ABSTRACT
Fancy's role may be compared to an architect's shipments of bricks and beams. Fancy is a mode of memory emancipated from time and space; its associative power collects from the artist's past those words and images and rhythms generally suitable to his present purpose. In imagination's final product, the diverse materials are fragments no longer, but parts of a whole which places each within a network of relations. Coleridge's analysis of Wordsworth's faults proceeds apace with his explanation of the principles by which one selects from the plethora fancy provides. In the most general of terms, Coleridge praises Wordsworth's vivid particularity and his highly individual voice, but criticizes the welter of meaningless detail and foggy moralizing that intrudes when Wordsworth loses control over his vision and his voice. Coleridge's account of Wordsworth's genial powers is matched by renewed emphasis on the speaker's own philosophic genius.
