Biographia Literaria

Coleridge breaks off his philosophical cogitations to return to the subject of imagination, or “plastic power” (51). He once wrote for a publication called The Friend, which was devoted to metaphysical speculation. This prompts a digression into advice to young authors seeking publication. Coleridge tells an anecdote of an old clergyman whose self-published volumes failed to sell and confesses that he had similar problems at the beginning of his literary career. Upon leaving Jesus College, Cambridge, he contributed to a periodical entitled The Watchman. Coleridge smoked tobacco mixed with Oronooko with a potential patron, causing him to swoon in the presence of a minister and his friends later that evening. Coleridge returned to London with over a thousand subscribers, but lost half of them when his first publication was late, and narrowly avoided jail.

Coleridge vehemently opposed the first revolutionary war and moved to Stowey, where he devoted himself to poetry. He compares the writings of Edmund Burke at the outset of the American war with the rhetoric of the French Revolution. Coleridge found Cowper’s famous poem The Task awkward and was inspired to write an unfinished poem entitled “The Brook,” intending to dedicate it playfully to the Public Safety Committee.