SOURCE: Jackson, J. R. de J. “Principles in Literary Criticism.” In Method and Imagination in Coleridge's Criticism, pp. 48-74. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.

In the following excerpt, Jackson discusses Coleridge's reaction to what he personally considered to be the poor quality of contemporary literary reviews, and his attempt to establish a set of standards by which literature could more properly be judged.

Coleridge's efforts to reform literary criticism follow much the same patterns. The prevalence of biting, opinionated reviews seemed to him to be another instance of the intellectual weakness of his age. His opposition to reviewing is part and parcel of his more general attempt to improve the way in which his contemporaries thought. Again we find him attacking reliance on mere opinions, advocating dependence on principles, recommending the advantages of hard thinking, and finally describing a specific Method and attempting to implement it. It is...