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English Men of Letters: Coleridge by H. D. (Henry Duff) Traill
page 44 of 217 (20%)
their origin to Coleridge's early political sentiments. Henceforth, and
for the too brief period of his poetic activity, he was to derive his
inspiration from other sources. The most fruitful and important of
these was unquestionably his intercourse with Wordsworth, from whom,
although there was doubtless a reciprocation of influence between
them, his much more receptive nature took a far deeper impression than
it made. [1] At the time of their meeting he had already for some three
years been acquainted with Wordsworth's works as a poet, and it speaks
highly for his discrimination that he was able to discern the great
powers of his future friend, even in work so immature in many respects
as the _Descriptive Sketches_. It was during the last year of his
residence at Cambridge that he first met with these poems, of which he
says in the _Biographia Literaria_ that "seldom, if ever, was the
emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more
evidently announced;" and the effect produced by this volume was
steadily enhanced by further acquaintance both with the poet and his
works. Nothing, indeed, is so honourably noticeable and even touching
in Coleridge's relation to his friend as the tone of reverence with
which, even in the days of his highest self-confidence and even almost
haughty belief in the greatness of his own poetic mission, he was
accustomed to speak of Wordsworth. A witness, to be more fully cited
hereafter, and whose testimony is especially valuable as that of one
who was by no means blind to Coleridge's early foible of self-
complacency, has testified to this unbounded admiration of his brother-
poet. "When," records this gentleman, "we have sometimes spoken
complimentarily to Coleridge of himself he has said that he was nothing
in comparison with Wordsworth." And two years before this, at a time
when they had not yet tested each other's power in literary
collaboration, he had written to Cottle to inform him of his
introduction to the author of "near twelve hundred lines of blank
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