ABSTRACT
Coleridge's theory of the imagination is given its fullest exposition in his Biographia Literaria, which was written in 1815 and published in 1817. Many readers are bewildered by it and find its argument difficult to follow; a good many skip some of the chapters because they find them obscure or irrelevant. But two criticisms of the work which are often made are in fact misplaced. The first is advanced by those who object to the mixing of autobiography and philosophy. The other objection is made by those who dislike Coleridge's mixing of poetics and philosophy. He was first led to speculate about the imagination and that 'repeated meditations' on the subject that Fancy and Imagination were two distinct and widely different faculties, instead of being, according to the general belief, either two names with one meaning.
