delight in richness and sweetness of sound, even to a faulty
excess, if it be evidently original and not the result of an easily
imitable mechanism, I regard as a highly favourable promise in the
compositions of a young man....

'A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects very remote
from the private interests and circumstances of the writer himself.
At least I have found, that where the subject is taken immediately
from the author's personal sensations and experiences the excellence
of a particular poem is but an equivocal mark, and often a
fallacious pledge, of genuine poetical power....

'Images, however beautiful, though faithfully copied from nature,
and as accurately represented in words, do not of themselves
characterise the poet. They become proofs of original genius only as
far as they are modified by a predominant passion; or by associated
thoughts or images awakened by that passion; or when they have the
effect of reducing multitude to unity, or succession to an instant;
or lastly, when a human and intellectual life is transferred to them
from the poet's own spirit....

'The last character ... which would prove indeed but little, except
as taken conjointly with the former--yet without which the former
could scarce exist in a high degree ... is _depth_ and _energy_ of
_thought_. No man was ever yet a great poet without being at the
same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the
fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions,
emotions, language.'

In the context the most striking peculiarity of this enunciation of the
distinguishing marks of poetic power, apart from the conviction which it
brings, is that they are not in the least concerned with the actual
language of poetry. The whole subject of poetic diction is dropped when
Coleridge's critical, as opposed to his logical, faculty is at work;
and, although this Chapter XV is followed by many pages devoted to the
analysis and refutation of the Wordsworthian theory and to the
establishment of those principles of poetic diction to which we have
referred, when Coleridge comes once more to engage his pure critical
faculty, in the appreciation of Wordsworth's actual poetry in Chapter
XXII, we again find him ignoring his own principles precisely on those
occasions when we might have thought them applicable.

Coleridge