ts general nature. Coleridge, in the first place, was essentially a
poet, and, moreover, his poetry was of the type most completely
divorced from philosophy. Nobody could say more emphatically that
poetry should not be rhymed logic; and his most impressive poems are
simply waking dreams. They are spontaneous incarnations of sensuous
imagery, which has no need of morals or definite logical schemes.
Although he expected Wordsworth to transmute philosophy into poetry,
he admitted that the achievement would be unprecedented. Even in
Lucretius, he said, what was poetry was not philosophy, and what was
philosophy was not poetry. Yet Coleridge's philosophy was essentially
the philosophy of a poet. He had, indeed, great dialectical
ingenuity--a faculty which may certainly be allied with the highest
imagination, though it may involve certain temptations. A poet who has
also a mastery of dialectics becomes a mystic in philosophy. Coleridge
had, it seems, been attracted by Plotinus in his schooldays. At a
later period he had been attracted by Hartley, Berkeley, and
Priestley. To a brilliant youth, anxious to be in the van of
intellectual progress, they represented the most advanced theories.
But there could never be a full sympathy between Coleridge and the
forefathers of English empiricism; and he went to Germany partly to
study the new philosophy which was beginning to shine--though very
feebly and intermittingly--in England. When he had returned he began
to read Kant and Schelling, or rather to mix excursions into their
books with the miscellaneous inquiries to which his versatile
intellect attracted him.

Now, it is abundantly clear that Coleridge never studied any
philosophy systematically. He never acquired a precise acquaintance
with the technical language of various schemes, or cared for their
precise logical relations to each other. The 'genial coincidence' with
Schelling, though an unlucky phrase, represents a real fact. He dipped
into Plotinus or Behmen or Kant or Schelling, or any one who
interested him, and did not know whether they were simply embodying
ideas already in his own mind, or suggesting new ideas; or, what was
probably more accurate, expressing opinions which, in a general way,
were congenial to his own way of contemplating the world. His power of
stimulating other minds proves sufficiently that he frequently hit
upon impressive and suggestive thoughts. He struck out illuminating
sparks, but he never diff