He was not, perhaps,
primarily, he certainly was not exclusively, a poet. In theology, in
philosophy, in political thought and literary criticism he set currents
flowing which are flowing yet. The terminology of criticism, for
example, is in his debt for many of those convenient distinctions--such
as that between genius and talent, between wit and humor, between fancy
and imagination--which are familiar enough now, but which he first
introduced or enforced. His definitions and apothegms we meet
every-where. Such are, for example, the sayings: "Every man is born an
Aristotelian or a Platonist." "Prose is words in their best order;
poetry, the best words in the best order." And among the bits of subtle
interpretation that abound in his writings may be mentioned his
estimate of Wordsworth, in the _Biographia Literaria_, and his sketch of
Hamlet's character--one with which he was personally in strong
sympathy--in the _Lectures on Shakspere_.
The Broad Church party, in the English Church, among whose most eminent
exponents have been W. Frederic Robertson, Arnold of Rugby, F.D.
Maurice, Charles Kingsley, and the late Dean Stanley, traces its
intellectual origin to Coleridge's _Aids to Reflection_, to his writings
and conversations in general, and particularly to his ideal of a
national clerisy, as set forth in his essay on _Church and State_.
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