Engliterarium

In order to understand Wordsworth's view on imagination, we have to go to his poems, and to his letter. In ‘The Preface’, the word occur first when Wordsworth tells us that his purpose has been to select incidents and situations from humble and common life and make them look uncommon and unusual by throwing over them a coloring of imagination. This clarifies that imagination is a transforming and transfiguring power which presents the usual in an unusual light. The poet does not merely present “image of men and nature” but he also shapes, modifies and transfigures that image by the power of his imagination. Thus imagination is creative; it is a shaping or ‘plastic’ power. The poet is half the creator; he is not a mere mechanical reproducer of outward reality, but a specially gifted individual, who, like God, is a creator or maker as he adds something to nature and reality. It is the imagination of the poet which imparts to nature, the ‘glory and freshness of a dream’, the light that never was on land and sea.

In making the poet’s imagination a creative power, Wordsworth goes counter to the ‘associationist’ theories of David Hartley who had considerable influences on the poet. Hartley and other associationist psychologist thought that the human mind receives impressions from the external words, which are therein associated together to form images. In this way, the mind merely reflects the external world. But according to Wordsworth the mind does not merely reflect passively, it actively creates. At least, it is half the creator. Imagination is the active, creative faculty of the mind. As Florence Marsh points out, for Wordsworth imagination is a mental power which alters the external world creatively.

“It is a word of higher import, denoting operations of the human mind upon those objects and processes of creation or composition, governed by certain fixed laws."

It is through imagination that the poet realizes his kinship with the eternal. Imagination works upon the raw material of sense impressions to illustrate the working of external truths. It makes the poet perceive the essential unity of “man, God and Nature” while “the meddling intellect” of the scientist multiplies diversities.

Again, he tells that the poet is a man who thinks long and deeply, and so he can treat things which are absent as if they were present. In other words, the poet contemplates in tranquility the emotions which he had experienced in the past and through imagination can visualize the objects which gave rise to those emotions initially. Imagination is the mind’s eye through which the poet sees into the ‘heart of things’ as well as into the past, the remote, and the unknown. It is imagination which enables the poet to render emotional experience, which he has not personally experienced, as if, they were personally felt emotions.

The power of imagination enables the poet to universalize the particular and the personal, and arrives at universal truths. Henry Crabbe Robinson describes the process in the following words:

“The poet first conceives the essential nature of his object, and then strips it of all casualties and accidental individual dress, and in this he is a philosopher; … he re-clothes his idea in an individual dress which expresses the essential quality and has also the spirit and life of a sensual object. And this transmutes the philosophic into a poetic exhibition.”

Stressing the importance which Wordsworth attached to the role of imagination in the process of poetic creation, C M. Bowra writes:

“For him, the imagination was the most important gift that a poet can have, and his arrangement of his own poems shows what he meant by it.”

The section which he calls, ‘Poems of the Imagination’, contains poems in which he united creative power and a special visionary insight. He agreed with Coleridge that this activity resembles that of God. It is the divine capacity of the child who fashions his own little world:

For feeling has to him imparted power
That through the growing faculties of sense
Doth like an agent of the one great Mind
Create, creator and receiver both,
Working but in alliance with the works
Which it beholds.

The poet keeps this faculty in his maturity, and through it he is what he is. But Wordsworth was full aware that mere creation is not enough, that it must be accompanied by a special insight. So he explains that the imagination,

Is but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
And Reason in her most exalted mood.

“Wordsworth did to go so far as the other Romantics in relegating reason to an inferior position. He preferred to give a new dignity to the word and to insist that inspired insight is itself rational.”

It should be noticed that here Wordsworth calls imagination, “reason in her most exalted mood”. It is a higher reason than mere reason. It is that faculty which transforms sense perceptions and makes the poet conscious of human immortality. It makes him have visions of the divine.

Wordsworth deals with imagination at much greater length in his Preface to the 1815 edition of the Lyrical Ballads. There he draws a distinction between Fancy and Imagination. Wordsworth’s distinction between Fancy and Imagination is not so subtle and penetrating as that of Coleridge. According to Wordsworth, both Imagination and Fancy, “evoke and combine, aggregate and associate”. But the material which they evoke and combine is different, and their purpose in evoking and combining is different. They differ not in their natures but in their purpose, and in the material on which they work. The material on which Fancy works is not so susceptible to change or so pliant as the material on which imagination works. Fancy makes things exact and definite, while Imagination leaves everything vague and indefinite

Rene Wellek’s comment in this respect is illuminating and interesting:

“Both Wordsworth and Coleridge make the distinction between Fancy, a faculty which, handles, ‘fixities and definites, and Imagination, a faculty which deals with the ‘plastic, the pliant and the indefinite’. The only important difference between Wordsworth and Coleridge is that Wordsworth does not clearly see Coleridge’s distinction between imagination as a ‘holistic’ and fancy as an ‘associative’ power and does not draw the sharp distinction between transcendentalism and associationism which Coleridge wanted to establish.”

Coleridge poses numerous questions regarding the nature and function of poetry and then answers them. He also examines the ways in which poetry differs from other kinds of artistic activity, and the role and significance of metre as an essential and significant part of a poem.

He begins by emphasizing the difference between prose and poetry.

A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition.

Both use words. Then, the difference between poem and a prose composition cannot lie in the medium, for each employs words. It must, therefore, “consists in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object being proposed.” A poem combines words differently, because it is seeking to do something different.

All it may be seeking to do may be to facilitate memory. You may take a piece of prose and cast it into rhymed and metrical form in order to remember it better.

Rhymed tags of that kind, with their frequent, “sounds and quantities”, yield a particular pleasure too, though not of a very high order. If one wants to give the name of poem to a composition of this kind, there is no reason why one should not. As Coleridge says:

But we should note that, though such rhyming tags have the charm of metre and rhyme, metre and rhyme have been ‘superadded’; they do not arise from the nature of the content, but have been imposed on it in order to make it more easily memorized.

The “Superficial form”, the externalities, provides no profound logical reason for distinguishing between different ways of handling language.

A difference of object and contents supplies an additional ground of distinction.

The philosopher will seek to differentiate between two ways of handling language by asking what each seeks to achieve and how that aim determines its nature. “The immediate purpose may be the communication of truth or the communication of pleasure. The communication of truth might in turn yield a deep pleasure, but, Coleridge insists, one must distinguish between the ultimate and the immediate end.” Similarly, if the immediate aim be the communication of pleasure, truth may nevertheless be the ultimate end, and while in an ideal society nothing that was not truth could yield pleasure, in society as it always existed, a literary work might communicate pleasure has always existed, a literary work might communicate pleasure without having any concern with “truth, either moral or intellectual”.

The proper kinds of distinction between different kinds of writing can thus be most logically discussed in terms of the difference in the immediate aim, or function, of each.

The immediate aim of poetry is to give pleasure.

But, “The communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically composed” – in novels, for example. Do we make these into poems simply by superadding metre with or without rhyme? To which Coleridge replies by emphasizing a very important principle: you cannot derive true and permanent pleasure out of any feature or a work which does not arise naturally from the total nature of that work. “To ‘superadd’ metre is to provide merely a superficial decorative charm.” “Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If metre be superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with it.” Rhyme and metre involve, “an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound” which in turn “are calculated to excite” a “perpetual and distinct attention to each part.” 

A poem, therefore, must be an organic unity in the sense that, while we note and appreciate each part, to which the regular recurrence of accent and sound draw attention, our pleasure in the whole develops cumulatively out of such appreciation, which is at the same time pleasurable in itself and conductive to an awareness of the total pattern of the complete poem.

Thus a poem differs from a work of scientific prose in having as its immediate object pleasure and not truth, and it differs from other kinds of writing which have pleasure and not truth as their immediate object by the fact that in a poem the pleasure we take from the whole work in compatible with, and even led up to by the pleasure we take in each competent part.

Therefore, a legitimate poem is a composition, in which the rhyme and the metre bear an organic relation to the total work; in it, “parts mutually support and explain each other, all in their proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of, metrical arrangement.”

Thus Coleridge puts an end for good to the age old controversy whether the end of poetry is instruction or delight or both. Its aim is definitely to give pleasure, and further poetry has its own distinctive pleasure, pleasure arising from the parts, and this pleasure of the parts supports and increases the pleasure of the whole.

Not only that, Coleridge also distinguishes a ‘Poem’ from ‘Poetry’. According to Shawcross:

This distinction between ‘poetry’ and ‘poem’ is not very clear, and instead of defining poetry he proceeds to describe a poet, and from the poet he proceeds to enumerate the characteristics of the Imagination.

This is so because ‘poetry’ for Coleridge is an activity of the ‘poet’s’ mind, and a ‘poem’ is merely one of the forms of its expression, a verbal expression of that activity, and poetic activity is basically an activity of the imagination. As David Daiches points out:

’Poetry’ for Coleridge is a wider category than that of ‘poem’; that is, poetry is a kind of activity which can be engaged in by painters or philosophers or scientists and is not confined to those who employ metrical language, or even to those who employ language of any kind. Poetry, in this large sense, brings, ‘the whole soul of man’, into activity, with each faculty playing its proper part according to its ‘relative worth and dignity’.

This takes place whenever the ‘secondary imagination’ comes into operation. Whenever the synthesizing, the integrating, powers of the secondary imagination are at work, bringing all aspects of a subject into a complex unity, then poetry in this larger sense results.

The employment of the secondary imagination is, a poetic activity, and we can see why Coleridge is led from a discussion of a poem to a discussion of the poet’s activity when we realize that for him the poet belongs to the larger company of those who are distinguished by the activity of their imagination.

A poem is always the work of a poet, of a man employing the secondary imagination and so achieving the harmony of meaning, the reconciliation of opposites, and so on, which Coleridge so stresses; but a poem is also a specific work of art produced by a special handling of language.

The harmony and reconciliation resulting from the special kind of creative awareness achieved by the exercise of the imagination, cannot operate over an extended composition; one could not sustain that blending and balance, that reconciliation, “of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshens, with old and familiar objects”, and so on, for an indefinite period. A long poem, therefore, would not be all poetry. Indeed, Coleridge goes to the extent of saying that there is no such thing as a long poem. Rhyme and metre are appropriate to a poem considered in the larger sense of poetry, because they are means of achieving harmonization, reconciliation of opposites, and so forth, which, as we have seen, are objects of poetry in its widest imaginative meaning.

In a legitimate poem, i.e. in a poem which is poetry in the true sense of the word, there is perfect unity of form and content. The notion of such organic unity runs through all Coleridge’s pronouncements of poetry. Rhyme and Metre, are not pleasure superadded for,

Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise.

Nothing that is, “superadded”, merely stuck on for ornament or decoration, can really please in a poem; every one of its characteristics must grow out of its whole nature and be an integral part of it. Rhyme and metre are integral to the poem, an essential part of it, because the pleasure of poetry is a special kind of pleasure, pleasure which results both from the parts and the whole, and the pleasure arising from the parts augments the pleasure of the whole. Thyme and metre are essential parts for by their, “recurrence of accent and sound”, they invite attention to the pleasure of each separate part, and thus add to the pleasure of the whole.

When, therefore, metre is thus in consonance with the language and content of the poem, it excites a ‘perpetual and distinct attention to each part’, ‘by the quick reciprocations of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited’, and carries the reader forward to the end ‘by the pleasurable’ activity of the mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself. There is no stopping for him on the way, attracted by the parts; nor any hastening forward to the end, unattracted by the parts. It is one unbroken pleasure trip from the parts to the whole.

Thus Coleridge's contribution to the theory of poetry is significant. First, he puts an end for good to the age old controversy between instruction and delight being the end of poetry, and establishes that pleasure is the end of the poetry, and that poetry has its own distinctive pleasure. Secondly, he explodes the neo-classical view of poetry as imitation, and shows that it is an activity of the imagination which in turn is a shaping and unifying power, which dissolves, dissipates and creates. Thirdly, he shows that in its very nature poetry must differ from prose. He controverts Wordsworth's view that ‘rhyme and metre’ are merely superadded, shows that they are an organic part of a poem in the real sense of the word.

Wordsworth and Coleridge came together early in life and mutually arose various theories which Wordsworth embodied in his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” and tried to put into practice in his poems. Coleridge claimed credit for these theories and said they were “half the child of his brain”. But later on, his views underwent the change; he no longer agreed with Wordsworth’s theories and so criticized them.

In his Preface, Wordsworth made three important statements all of which have been objects of Coleridge's censure.

First of all Wordsworth writes that he chose low and rustic life, where the essential passions of the heart find a better soil to attain their maturity. They are less under restraint and speak a plainer and more emphatic language. In rustic life our basic feelings coexist in greater simplicity and more accurately contemplated and more forcibly communicated. The manners of rural life, sprang from those elementary feelings and from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily realized and are more durable. Lastly the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.

Secondly, that the language of these men is adopted because they hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived. Being less under social vanity, they convey their feelings and ideas in simple and outright expressions because of their rank in society and the equality and narrow circle of their intercourse.

Thirdly, he made a number of statements regarding the language and diction of poetry. Of these, Coleridge refutes the following parts: “a selection or the real language of men”; “the language of the men in low and rustic life”: and, “Between the language of prose and that of metrical composition there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference”.

As regards the first statement, i.e. the choice of rustic characters and life, Coleridge points out, first, that not all Wordsworth characters are rustic. Characters in poems like Ruth, Michael, The Brothers, are not low and rustic. Secondly, their language and sentiments do not necessarily arise from their abode or occupation. They are attributable to causes of their similar sentiments and language, even if they have different abode or occupation. These causes are mainly two:

1. Independence which raises a man above bondage, and a frugal and industrious domestic life.
2. A solid, religious education which makes a man well-versed in the Bible and other holy books excluding other books.

The admirable qualities in the language and sentiments of Wordsworth’s characters result from these two causes. Even if they lived in the city away from Nature they would have similar sentiments and language. In the opinion of Coleridge, a man will not be benefited from a life in rural solitudes unless he has natural sensibility and suitable education. In the absence of these advantages, the mind hardens and a man grows, ‘selfish, sensual, gross and hard hearted’.

As regards the second statement of Wordsworth, Coleridge objects to the view that the best part of language is derived from the objects with which the rustic hourly communicates. First, communication with an object implies reflection on it and the richness of vocabulary arises from such reflection. Now the rural conditions of life do not require any reflection, hence the vocabulary of the rustics is poor. They can express only the barest facts of nature and not the ideas and thoughts which results from their reflection. Secondly, the best part of a man’s language does not result merely from communication with nature, but from education, from the mind of noble thoughts and ideals. Whatever rustics use, are derived not from nature, but from The Bible and from the sermons of noble and inspired preachers.

Coleridge takes up his statements, one by one, and demonstrates that his views are not justified. Wordsworth asserts that the language of poetry is:

A selection of the real language of men or the very language of men; and that there was no essential difference between the language of prose and that of poetry.

Coleridge retorts that:

‘Every man’s language’ varies according to the extent of his knowledge, the activity of his faculties, and the depth or quickness of his feelings.

Every man’s language has, first, its individual peculiarities; secondly, the properties common to his class; and thirdly, words and phrases of universal use.

No two men of the same class or of different classes speak alike, although both use words and phrases common to them all, because in the one case their natures are different and on the other their classes are different.

The language varies from person to person, class to class, place to place.

Coleridge objects to Wordsworth’s use of the words, ‘very’ or ‘real’ and suggests that ‘ordinary’ or ‘generally’ should have been used. Wordsworth’s addition of the words, “in a state of excitement”, is meaningless, for emotional excitement may result in a more intense expression, but it cannot create a noble and richer vocabulary.

To Wordsworth’s argument about having no essential difference between the language of poetry and prose, Coleridge replies that there is and there ought to be, an essential difference between both the languages and gives numerous reasons to support his view. First, language is both a matter and the arrangement of words. Words both in prose and poetry may be the same but their arrangement is different. This difference arises from the fact that the poetry uses metre and metre requires a different arrangement of words. Metre is not a mere superficial decoration, but an essential organic part of a poem. Even the metaphors and similes used by a poet are different in quality and frequency from prose. Hence there is bound to be an ‘essential’ difference between the arrangement of words of poetry and prose. There is this difference even in those poems of Wordsworth’s which are considered most Wordsworthian.

Further, it cannot be confirmed that the language of prose and poetry are identical and so convertible. There may be certain lines or even passages which can be used both in prose and poetry, but not all. There are passages which will suit the one and not the other.

Thus does Coleridge refute Wordsworth’s views on the themes and language of poetry.

Wordsworth was primarily a poet and not a critic. He has left behind him no comprehensive treatise on criticism. The bulk of his literary criticism is small yet “the core of his literary criticism is as inspired as his poetry”. There is the same utter sincerity, earnestness, passion and truth in both. He knew about poetry in the real sense, and he has not said even a single word about poetry, says Chapman, “which is not valuable, and worth thinking over”.

Wordsworth’s criticism is of far-reaching historical significance. When Wordsworth started, it was the Neo-classical criticism, which held the day. Critics were pre-occupied with poetic genres, poetry was judged on the basis of rules devised by Aristotle and other ancients, and interpreted by the Italian and French critics. They cared for rules, for methods, for outward form, and had nothing to say about the substance, the soul of poetry. Wordsworth is the first critic to turn from the poetry to its substance; builds a theory of poetry, and gives an account of the nature of the creative process. His emphasis is on novelty, experiment, liberty, spontaneity, inspiration and imagination, as contrasted with the classical emphasis on authority, tradition, and restraint. His ‘Preface’ is an unofficial manifesto of the English Romantic Movement giving it a new direction, consciousness and program. After Wordsworth had written, literary criticism could never be the same as before.

Wordsworth through his literary criticism demolishes the old and the faulty and opens out new vistas and avenues. He discards the artificial and restricted forms of approved 18th century poetry. Disgusted by the, “gaudiness and inane phraseology”, of many modern writers, he criticizes poets who:

… separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation.

Discarding formal finish and perfection, he stresses vivid sensation and spontaneous feelings. He says:

All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.

Scott James says:

He discards Aristotelian doctrine. For him, the plot, or situation, is not the first thing. It is the feeling that matters.

Reacting against the artificiality of 18th century poetry, he advocates simplicity both in theme and treatment. He advocates a deliberate choice of subject from “humble and rustic life”. Instead of being pre-occupied with nymphs and goddesses, he portrays the emotions of collage girls and peasants. There is a healthy realism in his demand that the poet should use, “the language of common men”, and that he should aim at keeping, “the reader in the company of flesh and blood.”

There is, no doubt, his views in this respect are open to criticism. Scott James points out, the flesh and blood and emotions of a townsman are not more profound. Besides, by confining himself wholly to rustic life, he excluded many essential elements in human experience. Thus, he narrowed down his range.

His insistence on the use of a selection of language really used by men is always in danger of becoming trivial and mean.

There is also, no doubt, that he is guilty of over-emphasis every now and then, and that it is easy to pick holes in his theories. Coleridge could easily demolish his theory of poetic diction and demonstrate that a selection of language as advocated by Wordsworth would differ in no way from the language of any other man of commonsense.

All the same, the historical significance of his criticism is very great. It served as a corrective to the artificial and inane phraseology and emphasized the value of a simpler and more natural language. By advocating simplicity in theme, he succeeded in enlarging the range of English poetry. He attacked the old, outdated and trivial and created a taste of the new and the significant. He emphasized the true nature of poetry as an expression of emotion and passion, and so dealt a death blow to the dry intellectuality of contemporary poetry. In this way, he brought about a revolution in the theory of poetry, and made popular acceptance of the new poetry, the romantic poetry, possible.

Unlike other romantics, Wordsworth also lays stress on the element of thought in poetry. He has a high conception of his own calling and so knows that great poetry cannot be produced by a careless or thoughtless person. He says:

Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.

Poetic process is a complex one. Great poetry is not produced on the spur of the moment. It is produced only when the original emotion is contemplated in tranquility, and the poet passions anew.

Wordsworth goes against the neo-classic view that poetry should both instruct and delight, when he stresses that the function of poetry is to give pleasure, a noble and exalted kind of pleasure which results from increased understanding and sympathy. If at all it teaches, it does so only indirectly, by purifying the emotions, uplifting the soul, and bringing it nearer to nature.

The credit for democratizing the conception of the poet must go to Wordsworth. According to him, the poet is essentially a man who differs from other men not in kind, but only in degree. He has a more lively sensibility, a more comprehensive soul, greater powers of observation, imagination and communication. He is also a man who has thought long and deep. Wordsworth emphasizes his organic oneness as also the need for his emotional identification with other men.

We can do no better than conclude this account of the achievement of Wordsworth as a critic with the words of Rene Wellek:

Wordsworth thus holds a position in the history of criticism which must be called ambiguous or transitional. He inherited from neo-classicism a theory of the imitation of nature to which he gives, however, a specific social twist: he inherited from the 18th century a view of poetry as passion and emotion which he again modified as … “recollection in tranquility”. He takes up rhetorical ideas about the effect of poetry but extends and amplifies them into a theory of the social effects of literature … he also adopts a theory of poetry in which imagination holds the central place as a power of unification and ultimate insight into the unity of the world. Though Wordsworth left only a small body of criticism, it is rich in survivals, suggestions, anticipations and personal insights.

Coleridge is one of the greatest of literary critics, and his greatness has been almost universally recognized. He occupies, without doubt, the fist place among English literary critics. After eliminating one after another the possible contenders for the title of the greatest critic, Saintsbury concludes:

So, then there abide these three – Aristotle, Longinus and Coleridge.

According to Arthur Symons, Coleridge's Biographia Literaria is,

… the greatest book of criticism in English.

Herbert Read concludes Coleridge as:

 … head and shoulders above every other English critic.

I. A. Richards considers him as the fore-runner “of the modern science of semantics”, and Rene Wellek is of the view that he is a link, “between German Transcendentalism and English Romanticism.”

A man of stupendous learning, both in philosophy and literature, ancient as well as modern, and refined sensibility and penetration intellect, Coleridge was eminently fitted to the task of a critic. His practical criticism consists of his evaluations of Shakespeare and other English dramatists, and of Milton and Wordsworth. Despite the fact there are so many digressions and repetitions, his practical criticism is always illuminating and highly original. It is rich in suggestions of far reaching value and significance, and flashes of insight rarely to be met with in any other critic. His greatness is well brought out, if we keep in mind the state of practical criticism in England before him. The Neo-classic critics judged on the basis of fixed rules. They were neither legislative nor judicial, nor were carried away by their prejudices. Coleridge does not judge on the basis of any rules. He does not pass any judgment, but gives his responses and reactions to a work of art. His criticism is impressionistic-romantic, a new kind of criticism, a criticism which dealt a knock out blow to neo-classic criticism, and has been in vague, more or less, ever since. He could discover new beauties in Shakespeare and could bring about fresh re-valuations of a number of old English masters. Similarly, his criticism of Wordsworth and his theories enable us to judge him and his views in the correct perspective.

In the field of theoretical inquiry, Coleridge was the first to introduce psychology and philosophy into literary criticism. He was interested in the study of the process of poetic creation, the very principles of creative activity, and for this purposes freely drew upon philosophy and psychology. He thus made philosophy the basis of literary inquiry, and thus brought about a union of philosophy, psychology and literary criticism. His literary theories have their bases in philosophy; he imparted to criticism the dignity which belongs to philosophy. He philosophized literary criticism and thus brought about a better and truer understanding of the process of creation and the nature and function of poetry.

His greatest and most original contribution to literary criticism is his theory of imagination. Addison had examined the nature and function of imagination, and Wordsworth, too, had developed his own theory on the subject. But all previous discussions of imagination look superficial and childish when compared with Coleridge's treatment of the subject. He is the first critic to differentiate between Imagination and Fancy, and to differentiate between primary and secondary Imagination. Through his theory of imagination he revolutionized the concept of artistic imitation. Poetic imitation is neither a servile copy of nature, not is it the creation of something entirely new and different from Nature. Poetry is not imitation, but creation, but it is creation based on the sensations and impressions received from the external world. Such impressions are shaped, ordered, modified and opposites are reconciled and harmonized, by the imagination of the poet, and in this way poetic creation takes place.

Further, as David Daiches points out:

It was Coleridge who finally, for the first time, resolved the age old problem of the relation between the form and content of poetry.

Through his philosophical inquiry into the nature and value of poetry, he established that a poem is an organic whole, and that its form is determined by its content, and is essential to that content. Thus metre and rhyme, he showed, are not merely, “pleasure super-added”, not merely something superfluous which can be dispensed with, not mere decoration, but essential to that pleasure which is the true poetic pleasure. This demonstration of the organic wholeness of a poem is one of his major contributions to literary theory.

Similarly, his theory of “Willing Suspension of Disbelief” marks a significant advance over earlier theories on the subject. His view that during the perusal of a poem or the witnessing of a play, there is neither belief nor disbelief, but a mere suspension of disbelief, is not universally accepted as correct, and the controversy on the subject has been finally set at rest.

However, it may be mentioned in the end that as Coleridge’s views are too philosophical, he is a critic no easy to understand. Often it is fragmentary and unsystematic. Victorians, in general, could not appreciate him and his appeal was confined to the few.

It is only in the 20th century that his literary criticism has been truly understood and recognition and appreciation have followed. Today his reputation stands very high, and many go to him for inspiration and illumination. Despite the fragmentary nature of his work, he is now regarded as the most original critic of England.

No phrase in the language has acquired such wide and universe popularity, and has had such a profound impact on subsequent literary theory as Coleridge's phrase, “Willing suspension of disbelief”, which he used to indicate the nature of poetic dramatic illusion. All through the Neo-classics era the question of dramatic illusion and credibility had exercised the mind of critics, and the observance of the unities was considered essential for, their violation puts too severe a strain on the credibility of the audience and thus dramatic illusion is violated. The topic was hotly debated and both Dryden and Dr. Johnson have expressed their views on it, views which are in advance of those of their contemporaries. However, it was Coleridge who said the last word on the subject, and finally put the controversy at rest.

Coleridge uses the phrase in connection with his account in Chapter XIV of the Biographia Literaria of the origin and genesis of the Lyrical Ballads. He writes:

In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical ballads; in which it was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith.

Thus he was to treat of characters supernatural, which are incredible and improbable and which under normal circumstances we would not believe in but the treatment was to be such that as long as we were reading his poems, there would be, “a willing suspension of disbelief”, and we would believe for the moment in what is essentially incredible and improbable. In other words, the treatment should be such as would send the judgment of readers to sleep, so that they would pursue the poem with delight.

In Chapter XXIII of the Biographia Literaria he explains himself further and writes:

The poet does not require us to be awake and believe; he solicits us only to yield ourselves to a dream; and this, too, with our eyes open, and with our judgment pursue behind the curtain, really to awaken us at the first motion of our will, and meantime, only, not to disbelieve.

The poet sends our judgment to sleep, for as long as we are reading his word or seeing his play. He does not ask us to believe in what is presented to our mind; he only requires that we should not disbelieve. Only a momentary suspension of disbelief is required for an enjoyment of imaginative literature. We are not under any illusion that it is reality; only, for the moment, there is a voluntary remission of judgment, we enjoy what we dream of. Similarly, the poet, if he is sufficiently skilful, sends our judgments to sleep so that we neither believe nor disbelieve, it to be reality, but merely enjoy what is presented to the mind’s eye. Our reason, or rational judgment, our consciousness, is in voluntarily suspension and this suspension of judgment enables us to enjoy what is in our waking moments when the spell is broken, we would condemn as incredible. Distancing in time and place, humanizing of the marvelous and the supernatural, etc., are some of the devices used to procure such, “willing suspension of disbelief”.

Further light on Coleridge's views in this connection is thrown through a comparison with the view of Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson was of the view that the reader or the spectator deludes himself into believing a play to be a reality, as long as he is witnessing it. The spectator knows, “from the first to the last that the stage is only a stage and that the players are only players”. But knowingly he deludes himself and regards it as the reality. Not unlike Johnson, Coleridge is of the view that it is not in this state that a tale or play is enjoyed, or that the reader or the spectator allows himself to be deluded even temporarily, to be able to enjoy it. On the contrary, he just takes leave of his judgment for the time being. ‘The true stage-illusion consists not in the mind’s judging it to be a forest, but in its remission of the judgment that it is not a forest’. While Dr. Johnson believed that the spectator is in full exercise of his judgment and knows that what is being presented to him is not reality, Coleridge believes that the spectator does not voluntarily exercise his judgment for the time being. His critical faculty is asleep so to say. Thus Coleridge’s position is a middle one: the spectator or the reader does neither actively believe nor disbelieve. His judgment is in a state of suspension for the time being. Voluntarily he is persuaded not to exercise it as long as he is reading a poem or witnessing a play. Imaginative literature owes its appeal to such suspension of disbelief.

Eliot is one of the greatest literary critics of England from the point of view of the bulk and quality of his critical writings. His five hundred and odd essays occasionally published as reviews and articles had a far-reaching influence on literary criticism in the country. His criticism was revolutionary which inverted the critical tradition of the whole English speaking work. John Hayward says:

I cannot think of a critic who has been more widely read and discussed in his own life-time; and not only in English, but in almost every language, except Russian.

As a critic Eliot has his faults. At times he assumes a hanging-judge attitude and his statements savor of a verdict. Often his criticism is marred by personal and religious prejudices blocking an honest and impartial estimate. Moreover, he does not judge all by the same standards. There is didacticism in his later essays and with the passing of time his critical faculties were increasingly exercised on social problems. Critics have also found fault with his style as too full of doubts, reservations and qualifications.

Still, such faults do not detract Eliot’s greatness as a critic. His criticism has revolutionized the great writers of the past three centuries. His recognition of the greatness of the Metaphysical poets of the 17th century resulted in the Metaphysical revival of the 20th century. The credit for the renewal of interest in the Jacobean dramatists goes to Eliot. He has restored Dryden and other Augustan poets to their due place. His essay on Dante aroused curiosity for the latter middle ages. The novelty of his statements, hidden in sharp phrases, startles and arrests attention. According to Eliot, the end of criticism is to bring readjustment between the old and the new. He says:

From time to time it is desirable, that some critic shall appear to review the past of our literature, and set the poets and the poems in a new order.

Such critics are rare, for they must possess, besides ability for judgment, powerful liberty of mind to identify and interpret its own values and category of admiration for their generation. John Hayward says:

Eliot’s criticism offers both reassessment and reaction to earlier writers. He called himself “a classicist in literature”. His vital contribution is the reaction against romanticism and humanism which brought a classical revival in art and criticism. He rejected the romantic view of the individual’s perfectibility, stressed the doctrine of the original sin and exposed the futility of the romantic faith in the “Inner Voice”. Instead of following his ‘inner voice’, a critic must follow objective standards and must conform to tradition. A sense of tradition, respect for order and authority is central to Eliot’s classicism. He sought to correct the excesses of “the abstract and intellectual” school of criticism represented by Arnold. He sought to raise criticism to the level of science. In his objectivity and logical attitude, Eliot most closely resembles Aristotle. A. G. George says:

Eliot’s theory of the impersonality of poetry is the greatest theory on the nature of the process after Wordsworth’s romantic conception of poetry.

Poetry was an expression of the emotions and personality for romantics. Wordsworth said that poetry was an overflow of powerful emotions and its origin is in “Emotions recollected in tranquility”. Eliot rejects this view and says that poetry is not an expression of emotion and personality but an escape from them. The poet is only a catalytic agent that fuses varied emotions into new wholes. He distinguishes between the emotions of the poet and the artistic emotion, and points out that the function of criticism is to turn attention from the poet to his poetry.

Eliot’s views on the nature of poetic process are equally revolutionary. According to him, poetry is not inspiration, it is organization. The poet’s mind is like a vessel in which are stored numerous feelings, emotions and experiences. The poetic process fuses these distinct experiences and emotions into new wholes. In “The Metaphysical Poets”, he writes:

When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences; the ordinary man’s experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary.

Perfect poetry results when instead of ‘dissociation of sensibility’ there is ‘unification of sensibility’. The emotional and the rational, the creative and the critical, faculties must work in harmony to produce great work of art. Critics stressed that the aim of poetry is to give pleasure or to teach morally. However, for Eliot the greatness of a poem is tested by the order and unity it imposes on the chaotic and disparate experiences of the poet. Wimsatt and Brooks are right in saying:

Hardly since the 17th century had critical writing in English so resolutely transposed poetic theory from the axis of pleasure versus pain to that of unity versus multiplicity.

Eliot devised numerous critical concepts that gained wide currency and has a broad influence on criticism. ‘Objective co-relative’, ‘Dissociation of sensibility’, ‘Unification of sensibility’ are few of Eliot clichés hotly debated by critics. His dynamic theory of tradition, of impersonality of poetry, his assertion on ‘a highly developed sense of fact’ tended to impart to literary criticism catholicity and rationalism.

To conclude, Eliot’s influence as a critic has been wide, constant, fruitful and inspiring. He has corrected and educated the taste of his readers and brought about a rethinking regarding the function of poetry and the nature of the poet process. He gave a new direction and new tools of criticism. It is in the re-consideration and revival of English poetry of the past. George Watson writes:

Eliot made English criticism look different, but not in a simple sense. He offered it a new range of rhetorical possibilities, confirmed it in its increasing contempt for historical processes, and yet reshaped its notion of period by a handful of brilliant institutions.

His comments on the nature of Poetic Drama and the relation between poetry and drama have done much to bring about a revival of Poetic Drama in the modern age. Even if he had written no poetry, he would have made his mark as a distinguished and subtle critic.

The essay 'The Metaphysical Poets' was originally a review in the London Times Literary Supplement (October 20, 1921) of the book Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century. In this essay, Eliot discusses three questions: To what extent did the so-called metaphysical form a school or a movement? How far is this so-called school or movement a digression from the main current? What is the importance in the modern age, of the study of these poets? The essay may be summarized under four headings:

According to T. S. Eliot, it is extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry. The difficulty arises when we are to decide what poets practised it and in which of their poems. The poetry of Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, Cowley and Donne is usually called metaphysical. However, it is difficult to find any precise use of metaphor, simile or other conceit, which is common to all these poets. Donne and often Cowley, “employ a device which is sometimes considered characteristically metaphysical: the elaboration of a figure of speech to the farthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it”. Donne develops a comparison of two lovers to a pair of compasses. Sometimes we find in them “a development by rapid association of thought which requires considerable agility on the part of the reader”. Donne is more successful than Cowley because in developing comparisons, he uses brief words and sudden contrasts:

A bracelet of bright hair about the bone

where the most powerful effect is produced by the sudden contrast of the associations of “bright hair” and of “bone”.

So it is to be maintained that metaphysical poetry is the elaboration of far-fetched images and communicated association of poet’s mental processes.

Johnson employed the term ‘metaphysical poets’, apparently having Donne, Cleveland and Cowley chiefly in mind. In their poetry, he remarks:

the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.

The force of this accusation lies in the fact that often the ideas are yoked but not united. But this is not blameworthy in itself, as it has been practised by a number of poets and even by Johnson himself. Johnson, shrewd and sensitive critic, Eliot concludes, failed to define metaphysical poetry by its faults.

Eliot adopts the opposite method to define metaphysical poetry. Instead of calling these poets metaphysical, he calls them “the poets of the seventeenth century”. He assumes that these poets were the direct and normal development of the precedent age. Without prejudicing their case by the adjective ‘metaphysical’, we may consider “whether their virtue was not something permanently valuable”.

Eliot lays emphasis on the synthetic quality in these poets. Eliot praises the metaphysical poets for their successful attempt to unite what resists unification. To unite thought and feeling, the poetic and unpoetic, form and content, was the main quality of the metaphysical poets. Eliot points out the difference by dividing the poets into two kinds: intellectual poets and reflective poets.

Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their though as immediately as the odour of a rose. A though to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility. When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly merging disparate experience; the ordinary man’s experience is chaotic, irregular fragmentary.

In the mind of the poet experiences are related to one another and from new wholes.

The poets of the 17th century possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience. They are simple, artificial, difficult or fantastic. In the 17th century dissociation of sensibility set in and Milton and Dryden, the two great poets carried on with this process. While the language became more refined, the feeling became cruder. The language became unnatural and artificial. But this development of language reduced the importance of feeling. The logical conclusion of the influence of Milton and Dryden was that:

The sentimental age began early in the 18th century and continued. The poets revolted against the ratiocinative.

In Shelley and Keats, there are traces of a struggle towards unification of sensibility. But they died and reflective poets Tennyson and Browning held the ground. If there had been no gap between the 17th and 18th centuries, poets like Donne would not have been called metaphysical. The poets in question have, like other poets, various faults.

It is not a permanent necessity that poets should be interested in philosophy, or in any other subject. But our present civilization demands the poets to be difficult.

Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and refined results. The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning.

Hence we get something which looks very much like the conceit. If this is done, the poets of the present age will draw closer to the metaphysical poets, because both use obscure words and simple phrasing.

In the end, Eliot defends the metaphysical poets that the charges such as quaintness, obscurity, wittiness and unintelligibility are found even in serious poets. The metaphysical ideas are not simply the possession of this group of poets. They are found in other poets as well.

From this essay we can draw three conclusions: First, the main quality of the metaphysical poets is their fidelity to thought and feeling, an attempt to merge into one whole the most heterogeneous ideas; secondly, if dissociation of sensibility has not taken place during the 17th century and a gap had not occurred, they would not have been called metaphysical; thirdly, modern poets are tending to become like them in their use of language and ideas and hence the metaphysical poets are in the direct current of English poetry.

Critics and poets, in all ages and countries tried to explain their own theory and practice of poetry. Wordsworth, too, expounded his views on poetry, its nature and functions, and the qualifications of a true poet in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.

On the nature of poetry, Wordsworth states that:

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful passion.

Internal feelings of the poet proceeds poetry. It is a matter of feeling and temperament. True poetry cannot be written without proper mood and temperament. It cannot be produced to order. It must flow out freely and willingly from the soul as it cannot be made to flow through artificially laid pipes. Secondly, poetry is a matter of powerful feelings. It is never an intellectual process.

Poetry is born not in the mind but in the heart overflowing with feelings.

Poets are gifted with greater organic sensibility. They have greater ability to receive sense impressions. Beauties of nature, which may leave ordinary mortals untouched, excite poet’s powerful emotions and he feels an urge to express them. Wordsworth’s heart leapt up with joy on beholding a rainbow or daffodils dancing in the breeze and he expressed his overflowing feelings spontaneously in his immortal poems.

According to Wordsworth, good poetry is never an instant expression of powerful emotions. A good poet must meditate and ponder over them long and deeply. Poetry has its origin in “emotions recollected in tranquility”. Experience has to pass at least four stages before successful composition becomes possible. Firstly, there is the observation or perception to some object, character or event which sets up powerful emotions in poet’s mind. Secondly, there is recollection and contemplation of that emotion in silence. In this stage, memory plays a very important part. An interval of time must elapse, in which the first experience sinks deep into the poet’s insight and becomes his part and parcel. During the interval, the mind ponders and the impression received is purged of the unneeded elements or superfluities and is “qualified by various pleasures”. This filtering process is very slow; time and solitude are vital. Thus, the poet’s emotion is universalized. Thirdly, the interrogation of memory by the poet sets up, or revives, the emotion in “the mind itself”. It is very much like the first emotion, but is purged of all superfluities and constitutes a “state of enjoyment”.

This does not mean that the creative process is a tranquil one. The poet points out that in the process of contemplation, “tranquility disappears”. The poet has to “passion anew” while creating and is terribly exhausted as a result. But creation, if it be healthy, carries with it joy or “an over-balance of pleasure”. On the whole, “the mood of imaginative creation is enjoyment”. The ability to create comes from nature and not from premeditated art.

The fourth and last stage is of composition. The poet must convey that “overbalance of pleasure” and his own “state of enjoyment” to others. He differs from ordinary individuals in communicating his experience to others in such a way as to give pleasure. Metre is justified for it is pleasure super-added:

Verse will be read a hundred times where Prose is read only once.

Wordsworth himself closely followed his theory. He rarely made, “a present joy the matter of a song”. He did not poetize an experience immediately; his hardly ten poems are described unplanned. His composition had a wide interval between an experience and its poetic delineation. He had a powerful memory and at times he would fetch out an impression, “from hiding places ten years deep”. All his best poems resulted from emotions recollected in tranquility.

Recalling in silence enables the poet to see into the things deeply and converse the very soul of an experience to his readers. Through such contemplation the poet is able to impart to everyday object a ‘visionary gleam’, a ‘glory’, a ‘light that never was on land and sea’. As such recollection is best done in solitude, the poet loved lonely places, liked to wander all alone, lost in reverie, and was known by the rustics of Cumberland as the Solitary.

Wordsworth asserts that the function of poetry is to give pleasure. Even the painful subject should give pleasure. The poet in a “state of enjoyment” must commune this enjoyment to his readers. But pleasure is not the only and the chief aim of poetry. It is not an entertainment or a pastime. He tells:

It is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, the impassioned expression that is in the countenance of all science.

To be incapable of poetic feeling is to be without love of human nature and reverence of God. Its mission is to:

Arouse the sensual from their sleep of Death. And win the vacant and the vain to noble Rapture.

Poetry must serve the purposes of life and morality.

Poetry divorced from morality is valueless.

He hoped to console through his own poetry, the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight, to lead the people to see, to think and to feel and become more virtuous.

Any subject can be poetically treated but Wordsworth favored incidents and characters from low and rustic life. He made the folks of Cumberland, their lives and objects of nature, the subjects of his poetry, for in rustic life the basic passions and emotions can be observed more clearly and expressed more perfectly. Such elementary passions in rural settings are linked with, “the beautiful and permanent forms of nature”. For Wordsworth it is the feeling and emotion that is important and not action and situation.

Feeling developed in a poem gives importance to the action and situation and not the diction and situation to the feeling.

Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction was a direct outcome of his democratic preference for simple rustic life and characters. When the theme was simple, the language must be simple too. It must be a selection of the language really spoken by such men otherwise it would not be in character. He is, therefore, critical of the artificial poetic diction of 18th century poetry.