ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Though he might find numerous precedents, he shall not desire the reader to strip his mind of all prejudices, or to keep all prior systems out of view during his examination of the present. For in truth, such requests appear to him not much unlike the advice given to hypochondriacal patients in Dr Buchan's domestic medicine; videlicet, to preserve themselves uniformly tranquil and in good spirits. Biographia Literaria. At the same time that they were studying the Greek Tragic Poets, Bowyer, Head Master of the Grammar School, Christ's Hospital made us read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons. Coleridge's studies in this severe logic, his enquiry into these multiple and fugitive causes occupied the best years of his life. The methods he employed and the results that he reached are the subject of this chapter.
