an eclectic publication that drew upon every
corner of Coleridge’s remarkably diverse knowledge of law, philosophy, morals,
politics, history, and literary criticism. Although it was often turgid,
rambling, and inaccessible to most readers, it ran for 25 issues and was
republished in book form a number of times. Years after its initial
publication, The Friend became a highly influential work and its effect
was felt on writers and philosophers from [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Between 1810 and 1820, this
"giant among dwarfs", as he was often considered by his
contemporaries, gave a series of lectures in London
and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] – those on [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] renewed interest in the playwright
as a model for contemporary writers. Much of Coleridge's reputation as a
literary critic is founded on the lectures that he undertook in the winter of
1810–11 which were sponsored by the Philosophical Institution and given at
Scot's Corporation Hall off Fetter
Lane, Fleet Street. These lectures were heralded
in the prospectus as "A Course of Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, in
Illustration of the Principles of Poetry." Coleridge's ill-health,
opium-addiction problems, and somewhat unstable personality meant that all his
lectures were plagued with problems of delays and a general irregularity of
quality from one lecture to the next. Furthermore, Coleridge's mind was
extremely dynamic and his personality was spasmodic. As a result of these
factors, Coleridge often failed to prepare anything but the loosest set of
notes for his lectures and regularly entered into extremely long digressions
which his audiences found difficult to follow. However, it was the lecture on [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] given on 2 January
1812 that was considered the best and has influenced Hamlet studies ever
since. Before Coleridge, Hamlet was often denigrated and belittled by
critics from [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
Coleridge rescued Hamlet and his thoughts on the play are often still
published as supplements to the text.

In August 1814, Coleridge was
approached by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s
publisher, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], about the possibility of
translating Goethe's classic [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
(1808). Coleridge was regarded by many as the greatest living writer on the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and
he accepted the commission, only to abandon work on it after six weeks. Until
recently, scholars have accepted that Coleridge never returned to the project,
despite Goethe's own belief in the 1820s that Coleridge had in fact completed a
long translation of the work. In September 2007, Oxford University
Press sparked a heated scholarly controversy by publishing an English
translation of Goethe's work which purported to be Coleridge's long-lost
masterpiece (the text in question first appeared anonymously in 1821).^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

In 1817, Coleridge, with his
addiction worsening, his spirits depressed, and his family alienated, took
residence in the home of the physician James Gillman, first at South Grove and
later at the nearby 3 The Grove, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
London, England. He remained there for the rest of his life, and the house
became a place of literary pilgrimage of writers including [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and Emerson.

In Gillman's home, he
finished his major prose work, the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
(1817), a volume composed of 23 chapters of autobiographical notes and
dissertations on various subjects, including some incisive literary theory and
criticism. He composed much poetry here and had many inspirations — a few of
them from opium overdose. Perhaps because he conceived such grand projects, he
had difficulty carrying them through to completion, and he berated himself for
his "indolence". It is unclear whether his growing use of opium (and
the brandy in which it was dissolved) was a symptom or a cause of his growing
depression.

He published other writings
while he was living at the Gillman home, notably Sibylline Leaves
(1817), Aids to Reflection (1825), and Church and State (1826).
He died in Highgate, London
on 25 July 1834 as a result of heart failure compounded by an unknown lung
disorder, possibly linked to his use of opium. Coleridge had spent 18 years
under the roof of the Gillman family, who built an addition onto their home to
accommodate the poet.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

Carlyle described him at
Highgate: "Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years,
looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the
inanity of life`s battle ... The practical intellects of the world did not much
heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising
spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat
there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona
oak-grove (Mr. Gilman`s house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain
whether oracles or jargon." ^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

Poetry

Despite not enjoying the name
recognition or popular acclaim that Wordsworth or Shelley have had, Coleridge
is one of the most important figures in English poetry. His poems directly and
deeply influenced all the major poets of the age. He was known by his
contemporaries as a meticulous craftsman who was more rigorous in his careful
reworking of his poems than any other poet, and Southey and Wordsworth were
dependent on his professional advice. His influence on Wordsworth is
particularly important because many critics have credited Coleridge with the
very idea of "Conversational Poetry". The idea of utilizing common,
everyday language to express profound poetic images and ideas for which
Wordsworth became so famous may have originated almost entirely in Coleridge’s
mind. It is difficult to imagine Wordsworth’s great poems, The Excursion
or The Prelude, ever having been written without the direct influence of
Coleridge’s originality. As important as Coleridge was to poetry as a poet, he
was equally important to poetry as a critic. Coleridge's philosophy of poetry,
which he developed over many years, has been deeply influential in the field of
literary criticism. This influence can be seen in such critics as A.O.
Lovejoy and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].^{[[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]]}

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Kubla Khan

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Coleridge
draft of the poem Kubla
Khan

Coleridge is probably best
known for his long poems, The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Even those who have never read
the Rime have come under its influence: its words have given the English
language the metaphor of an [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
around one's neck, the quotation of "water, water everywhere, nor any drop
to drink" (almost always rendered as "but not a drop to drink"),
and the phrase "a sadder and a wiser man" (again, usually rendered as
"sadder but wiser man"). Christabel is known for its musical
rhythm, language, and its [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] tale.

Kubla Khan, or, A
Vision in a Dream, A Fragment, although shorter, is also widely known. Both
Kubla Khan and Christabel have an additional "romantic"
aura because they were never finished. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] characterised both poems
as having no rival due to their "exquisite metrical movement" and
"imaginative phrasing."

The Conversation poems

Main
article: Conversation
poems

The
Eolian Harp (1795)
Reflections
on having left a Place of Retirement (1795)
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(1797)
Frost
at Midnight (1798)

Fears
in Solitude (1798)
The Nightingale: A Conversation
Poem (1798)
Dejection:
An Ode (1802)
To
William Wordsworth (1807)

The eight of Coleridge's
poems listed above are now often discussed as a group entitled
"Conversation poems". The term itself was coined in 1928 by George
McLean Harper, who borrowed the subtitle of The Nightingale: A Conversation
Poem (1798) to describe the seven other poems as well.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
The poems are considered by many critics to be among Coleridge's finest verses;
thus [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] has
written, "With Dejection, The Ancient Mariner, and Kubla
Khan, Frost at Midnight shows Coleridge at his most
impressive."^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
They are also among his most influential poems, as discussed further below.

Harper himself considered
that the eight poems represented a form of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] that is
"...more fluent and easy than Milton's, or any that had been written since
Milton".^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
In 2006 Robert Koelzer wrote about another aspect of this apparent
"easiness", noting that Conversation poems such as "...
Coleridge's The Eolian Harp and The Nightingale maintain a middle
register of speech, employing an idiomatic language that is capable of being
construed as un-symbolic and un-musical: language that lets itself be taken as
'merely talk' rather than rapturous 'song'."^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

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A
statue of the Ancient Mariner at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Harbour, Somerset,
England

The last ten lines of
"Frost at Midnight" were chosen by Harper as the "best example
of the peculiar kind of blank verse Coleridge had evolved, as natural-seeming
as prose, but as exquisitely artistic as the most complicated sonnet."^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
The speaker of the poem is addressing his infant son, asleep by his side:

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

In 1965, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] wrote a broad
description that applies to the Conversation poems: "The speaker begins
with a description of the landscape; an aspect or change of aspect in the
landscape evokes a varied by integral process of memory, thought, anticipation,
and feeling which remains closely intervolved with the outer scene. In the
course of this meditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a
tragic loss, comes to a moral decision, or resolves an emotional problem. Often
the poem rounds itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an
altered mood and deepened understanding which is the result of the intervening
meditation."^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
In fact, Abrams was describing both the Conversation poems and later poems
influenced by them. Abrams' essay has been called a "touchstone of
literary criticism".^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
As Paul Magnuson described it in 2002, "Abrams credited Coleridge with
originating what Abrams called the 'greater Romantic lyric', a genre that began
with Coleridge's 'Conversation' poems, and included Wordsworth's Tintern
Abbey, Shelley's Stanzas Written in Dejection and Keats's Ode to
a Nightingale, and was a major influence on more modern lyrics by Matthew
Arnold, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and W. H. Auden."^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}