tance there is of magnificent promise, and laughable
non-performance, unequalled in the annals of literary History. Mr.
Coleridge informs us, that he and Mr. Wordsworth (he is not certain which
is entitled to the glory of the first discovery) have found out the
difference between Fancy and Imagination. This discovery, it is
prophesied, will have an incalculable influence on the progress of all
the Fine Arts. He has written a long chapter purposely to prepare our
minds for the great discussion. The audience is assembled--the curtain
is drawn up--and there, in his gown, cap, and wig, is sitting Professor
Coleridge. In comes a servant with a letter; the Professor gets up, and,
with a solemn voice, reads to the audience.--It is from an enlightened
Friend; and its object is to shew, in no very courteous terms either to
the Professor or his Spectators, that he may lecture, but that nobody
will understand him. He accordingly makes his bow, and the curtain
falls; but the worst of the joke is, that the Professor pockets the
admittance-money,--for what reason, his outwitted audience are left, the
best way they can, to "fancy or imagine."

But the greatest piece of Quackery in the Book is his pretended account
of the Metaphysical System of Kant, of which he knows less than nothing.
He wall not allow that there is a single word of truth in any of the
French Expositions of that celebrated System, nor yet in any of our
British Reviews. We do not wish to speak of what we do not understand,
and therefore say nothing of Mr. Coleridge's Metaphysics....

We have done. We have felt it our duty to speak with severity of this
book and its author--and we have given our readers ample opportunities
to judge of the justice of our strictures. We have not been speaking in
the cause of literature only, but, we conceive, in the cause of Morality
and Religion. For it is not fitting that He should be held up as an
example to the rising generation (but, on the contrary, it is most
fitting that he should be exposed as a most dangerous model), who has
alternately embraced, defended, and thrown aside all systems of
Philosophy--and all creeds of Religion,--who seems to have no power of
retaining an opinion,--no trust in the principles which he defends,--but
who fluctuates from theory to theory, according as he is impelled by
vanity, envy, or diseased desire of change,--and who, while he would
subvert and scatter into dust those structures of knowledge, rea