But the root of the
matter was there, and in Coleridge's fertile mind the Aristotelian
theory of imitation flowered into a magnificent conception of the
validity and process of the poetic imagination. And partly because the
foundation was truly Aristotelian, partly because Coleridge had known
what it was to be a great poet, the reference to life pervades the
whole of what is permanently valuable in Coleridge's criticism. In him,
too, there is a strict and mutually fertilising relation between the
moral and the aesthetic values. This is the firm ground beneath his feet
when he--too seldom--proceeds to the free exercise of his exquisite
aesthetic discrimination.
In Dryden, however, there was no such organic interpenetration. Dryden,
too, had a fine sensibility, though less exquisite, by far, than that of
Coleridge; but his theoretical system was not merely alien to him--it
was in itself false and mistaken. _Corruptio optimi pessima_. He took
over from France the sterilised and lifeless Aristotelianism which has
been the plague of criticism for centuries; he used it no worse than his
French exemplars, but he used it very little better than they.
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