Biographia Literaria

In Chapter 1 Coleridge gives his motives for writing Biographia Literaria. The work addresses the commentaries on his work and defines his philosophical and poetic principles. The favorable reception of a 1796 volume of poems was tempered by excessive ornamentation. At Christ’s Hospital school, Coleridge says he admired the “manly simplicity” of Greek poetry, in which every poetic choice “had a logic” (2). Coleridge’s severe schoolmaster, Reverend James Bowyer, gave him a firm grounding in classical languages.

The literary canon exerted a profound influence on the youthful poet’s mind. Coleridge admired Bowles’s sonnets, which he claims saved him from less wholesome rumination about metaphysics. The young Coleridge undervalued yet appreciated Pope, and he preferred Collins to Gray, whose imitations of Shakespeare he found derivative. “How completely all the propriety was lost in the transfer,” Coleridge scoffs at Gray on Page 6.

Conversations with his friend and contemporary William Wordsworth further enhanced Coleridge’s appreciation for classical poetry. The young poet sought “a solid foundation, on which permanently to ground my opinions” (7). Here Coleridge sets out two initial rules of poetics: that “the greatest pleasure, possesses a genuine power” (7), and that the sentiment expressed should have value in itself.