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Leaving his family dependent upon Southey, he lived with various friends, first, from 1816 to 1819, with John Morgan at Calne. While there he pub. Christabel and Kubla Khan in 1816, and in 1817 Biographia Literaria, Sybilline Leaves, and an autobiography. In 1818 he appeared for the last time as a lecturer.

The poem is addressed to Coleridge; and apart from its poetical merits, is interesting as at once a counterpart and a supplement to that author's philosophical and beautiful criticism of the Lyrical Ballads in his Biographia Literaria. It completes the explanation, there given, of the peculiar constitution of Wordsworth's mind, and of his poetical theory.

No finer selection of finely characteristic Wordsworthian passages could perhaps have been made than those which Coleridge has quoted in illustration of his criticisms in the eighteenth and two following chapters of the Biographia Literaria.

The Bibliotheca Literaria was so little supplied with papers that could interest curiosity, that it could not hope for long continuance . Wasse, the chief contributor, was an unpolished scholar, who, with much literature, had no art or elegance of diction, at least in English. At Bodfari I heard the second lesson read, and the sermon preached in Welsh.

So far as a mere layman can understand it, it is a sudden arrest, rather than a satisfaction, of the poet's longing, for genuine satisfaction would kill the aspiration, and leave the poet heavy and phlegmatic. Biographia Literaria, Vol. II, Chap. I, p. 14, ed. Does not the fact that inspiration works in this manner account for the immemorial connection of poetic creativeness with Bacchic frenzy?

It is something like the colleges in a university; they all are independent, yet, joined, are one body. So a general council consisteth of many persons independent of one another, &c. However there is such a thing as jus gentium, &c. And he that is doctor of physic, or law, is so in any university of Europe, like the Respublica Literaria.

With this interest, in the Biographia Literaria, he refines Schelling's "Philosophy of Nature" into a theory of art.

Coleridge has himself cited its most significant passage in the Biographia Literaria as supplying the best description of his mental state at the time when it was written. De Quincey quotes it with appropriate comments in his Coleridge and Opium-Eating. Its testimony is reverently invoked by the poet's son in the introductory essay prefixed by him to his edition of his father's works.

How he sped upon his mission is related by him with infinite humour in the Biographia Literaria.

If, therefore, in writing, you find it your mission to be abstruse, fight to render your statement clear and attractive, as if your life depended on it: your literary life does depend on it, and, if you fail, relapses into a dead language, and becomes, like that of Coleridge, only a Biographia Literaria.