"My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots as far as they lift themselves above the ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our common consciousness."

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)


Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Rest Fenner
Date
1817
Metaphor
"My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots as far as they lift themselves above the ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our common consciousness."
Metaphor in Context
[...] But it was Mr. Wordsworth's purpose to consider the influences of fancy and imagination as they are manifested in poetry, and from the different effects to conclude their diversity in kind; while it is my object to investigate the seminal principle, and then from the kind to deduce the degree. My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots as far as they lift themselves above the ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our common consciousness.
(p. 88)
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Text drawn from or checked against S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria. ed. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, Bollingen Series: The Collected Works, vol. vii (Princeton UP, 1983).

See also Project Gutenberg edition <Link>.
Date of Entry
09/22/2005
Date of Review
07/21/2011

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.