ABSTRACT
According to Coleridge, William Wordsworth's befuddled theory and its consequences combine the worst errors of both English mechanism and Continental pantheism, because he does not sufficiently emphasize the mind's priority over matter. In reading the Preface and the poems, Coleridge seizes the points where Wordsworth does not assert this logical and moral priority so as to develop at length the aesthetic inadequacies of an associationist theory of poetry and poetic diction. Coleridge's criticism of Wordsworth's theory depends in part on his conflating Preface and Appendix, and in part on his ignoring how the Appendix qualifies and clarifies several major ideas. Wordsworth has been ably defended on several fronts; only a few points need to be repeated.
