An Experiment in Honesty: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's [i]The Friend[/i]

An Experiment in Honesty: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's [i]The Friend[/i]: Conservatives today owe a debt of gratitude to Russell Kirk for rightly seeing in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s mature thought a great deal more than the epithet “romantic poet” might suggest. Still, some may wonder how exactly Coleridge—notorious for his opium addiction, youthful enthusiasm for the French Revolution, intellectual fixation with German Romanticism, estranged family life, amorous obsessions, bohemian lifestyle, plagiarisms, and long-held interest in establishing a utopian community—found a place among Kirk’s pantheon of conservative minds. . . .