"For the conceptions of the mind may be so vivid and adequate, as to preclude that impulse to the realising of them, which is strongest and most restless in those who possess more than mere 'talent' (or the faculty of appropriating and applying the knowledge of others,) yet still want something of the creative and self-sufficing power of absolute 'Genius'. For this reason, therefore, they are men of 'commanding' genius. While the former rest content between thought and reality, as it were in an intermundium of which their own living spirit supplies the 'substance', and their imagination the ever-varying 'form'; the latter must impress their preconceptions on the world without, in order to present them back to their own view with the satisfying degree of clearness, distinctness, and individuality." Vol. i. p. 31.] [Footnote 2: In consequence of various reports traducing Coleridge's good name, I have thought it an act of justice due to his character, to notice several mistatements here and elsewhere, which I should otherwise have gladly passed over.] [Footnote 3: Coleridge was always most ready to pass a censure on what appeared to him a defect in his own composition, of which the following is a proof:--In his introductory remarks to this Greek Ode, printed in the Sibylline Leaves, he observes: "The Slaves in the West Indies consider Death as a passport to their native country. This sentiment is expressed in the introduction to the 'Greek Ode on the Slave Trade,' of which the Ideas are better than the language in which they are conveyed." Certainly this is taking no merit to himself, although the Ode obtained the Prize.] [Footnote 4: "At the beginning of the French Revolution, Klopstock wrote odes of congratulation. He received some honorary presents from the French Republic (a golden crown, I believe), and, like our Priestley, was invited to a seat in the legislature, which he declined: but, when French liberty metamorphosed herself into a fury, he sent back these presents with a palinodia, declaring his abhorrence of their proceedings; and since then he has been more perhaps than enough an Anti-Gallican. I mean, that in his just contempt and detestation of the crimes and follies of the revolutionists, he suffers himself to forget that the revolution itself is a process of the Divine Providence; and that as the folly of men is the wisdom of God, so are their iniquities instruments of his goodness." 'Biographia Literaria,' vol. ii. p. 243.] [Footnote 5: Coleridge in the 'Friend,' says: