Richards is not only a pre-eminent Coleridgean but is himself, in many important senses, the Coleridge of our time. Like Coleridge, he has taught us that there can be no criticism without reconsidering fundamental conceptions; that we must watch our minds as well as use them, attending especially to what we are doing when we use words like "word," "meaning," "knowledge," "truth," "belief" etc. Like Coleridge, he sees poetry as bringing the whole soul of man into activity, at the same time imposing upon it a more than usual order; and like him, he teaches that to experience poetry fully is to enjoy the bliss of "the rectified mind and the freed heart." Unlike Coleridge, he does not subordinate his critical and psychological insights to an over-riding metaphysical and religious programme; but in his impassioned defence of life-values in a world gone cold and inanimate he has more...