View source for Samuel Taylor Coleridge

== Reputation and influence ==
Hazlitt was one of Coleridge's severest critics, attacking his politics, his plagiarism, his poetry and his ''Biographia Literaria''; but he ended one of his diatribes with a tribute, describing him as the only man from whom he had ever learnt anything.  The younger generation of romantic poets, Byron, Shelley and Keats, were much influenced by his poetry.  [[Thomas Carlyle]] was in a sense Coleridge's successor in popularising German philosophy and literature in Britain.<ref>Holmes, R.</ref>

After Coleridge's death, Wordsworth described him as the most ''wonderful'' man he had ever known - wonderful for the originality of his mind, and the power he possessed of throwing out in profusion grand central truths from which might be evolved the most comprehensive systems.<ref>Stauffer, Donald A, ed.  Selected Poetry and Prose of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  Random House.  1951.  Introduction</ref>

His ''Table Talk'', transcribed by his nephew and son-in-law, Henry Nelson Coleridge, was published in 1835, but does not do much to convey the basis for his reputation as a fascinating conversationalist.