“Not a Man, But a Monster”: Organicism, Becoming, and the Daemonic Imago

Abstract

Writing to Southey on July 17, 1797, Coleridge enthused about the arrival in the Quantocks of “a very great man”: “I had been on a visit to Wordsworth’s at Racedown near Crewkherne—and I brought him & his Sister back with me & here I have settled them” (CL I 334). They had known each other since Autumn 1795, and were already literary correspondents: writing to Thelwall in May 1796, Coleridge refers to Wordsworth as “a very dear friend of mine”—and with precipitous confidence, as “the best poet of the age”—citing Wordsworth’s praise of “Religious Musings” (CL I 215). Friendship with William and Dorothy enabled Coleridge to detach himself further from theological allegiances he now found limiting; freed from both financial anxiety and the deleterious effects of doctrinal commitment by the Wedgwood annuity, he immediately planned to spend the spring and summer of 1798 with Wordsworth (CL I 377–78). Most of all, Wordsworth’s passion for the beauty and mystery of the natural world reflected and encouraged his own.