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Throughout his life, the great Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, struggled to write. Wavering between great self-confidence and utter despair, many of his works reveal his anxious longing to capture the sublime. He managed to write thousands of essays and poems, yet few today remember more than a handful of lines.

Though not as obvious, Coleridge’s legacy continues to run strong to this very day. His struggle to understand the imagination inspired many famous examinations of the topic, and his views quietly influence our own by shaping how we understand nature and art. Many of his important essays are commonly collected as his “Table Talk,” and they reveal much about the poet and his beliefs.

An essay dated September 12, 1831 describes his intention to create a unified system of understanding: “My system, if I may venture to give it so fine a name, is the only attempt I know, ever made, to reduce all knowledges into harmony. It opposes no other system, but shows what was true in each… I have endeavoured to unite the insulated fragments of truth, and therewith to frame a perfect mirror.”

He later concludes, “In all my illnesses I have ever had the most intense desire to be released from this life, unchecked by any but one wish, namely, to be able to finish my work on Philosophy. Not that I have any author’s vanity on the subject: God knows that I should be absolutely glad, if I could heart that the thing had already been done before me.”

There was something within him, an understanding or view of the world, that he felt necessary to get out. However, his anxiety takes over and makes him feel inadequate to the task. Most artists can relate to this struggle.

Coleridge wrote on many subjects, but he often shone brightest on literature. In a July 3, 1833 essay, he took on the language within literature and began with the English greats: “The collection of words is so artificial in Shakspeare and Milton that you may as well think of pushing a brick out of a wall with your forefinger, as attempt to remove a word out of any of their finished passages.”

The use of “artificial” lacks the negative connotation that we normally ascribe to the term, and it emphasizes the skill behind Shakespeare’s and Milton’s works. Each word was necessary for meaning and beauty. This was not true of their successors, who quickly fell prey to emphasizing one over the other or, as it sometimes happens, neither.

Coleridge then describes the extremes of slang and magniloquence that followed: “It is quiet curious to remark the prevalence of the Cavalier slang style in the divines of Charles the Second’s time. Barrow could not of course adopt such a mode of writing throughout, because he could not in it have communicated his elaborate thinkings and lofty rhetoric; but even Barrow not unfrequently lets slip a phrase here and there in the regular Roger North way–much to the delight, no doubt, of the largest part of his audience and contemporary readers.”

Coleridge continues, “The style of Junius is a sort of metre, the law of which is a balance of thesis and antithesis. When he gets out of this aphorismic metre into a sentence of five or six lines long, nothing can exceed the slovenliness of the English. Horne Took e and a long sentence seem the only two antagonists that were too much for him. Still, the antithesis of Junius is a real antithesis of images or thought but the antithesis of Johnson is rarely more than verbal.”

Once he establishes the greats and their successors who embraced the two extremes of language, Coleridge then explains the basis of quality literature: “The definition of good Prose is–proper words in their proper places;–of good Verse–the most proper words in their proper places.”

This is one of his most famous quotes, and it is often still used today in discussions on writing. It is a short and efficient statement, and there is a clear distinction between informing and transcending.

Coleridge explains further: “The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault… But in verse you must do more;–there the words, the media, must be beautiful, and ought to attract your notice–yet not so much and so perpetually as to destroy the unity which ought to result from the whole poem. This is the general rule, but, of course, subject to some modifications, according to the different kinds of prose or verse.”

There are some minor exceptions to these general rules: “Some prose may approach towards verse, as oratory, and therefore a more studied exhibition of the media may be proper; and some verse may border more on mere narrative, and there the style should be simpler. But the great thing in poetry is, quoncunque modo, to effect a unity of impressions upon the whole; and a too great fulness and profusion of point in the parts will prevent this.”

Poetry must obtain a loftier goal that would hinder the effectiveness of prose. This distinction is no longer as clear today; we have lost the poetic spirit and our prose tends of be a meandering mess. Clickbait or self-aggrandizing essays are the dominant form of expression, and they often drown out those who are trying to explain more important aspects of life.

Coleridge struggled throughout his life to explain his views of the universe, and he thought that such were the purpose of both prose and poetry. It is not enough to convey rude or common ideas; one must try to obtain a higher understanding within their writing.

The irony is that we still hear that great line today but we, as a society, seem to no longer understand or care what it means. For those truly interested in art, in literature, and in humanity, Coleridge provides a source of inspiration and meaning to combat this intellectual malaise.