Coleridge’s afterlife

Abstract

After Coleridge's death it was hard to know how to come to terms with him. Those who had known him personally might be left with a sense of resonating marvel, as expressed in Wordsworth's tribute that he was 'the most wonderful man he had ever known'. Even Thomas Arnold, who as a neighbour in the Lake District would have heard about the troubles of Coleridge's domestic life in some detail, wrote, 'I think with all his faults old Sam was more of a great man than anyone who has lived within the four seas in my memory.' Hazlitt, among his many adverse criticisms, had described him as 'the only person I ever knew that answered to the idea of a man of genius' (Howe v , 167). De Quincey, in an access of enthusiasm, now termed him 'the largest and most spacious intellect . . . the subtlest and most comprehensive, that has yet existed among men'. This last was written in the immediate aftermath of his death, however, and omitted from the account in subsequent years, reflecting contemporary uneasiness and a tendency to look warily at heroes of the previous age.

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