his debt for many of those convenient
distinctions--such as that between genius and talent, between wit and
humor, between fancy and imagination--which are familiar enough now, but
which he first introduced, or enforced. His definitions and apothegms we
meet every-where. Such are, for example, the sayings: "Every man is born
an Aristotelian or a Platonist." "Prose is words in their best order;
poetry, the best words in the best order." And among the bits of subtle
interpretation, that abound in his writings, may be mentioned his
estimate of Wordsworth, in the _Biographia Literaria_, and his sketch of
Hamlet's character--one with which he was personally in strong
sympathy--in the _Lectures on Shakspere_.

The Broad-Church party, in the English Church, among whose most eminent
exponents have been Frederic Robertson, Arnold of Rugby, {237} F. D.
Maurice, Charles Kingsley, and the late Dean Stanley, traces its
intellectual origin to Coleridge's _Aids to Reflection_; to his writings
and conversations in general, and particularly to his ideal of a national
Clerisy, as set forth in his essay on _Church and State_. In politics,
as in religion, Coleridge's conservatism represents the reaction against
the destructive spirit of the eighteenth century and the French
revolution. To this root-and-branch democracy he opposed the view, that
every old belief, or institution, such as the throne or the Church, had
served some need, and had a rational idea at the bottom of it, to which
it might be again recalled, and made once more a benefit to society,
instead of a curse and an anachronism.

As a poet, Coleridge has a sure, though slender, hold upon immortal fame.
No English poet has "sung so wildly well" as the singer of _Christabel_
and the _Ancient Mariner_. The former of these is, in form, a romance in
a variety of meters, and in substance, a tale of supernatural possession,
by which a lovely and innocent maiden is brought under the control of a
witch. Though unfinished and obscure in intention, it haunts the
imagination with a mystic power. Byron had seen _Christabel_ in MS., and
urged Coleridge to publish it. He hated all the "Lakers," but when, on
parting from Lady Byron, he wrote his song,

"Fare thee well, and if forever,
Still forever fare thee well,"

{238} he prefixed to it the noble lines from Coleridge's poem, beginning

"Alas! they had been friends in youth."

In that weird ballad, the _Ancient Marin