e language of a poem must show evidence of
emotion, by being different from the language of prose. Further, he
says, metre in itself stimulates the emotions, and for this condition of
emotional excitement 'correspondent food' must be provided. Thirdly, the
emotion of poetical composition itself demands this same 'correspondent
food.' The final argument, if we omit one drawn from an obscure theory
of imitation very characteristic of Coleridge, is the incontrovertible
appeal to the authority of the poets.

Unfortunately, the elaborate exposition of the first three arguments is
not only unnecessary but confusing, for Coleridge goes on to
distinguish, interestingly enough, between a language proper to poetry,
a language proper to prose, and a neutral language which may be used
indifferently in prose and poetry, and later still he quotes a beautiful
passage from Chaucer's _Troilus and Cressida_ as an example of this
neutral language, forgetting that, if his principles are correct,
Chaucer was guilty of a sin against art in writing _Troilus and
Cressida_ in metre. The truth, of course, is that the paraphernalia of
principles goes by the board. In order to refute the Wordsworthian
theory of a language of real life supremely fitted for poetry you have
only to point to the great poets, and to judge the fitness of the
language of poetry you can only examine the particular poem. Wordsworth
was wrong and self-contradictory without doubt; but Coleridge was
equally wrong and self-contradictory in arguing that metre
_necessitated_ a language essentially different from that of prose.

So it is that the philosophic part of the specifically literary
criticism of the _Biographia_ takes us nowhere in particular. The
valuable part is contained in his critical appreciation of Wordsworth's
poetry and that amazing chapter--a little forlorn, as most of
Coleridge's fine chapters are--on 'the specific symptoms of poetic power
elucidated in a critical analysis of Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_.
In these few pages Coleridge is at the summit of his powers as a critic.
So long as his attention could be fixed on a particular object, so long
as he was engaged in deducing his general principles immediately from
particular instances of the highest kind of poetic excellence, he was a
critic indeed. Every one of the four points characteristic of early
poetic genius which he formulates deserves to be called back to the mind
again and again:--

'The