Why We Like the Ghost of S. T. Coleridge

Bryan and I are tough critics in the sphere of lecturing: We dislike most lecturers and find fault with their addresses. Howbeit, we really like the work of S. T. Coleridge. — That’s Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the friend of Wordsworth. Of course, he’s no longer alive with us in the flesh, so, when we rate Coleridge’s lecturing skills, we’re talking about his ghost. But he’s got a fine style and a strong, intellectual bearing. He’s, in fact, my favorite semi-resurrected lecturer; and I believe that Bry would agree with me on this. — Here’s a highlight of the ghost’s most recent speech, whose text is from Chapter XIV of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria: 

. . . the communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically composed; and that object may have been in a high degree attained, as in novels and romances. Would then the mere superaddition of metre, with or without rhyme, entitle these to the name of poems? The answer is, that 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. They must be such, as to justify the perpetual and distinct attention to each part, which an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound are calculated to excite. The final definition then, so deduced, may be thus worded. A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.

Now, what Mister Coleridge is asserting here, is it sound? Is it true? Must we consider ourselves to be bound by its implications? — I can’t answer all of your questions at the moment; all I can say is that it pleases me to hear the ghost of the author voice these words. 

And that’s what being a lecturer is all about: Delivering an address on an interesting subject, and leaving your audience in a lasting state of euphoria.