on, the poet said, "They are both equally wrong; the first
have volatilized the Eucharist into a metaphor--the last have condensed
it into an idol." Such utterance as this flashes light; it supersedes
all argument--it abolishes proof by proving itself.

We speak of Coleridge, then, as the poet of imagination; and we add,
that he is likewise the poet of thought and verbal harmony. That his
thoughts are sometimes hard and sometimes even obscure, we think must be
admitted; it is an obscurity of which all very subtle thinkers are
occasionally guilty, either by attempting to express evanescent feelings
for which human language is an inadequate vehicle, or by expressing,
however adequately, thoughts and distinctions to which the common reader
is unused. As to the first kind of obscurity, the words serving only as
hieroglyphics to denote a once existing state of mind in the poet, but
not logically inferring what that state was, the reader can only guess
for himself by the context, whether he ever has or not experienced in
himself a corresponding feeling; and, therefore, undoubtedly this is an
obscurity which strict criticism cannot but condemn. But, if an author
be obscure, merely because this or that reader is unaccustomed to the
mode or direction of thinking in which such author's genius makes him
take delight--such a writer must indeed bear the consequence as to
immediate popularity; but he cannot help the consequence, and if he be
worth anything for posterity, he will disregard it. In this sense almost
every great writer, whose natural bent has been to turn the mind upon
itself, is--must be--obscure; for no writer, with such a direction of
intellect, will be great, unless he is individual and original; and if
he is individual and original, then he must, in most cases, himself make
the readers who shall be competent to sympathize with him.

The English flatter themselves by a pretence that Shakespeare and Milton
are popular in England. It is good taste, indeed, to wish to have it
believed that those poets are popular. Their names are so; but if it be
said that the works of Shakespeare and Milton are popular--that is,
liked and studied--amongst the wide circle whom it is now the fashion to
talk of as enlightened, we are obliged to express our doubts whether a
grosser delusion was ever promulgated. Not a play of Shakespeare's can
be ventured on the London stage without mutilation--and without the most
revolting balderdash foi