“The story of Coleridge’s life,” observed I. A. Richards in 1950, “has been told many times, in outline and at length—too often to an accompaniment of wrung hands, wry faces, set frowns, and worse.” Such biographical opprobrium, tedious though it may be, is unsurprising given the rich occasions for reprimand that Coleridge provided. Plagiarism, drug abuse, deadbeat fatherhood: these are among the crimes of which he may easily be convicted, and at him an army of carping Plutarchs has thrown its books. Above all, however, Coleridge has been chided for not living up to his abilities. “What a humbling lesson to all men is Samuel Coleridge,” his own brother concluded in disgust. He is a poster boy for squandered talent, a cautionary figure—in short, that awful thing, a disappointment. The pained tone taken by many of his critics is epitomized by Leslie Stephen’s lugubrious summation in a lecture of 1888: “When all is said, the history, both of the man and the thinker, will always be a sad one—the saddest in some sense that we can read, for it is the history of early promise blighted and vast powers all but running hopelessly to waste.”

“What a humbling lesson to all men is Samuel Coleridge,” his own brother concluded in disgust.

A daunted reader sizing up the Bollingen edition of Coleridge—thirteen volumes thick and counting—might wonder what all the fuss is about.