from CHAPTER 17
[POETIC LANGUAGE]

The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself. It is formed by a voluntary appropriation of fixed symbols to internal acts, to processes and results of imagination, the greater part of which have no place in the consciousness of uneducated man...

NOTES: This begins Coleridge's objection to Wordsworth's use of the term "real language o f men." According to Coleridge, such a generalization cannot exist, for men are individuals by nature. Furthermore, he is attributing acts of the imagination to educated men, or in this case, those who possess poetic genius. What is apparent is that the language of poetry undoubtedly comes from the imagination. The way the poet perceives the world and, to use Wordsworth's term, translates it for everyone else is an act of the imagination.