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Excerpt from Biographia Literaria, Vol. 1
Another reason is, perhaps, to be found in the frag mentary nature of his aesthetic. This, again, is a defect which attaches to all Coleridge's speculations. But it must be remembered that the very qualities in his genius, to which his writings owe their vitality, were antagonistic to complete and systematic exposition. Coleridge was essentially a teacher, and conscious of a message to his age and his examination of principles was rarely directed bya purely speculative interest. The search for a criterion of poetry involved him in the wider search for a crite rion of life. His theory of the imagination, upon which his whole art-philosophy hinges, was primarily the vindi cation of {particular attitude to life and reality. This width of vision was fatal to his success as a specialist but while it vastly increases the general interest of his views, it by no means lessens their value for the artist and the critic.
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