ABSTRACT
This was Coleridge’s explanation for the failure of intelligent men, in this case his patron, Tom Wedgwood, and the Whig and one-time radical, James Mackintosh, to recognise Wordsworth’s power. It was Coleridge who enunciated the principle (one also shared by Wordsworth) which later defended Wordsworth from the attacks of his earliest critics: ‘every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must create the taste by which he is to be relished; he must teach the art by which he is to be seen.’ Much of our understanding of Wordsworth springs from Coleridge, but, perhaps to a surprising extent, it depends also on what Wordsworth himself has told us about his art. His prefaces and essays, his letters, his dictated notes, records of his conversation, his sister Dorothy’s Journals, have all been potent in elucidating the nature of his poetry: of course, intentions are no substitute for great poetry, but if the poet is indeed as great as Wordsworth was, his insights about his own work cannot be ignored.
